Ecommerce Case Study_This Guy Built an $800K eCommerce Business, Learn How?

A reference experience guide.

Why Dropshipping?

Jack was always in favor of just doing things for fun to see where they might go: “There’s a paradigm that one should take business very seriously, but actually otherwise is true.”

It was interesting for me to see how ecommerce works and put my free evenings to good use, Jack says before launching Leo Gary. Because he was funding his startup from his personal savings, he was looking for ways to cut costs at each and every step, which is why he got into dropshipping with Shopify.

When you receive an order, you just buy it from a supplier and have it shipped directly to your customer. With dropshipping, ecommerce store owners don’t need to stock inventory or buy products in advance and can effectively launch and test a business with a very small budget.

Dropshipping, according to Jack, is not a perfect ecommerce model, which is why it’s not surprising that Zappos turned it down after it developed into a strong startup, but he does assert that it is the ideal model for beginners and the simplest way to start an ecommerce business.

Why Men’s Clothing?

It’s not like you’re going to get “walk-ins” the way you might when people pass by a physical store. Jack quickly discovered the hard lesson that after opening a store, people don’t just automatically come to it.

“Starting an ecommerce business with Shopify and similar tools was the easy part. The hard part is sales,” claims Jack.

He mentions that at the start phase, he only had some vague ideas of what he wanted to sell, and he needed data to support his idea and make a decision. Then he used a free data analysis tool called SimplyTrends to help him lock the niche market. Now he still uses the tool to discover winning products as well as find and analyze competitors.

He continues that he finally chose a broad men’s clothing category and used specific products to draw customers through his advertising campaigns because he doesn’t believe in extreme niche targeting because it’s now such a popular go-to option for new ecommerce merchants.

“I think every dropshipping store owner should offer a wide variety of products, but use the niche products to draw customers to the site,” As Jack explains, “Dropshipping allows me to have a lot of products, and this allows me to be flexible. If my niche product doesn’t attract any visitors, I just pick another product for my store.” However, if he were to open a bicycle gear store named bycyclefansgear.com, he probably wouldn’t be able to make a go of it selling only sports clothing.

Why Facebook Ads?

Google Ads and Search Engine Marketing (SEM/SEO) are great ways to reach people who are already interested in your products, but you have to generate that interest first or you’ll end up competing with the big names and losing.

Jack used Shopify dropship apps to expand his business internationally, and he complemented this with Facebook as an equally expansive and adaptable marketing channel.

Jack continues, “If you know how to make the most of the data Facebook has about its users, you can achieve amazing results.

Facebook Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences accounted for the majority of my sales. You give Facebook a base audience and instruct it to find users who are most like those on that list when you create a Lookalike Audience. You could, for instance, give Facebook a list of the people who frequently visit your website and ask it to compile a list of people who are most like those visitors.

Facebook’s sophisticated data capabilities far exceed anything you can do with your own analytics for understanding who your website visitors are and how they differ from the average Facebook user; this is not a secret tip, and many people are already using this technique. Together with Facebook retargeting campaigns, these strategies alone brought Allan almost $600,000 in revenue.

Any Other Secret Tips?

Jack argues that everyone should look to try other markets in addition to the US because it was simpler for him to resist focusing on US citizens while he was living abroad. “The problem is in that sentence,” says Jack. “The more people do something in terms of marketing, the less effective that particular marketing method becomes. Everyone says the US is the go-to market for dropshipping store owners.

He repeats that the analysis tool SimplyTrends is an excellent booster for his business success, especially the functionality of competitor analysis, through which he evaluates competitors’ marketing strategies and sees what they are doing right. In return, he can always capture the trend and make the right marketing decision.

If you enjoy this article, you can turn to SimplyShop blog website to find more dropshipping tips and ecommerce marketing strategies.

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