We’ve said this a million times before: The Readystart team consists of actual dropshipppers who run their own stores.
And, as you already know, we LOVE testing new promotional methods whenever possible.
This way, we gain skills and knowledge, so that we can recommend you the most efficient marketing strategies!
Today, we would like to share quite curious experience we had with Instagram Paid Ads, and we hope you’ll benefit from it heavily.
Why use Instagram paid ads for drop shipping?
Drop shipping is a really specific type of business, we must say.
Basically, your customers buy products they’ve never seen in real life, from an online store they’ve never visited in person.
That’s hardcore.
Their courage definitely deserves your respect, so support your customers! Don’t leave them all alone and insecure.
To motivate them to make a purchase, you need to:
- Showcase your products in a clear and detailed way
- Build the reputation of a trustworthy and reliable store
Both of these goals can be achieved with the help of Instagram. This social network is a true blessing for businessmen because it lets you:
- Demonstrate the features of your offers through photos, image galleries, videos, etc.
- Provide social proof through your followers’ actions: subscriptions, leaving feedback through comments and posts, etc.
To make your potential customers familiar with your store offers and to gain a bigger exposure, you can safely use Instagram Paid Ads. That’s a relatively young feature that was only introduced in 2016, and it can actually do magic.
Setting up Instagram Ads: creating a business account
Generally, people get personal Instagram accounts – you are surely familiar with them. They are ordinary accounts that your friends and relatives have.
If you want to run advertising campaigns on Instagram, you will need something a bit different: a business account.
A business account opens up some nice opportunities for promoting your drop shipping store. As soon as you get it, you can:
- Launch an advertising campaign
- View detailed statistics on your posts and followers
- Give your followers several ways to get in touch with you
To set up a business account, you need to do the following:
- Go to your profile settings
- Tap the Switch to Business Profile link
Don’t forget to make your profile publicly available. If your Instagram account is private, you can’t turn it into a business account.
Now, it’s time to set up the new profile. Add some information about your store, and provide contact details:
You must specify at least one contact option. After you add it, your followers will see a Contact button at the top of your profile page, and therefore, they will be able to get in touch with you conveniently.
Tap Done when everything is ready.
Okay, so now it’s time to run your ads!
How to run Instagram Paid Ads: SuperBlings case study
Long story short, we created a store dedicated to jewelry and other cute tiny stuff that is offered on AliExpress for affordable prices.
To spread the word about this store, we launched an Instagram Ads campaign.
First, we turned the profile into a business account.
Then, we connected the store’s Facebook page to the new Instagram business account.
After that, we started the promotion itself.
To do this, it is necessary to choose the already published post. It’s important not to promote a freshly published post – wait for several days before making any actions. In these several days, the post will get enough organic engagement, and you will be able to understand if this post is interesting to your followers at all.
To start planning the campaign, tap the Promote button under the chosen post.
This way, an Instagram post easily turns into an advertisement, and it awesome! Now, it is possible to reach tons of new potential customers.
After tapping the Promote button, we had to specify the details of our new advertising campaign:
On this stage, it is necessary to define the target audience for the promotion.
After that, you set the budget and the duration for the campaign. Instagram gives you some recommendations on this, but you can choose any settings you like.
The advertising campaign is only launched after moderation.
PLEASE NOTE: Instagram team reviews every promotion to make sure it meets all the ad policies of the platform. This is why it’s a good idea to read these policies first to make sure your account won’t be suspended after moderation.
Instagram advertising: efficiency and results
So, your promotion period is over, now what?
Now it’s time for the statistics!
Instagram business accounts have a wonderful additional tab called Insights – it’s located below every post image and contains some valuable info.
Instagram Insights tab helps you understand:
- Who exactly are your followers: their average age, most common gender, typical location, AND, most importantly, behavior. You will be able to see which posts and stories provoke the highest level of engagement within your audience. These details refer not to a single post, but to the whole account.
- What are the actual results of a promotion:
- Impressions– total number of times your post was viewed
- Reach– total number of unique accounts who viewed your post
- Engagement– total number of unique Instagram accounts that liked, commented on or saved your post
- Website Clicks– total number of clicks to the links in your business profile description
- Profile Views– total number of unique accounts who’ve visited your business profile
To measure the efficiency of a post promotion, you can compare the insights for the original post and for the promoted version of the post.
Please note: you can only view the Insights for posts and stories that appeared in your profile AFTER you’ve switched to a business account.
And what about the SuperBlings store where we tried out this strategy?
Well, in three months of the website operation, this strategy already generated 247 sales and brought us around $2,000 in net profit. Not bad at all for a brand new website!
