The community as a model for dropshipping business
The community as a model for dropshipping business
If your dropshipping business relies solely on advertising, you’ll constantly have to pay to attract new customers. At the same time, the cost per click rises by around 10–20% each year, and acquiring a new customer usually costs 5–7 times more than retaining an existing one. In this article from Selpway Trading, we’ll look at how to retain customers and where to bring them together.
Communities are groups and pages on social media. This is where you should direct customers who share an interest in the same topic or products. People will be happy to join and stay in the group for a long time if you post not only direct sales pitches but also useful content.
If a page is merely a showcase for products, visitors quickly grow bored, according to experts at Selpway Cyprus. They start visiting less and less frequently and eventually unfollow. But when a community forms around the shop, where interesting content is shared and people can interact in the comments, they will stick around.
If a page is merely a showcase for products, visitors quickly grow bored, according to experts at Selpway Cyprus. They start visiting less and less frequently and eventually unfollow. But when a community forms around the shop, where interesting content is shared and people can interact in the comments, they will stick around.
Why a community boosts repeat sales
Build a community linked to your shop
Attracting new customers in an online business takes a lot of time, effort and money. If a shop has a community, its subscribers buy more often, in greater quantities and spend more. According to statistics, such customers spend on average 67% more and return 3–5 times more often. The probability of a sale to an existing subscriber is approximately 60–70%, whereas for new customers acquired through advertising, it is only 5–20%. Without a community, people often buy once and leave, forgetting about you.
Platforms for building a community
You can build a community on various online platforms. The key is to choose a place where your audience already spends their time and where they feel comfortable interacting. If you choose the wrong platform, the community will grow slowly, and followers will simply view the content and leave. Before launching, you need to understand where your audience spends most of their time, as recommended by Selpway Cyprus. For example, millennials prefer Instagram, Generation X ‘hangs out’ on Facebook, whilst young people and those aged 55+ are more likely than others to scroll through TikTok feeds.
If your posts are boring or purely sales-oriented, with a ‘buy this, buy that’ approach, people will quickly lose interest in your page. Marketing research shows that 60% of users unfollow a brand if their feed is full of nothing but adverts. Posts offering advice, life hacks or interesting videos keep the audience engaged. And when you have a loyal audience, selling becomes easier.
A community should not only bring people together but also help drive sales, note SELPWAY managers. Shop owners should carefully link useful content with sales content - showing how the product solves a problem, sharing reviews and other customers’ experiences, and answering questions. According to research, 92% of people trust reviews more than traditional advertising. Constantly pushing people to buy a product doesn’t work. You need to earn customers’ trust first.
A community should not only bring people together but also help drive sales, note SELPWAY managers. Shop owners should carefully link useful content with sales content - showing how the product solves a problem, sharing reviews and other customers’ experiences, and answering questions. According to research, 92% of people trust reviews more than traditional advertising. Constantly pushing people to buy a product doesn’t work. You need to earn customers’ trust first.
Community performance metrics
How to turn followers into customers
When building a community, it is important to monitor three key metrics:
The minimum effective engagement rate (ER) is considered to be 3–6%. If it is lower, it means the content is not engaging. Among community members, the conversion rate to purchase can be 10–15%, whereas a typical dropshipping shop with cold traffic achieves only 1–2%.
The experts at Selpway Trading emphasise: in dropshipping, you can constantly seek out new customers, but advertising costs rise by 10–20% every year. It is far more effective to build a community that keeps people coming back to you time and time again.
- engagement (comments, likes, discussions);
- audience growth (sharing posts and inviting friends);
- the percentage of followers who make a purchase from you.
The minimum effective engagement rate (ER) is considered to be 3–6%. If it is lower, it means the content is not engaging. Among community members, the conversion rate to purchase can be 10–15%, whereas a typical dropshipping shop with cold traffic achieves only 1–2%.
The experts at Selpway Trading emphasise: in dropshipping, you can constantly seek out new customers, but advertising costs rise by 10–20% every year. It is far more effective to build a community that keeps people coming back to you time and time again.