Mind-Blowing Practices for A Fashion Ecommerce Site to Widen Shopper Base

What can be some innovative ways for customer acquisition for a fashion ecommerce site? Originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Customer acquisition in e-commerce/dropshipping is not about being innovative.

It’s about getting the attention of the right audience and converting that attention into revenue.

There are already people purposefully growing targeted followings on instagram for the sole purpose of gathering a niche audience. These people are known as influencers.

The money is in the niche.

Millenials want to buy from brands that align with their objectives and values. They also want to be unique. They want the social capital that comes with championing new trends.

But they are not objective about where they source their desires. They get their desires from ‘influencers’.

These influencers are people whose lives the millenial consumer wishes to emulate. They’re also people they trust.

If you can identify the right influencers to partner with to promote your brand/product, you can win big.

In fact, this is combo/alignment is so crucial that you should START “with the end in mind”.

Which influencers have audiences for which you think you understand, and can position a product appropriately from a branding standpoint?

Once you have that, go find the product(s), build the website, and partner with the influencer.

That’s just phase “1” of the 1–2 PUNCH.

That’s how you get your ‘early adopters’.

To really cash in, you need phase 2.

For phase 2 to work, go to your “Plug-ins” section on your wordpress site and search “facebook pixel”. Install and activate a plug-in that will make it easy to add your unique facebook ‘pixel’ to your site.

If you don’t have your WordPress site/store yet, it’s really easy to set up. Follow my free video tutorials for building a WordPress dropshipping store here.

Those tutorials utilize the Zerif Lite theme, but if you’re willing to invest $44 to make your site look even better and save yourself sometime: follow the same steps shown but buy the ProLand wordpress theme and install it instead of Zerif Lite.

Note: If you’re not clear enough yet on the whole process to start building a site, read my other more detailed answer here too: Zach Pinnell’s answer to What industries have the highest margins?

Make sure you install the pixel BEFORE promoting the site/product at all. That way every visitor is tracked.

Get the pixel from facebook after signing up for facebook ads. Plug that ‘pixel’ into your facebook pixel plug-in.

The pixel is going to place cookies on your visitors’ computers so facebook’s algorithm can identify them on their platform.

So, you identify some influencers and audiences on Instagram (best for fashion). You partner with those influencers by paying them to promote your product/brand/website.

If you did it well, you likely have some (1) traffic and (2) revenue.

Even if you just break even, that’s great.

Why?

People don’t buy the first time they see your product. They usually have to think about it 5 times. They may like your product and influencer plug but don’t even click yet.

Keep paying the influencers that work more money to mitigate that.

You’re looking for 50 add-to-carts in a week, or per week.

Facebook and facebook ads experts have both said 50 actions per week is sufficient data for the pixel to work it’s magic.

In this case we are using ‘add-to-carts’ for the action instead of conversions (sales) because it requires less influencer traffic to start utilizing the pixel effectively.

So, because you installed that pixel, facebook knows who came to your site and how they behaved, including whether or not they added a product to their cart.

You want to tell facebook to utilize that data in two ways (google for video tutorials):

• Re-targeting. These are the ads that follow you around the web. Invite all previous visitors back to your site. Make them think about your product 5 times so they are more likely to buy. You can run the ads on facebook and Instagram. Use Canva (Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software) for graphics and keep your ad text simple and aligned with your brand/audience.
• Look-a-like. Look-a-like ad campaigns allow you to say “hey facebook, here are 50 people who added my product to their cart. Can you go find 1 million people who are demographically and behaviorally similar and serve them these ads?” This allows you to take the influencers audience and leverage it to find the people who actually love your brand enough to buy, then find a ton more people very similar to them to market to.

Then it’s just a matter of continuing to change up the ads over time, test to see which ad images/copy work better, and continue to invest in influencers that create ROI.

Plus, you can expand the product line with similar products to maximize revenue generated from each customer. But in the beginning, focus on one flagship product so you don’t spread your resources to thin.

If this strategy interests you, make sure you go to my website and join my Slack group so we can exchange ideas. Also watch out for Kobe Gatsby to start writing. He just started in e-commerce a couple months ago and is crushing it with this strategy. Total natural.

Contributed by Zach Pinnell, DropshipStepbyStep.com creator. 10 years in E-Commerce