There are numerous ways you can grow your business, especially in the world of e-commerce. Time after time, e-commence entrepreneurs try and reinvent the wheel, but they tend to always come back to one strategy. Free plus shipping is perhaps one of the best marketing tactics one can utilize when it comes to growing your e-commerce business.
As we know, email marketing is a crucial online marketing strategy and it can help e-commerce entrepreneurs grow their bottom and topline revenue in the long term. You will be collecting a large number of emails when using free plus shipping marketing method. The free shipping method can essentially pay for your advertising costs while you grow your email list for free.
Most e-commerce store owners are also drop-shippers and primarily based on the Shopify platform, using Oberlo and other automation to fulfil orders and to make business easier. Even though these applications are very helpful, they can cause a drastic drop in profit margins. With increasing marketing costs, the last thing you want to do is lower your profit margin. The great thing about the free plus shipping marketing strategy would be the increase in the volume of orders your store will be getting.
Consumers are always looking for the next best deal or freebie.
This offer could be very enticing to many consumers, and a couple of bucks reduced off of shipping cost would be welcome to many.
Most e-commerce ‘gurus’ suggest beginners sell low ticket products at first; this will allow the business’s Facebook pixel to collect data. With the free plus shipping marketing, a business can amplify your data collection. Optimizing your pixel will not only help you to get more sales in the long term, but it will also help you to re-target your audience when you start marketing a higher ticket product.
Free plus shipping has many benefits, especially for beginners, but let’s talk about the right way you can get started with a free plus shipping strategy.
How to start
The main thing to remember when you are beginning the free plus shipping method would be the product cost. Our goal is to make as much profit as we can. Since you will be primarily relying on your shipping cost, you need to make sure the product price is under $3.
Depending on your niche, finding a product that is under $3 would be very easy. We recommend you browse Oberlo. Another thing to remember is not to spend a lot on your marketing in the beginning, especially if you are using Facebook for advertising.
Your profit margins will be very slim, which is why you need to make sure your ads are optimized and converting as soon as possible.
If your advertisement spends more than your profit margin and has not yielded you a sale, then you should cut down on it.
We recommend you always test out your product with an Instagram influencer, as this will allow you to have a better understanding of your audience. For example, Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson’s conspiracy collection sold out in a matter of minutes because of all the PR they did with Instagram Influencers.
Trialling as many advertisements with different sales copy and audiences for $5 then culling the underperforming ads, then continuing to test and re-test the successful advertisements is a great tip for those starting. Make sure that you add the word “FREE” as much as possible in your advertising copy. This will attract more customers which equates to higher sales.
If you can use a video for your advertising, then you will have a much higher conversion rate. Since most people like to consume media from videos these days, your customers will be more engaged with your advertisement if it’s in video format.
If you can’t manage to find videos on your product, then we highly suggest you have a look at other marketers using images successfully.
You can still be successful with image advertising or carousel advertising, but make sure your image is in HD, and you have the picture showing the product’s capabilities.If the margins are too limited for your product, you can consider adding a one time upsell to the thank you page or the page the traffic is redirected to after ordering their freebie.
Things to avoid
Before you start, make sure that you have the right supplier for your product. Consider looking at Aliexpress suppliers, then make sure they offer e-packet shipping as it is the cheapest and fastest, most reliable shipping available.
The last thing you want to do is to turn off your customers. Recurring sales are the bread and butter of any small business and e-commerce is no different.
Your safest bet would be to find products on Oberlo. Also, make sure you are doing your best to make your landing page look as professional as possible.
Customers will not buy if your site doesn’t look the part. You can always look at other successful company websites for inspiration. This is one step you don’t want to miss, the reason being is that there are a ton of people running a free plus shipping marketing campaign, and sometimes they might be using the same product you might be interested in using.
It is essential for the landing page and the website to look very professional and to stand out from the crowd. The goal here is to make the site look like a real, professional brand that other consumers are purchasing from. Following these steps will mean your ads will have a better chance of converting.
Not only that, if the same person stumbles upon your ad, the chances of them purchasing your product versus your competitions would be much higher.
The key to making your page look more branded is to be as minimal as possible.
Most consumers have an eye for drop-shipping stores. If you have a very spammy trust badge or have no reviews for the product, then you may be defined as one of those “spammy” online stores.
Try and make your store look as branded as possible alongside a fantastic landing page, which is neat.
You don’t want your description to have tons of highlighted words, but it is totally fine to highlight some features and benefits of the product.
The final verdict:
The free plus shipping is an extremely powerful method of garnering a large email list as cheap as possible. Russel Brunson popularized it with his Dotcom Secrets book where he gave out his book for free.
If you follow the steps outlined above you too can have an email list of consumers ready to purchase whatever your store is selling.
The key is to have good branding, great advertising copy and a unique product.
