 Hey what's up guys welcome to a new video so in this one I'm going to be going over my Q4 strategy video so this is the strategy that I actually implement myself every single year every single Q4 ever since I've started dropshipping over three years ago now. Now whilst the products might change actual principles and fundamentals of the strategy doesn't so in this video I'm going to be taking you through everything you need to know so by the time you finish watching this video you'll have a clear cut of vision of exactly what you need to do. The notes in this video as well will be available to download so you can get your copy and work through step-by-step in your own time to download them just check out the link which I will post below in the comment section or the video description. Anyway with that being said guys thanks for tuning in I hope you enjoy it and let's get straight into it. So the content I'm going to be covering are the three core elements to any successful dropshipping business and as you can see on your screen that is the store the product and your Facebook ad or your marketing ad. Now the reason why they're three core elements is purely because you have to do all three of these things correctly otherwise you're going to fail. Let's give you an example then you could have a really nice store that you spend thousands of pounds designing you could get professional designer in and you have a really nice looking website you could have the next best product that nobody's ever seen before that everybody wants to buy but if you don't have a very good marketing campaign or Facebook ad you're simply not going to drive enough traffic to get the success that you want and this works every way around too so you could have the next best product since sliced bread everybody wants it it's a really cool product you could have an awesome Facebook ad campaign that drives traffic for say £3 per CPM but if you've got a dodgy looking store that nobody's going to trust again you're not going to make the sale so just make sure you watch the whole video stick to what I go through because you need to do all three of these things correctly first thing sir so I'm going to start with the actual Shopify store itself now my recommendation is to go with the general store because it allows for fast flexibility and I want you to make this store Xmas themed as well I'm going to show you a couple of stores in a second just because people don't believe general stores work but they do and just as proof here's a couple of big ones that you guys can use for inspiration and this is bluecrate.com you can see these guys are still kind of like Halloween themed so what I want you to do is replicate something similar but make it Xmas themed as we can see on the right as well there's like a little chrome extension called similar web these guys are averaging monthly visits of around a hundred thousand so obviously they're they're doing something right they're obviously doing pretty well the next one even bigger is high go sharp you may have heard of these guys before and these guys are regularly getting around 200,000 visits per month so as you can see the general store strategy obviously still works but the main reason I want you to use it is for fast flexibility as it says here our key to success will be rapid testing of different products to find exactly what works and when we do find what works we're going to double down on it so as it says in the next point focus on one product at a time for a couple of reasons really number one is your pixel if you're trying to sell a product in the camping niche in the dog niche in the hiking niche all at the same time it's going to confuse your pixel a little bit unless you've got the custom conversion set up however if you're a beginner and you're trying to make money as quick as possible you don't want to waste time doing that just make sure you focus on one product at a time the second point is confusion slash workload you don't want to be buying off more than you can chew here when it comes to running Facebook ad you need to have a clear focus of what you're currently focusing on otherwise you're going to get lost and otherwise you're going to end up spending lots of money and not seeing the results that you hope for next point just a recommendation it doesn't really matter to be honest just make sure you fill out your store accordingly so when people come on it looks legit it looks professional and you look like a substantial and established business so as a ruff order thumb then I recommend five collections slash niches with 10 products per collection next point then this is the most important part you want at least one trending product per niche and this when I say one trending products we're going to get into that second in the next section but this is going to be the product that we're focusing on that we're going to be pushing that we're going to be marketing that will hopefully bring us all our sales an important note here I'm going to put this in bold because it is very important is that don't restrict yourself to the niche so if you create your store and your niches are let's say golf hiking dogs cats and mobile phone cases but then you find say a unicorn product that is really trending but just because it doesn't fit into your niches then then you kind of write it off that's not the case what we want to do here is build a store that's focused around the product and not the niches if you find a product that's selling really well by all means add it to your store and just go with that next point then is you must include an upsell to maximize your average order value this is something not to be neglected it's like the number one and easiest thing you can do to increase your profit margins and make some more money just one little tip make sure that the upsell is from the same supplier as the product that you're focusing on that way you're going to save yourself about two to three pound per that extra carriage charge next point as well make sure you have an eczema themed countdown timer then it's relevant it's current people coming onto your store know that you're active because you're keeping up with trends the fact that it's coming up to Christmas and again another little important note is make sure you use this appropriately if customers come onto your store and you've got 20 items in stock then they refresh the page and you've got 25 items in stock or 10 items it's not going to look very good customers will be put off by that and they'll just go elsewhere so just yes it's a general store but just make sure you keep things professional the final point then is just again another recommendation and I'm not affiliated with these guys I just like the way their stores look especially when you're designing a general store so if you have the budget it's about a hundred dollars I believe um then I recommend using the optimized theme moving on to the second core element then which is the product I'm not going to go into crazy amounts of detail in this section probably because my previous video was specifically on products and how to find them so make sure you go check that out if you want to delve even deeper so to begin with then it has to be a seasonal slash trending products what I mean by that is that it will sell immediately we don't have time to build a brand we don't have time to create tons of content and get loads of different influences on board we need the products that since we put it in our store and start advertising it is in demand and it's going to start bringing in some sales through the door uh from day one number two in terms of coming up with ideas for products then I think whether related and things people care about or can be sociable with to give you an example then of some products that fit this criteria also the next point as well which is ideally doubles up as a gift this is quite important with it coming up to Christmas obviously people are in buying moods and they're not only buying for themselves but they're buying for other people too so I mentioned in my previous video but again just to mention it now it's one thing I like to mention in my Facebook ads is so for example if you're selling Labrador socks you could say um makes the perfect gift for somebody who has a Labrador and then that way even if they don't have a Labrador themselves it might trigger in their mind somebody who does um and therefore they're more likely to buy it as a gift for somebody anyway to give you some product examples we have this petal kind of light fruit and nut box which is perfect for this time of year because it's the time of year where families get together social gatherings things like that it's just a nice piece that they could have on their coffee table or something the next one being this LED lamp this is a proven seven figure product I can't remember what video it was but it featured in one of my videos where I found this store that sold a lot of these um especially this time of year where it's getting darker earlier um it's the kind of thing you could add to a room just to make it a bit more cozy and a bit warmer um whilst the weather is cold outside next product is this transformer car I think personally I think this is a great product especially for this time of year what kid under the age of say 12 years old wouldn't want this me being 27 I'm a fan of it and to be honest if my girlfriend bought me this for Christmas then I wouldn't be disappointed anyway that being said back to the strategy itself um the next point is e-packet is a must purely because in term on AliExpress e-packet in my opinion certainly from my experience has been the fastest service you can get so obviously it's just going to help with not missing that delivery date because obviously if somebody buys something as a gift and it arrives after Christmas Day the chances are they're going to ask for a refund the next thing you want to make sure you do as well certainly as it comes up to December is ask your supplier for the last dispatch date for delivery before Xmas now obviously they won't be able to guarantee anything um from past experience it's usually towards the end of the first week of December and once you've reached that point then where you can't guarantee delivery before Christmas there's a couple of things you can do number one is you can just proceed as normal but just make sure you have a note on your site that says delivery not guaranteed before Xmas so people know or the second thing you can do then is start sourcing the product locally for the rest of the month if possible to give you an example then I'm on aliexpress here not a lot of people know this but if you search for certain products and what you can do then is if you take a look at this box you can set what country the products are currently available from um at the moment I've got it set to UK so these are all the different countries that have products in that can ship to the UK so at the moment I've got Spain and just to give you an example of a current product I've found it was this product here I'm not saying this is a good product but what I'm illustrating is the fact you can source this from China Russia Spain and the US and if you have a look at the delivery time here you can actually get this delivered within a week to the UK so when you reach that point then just have a look around on aliexpress and see if you can actually source that same product just a bit quicker moving on to the next few points then so stay away from consumables or hazardous products number one reason well I guess there's two kind of like main reasons number one is you want to avoid the risk of potentially harming someone for obvious reasons and number two then is these will be slow through customs especially if you don't have a decent supplier so certain products require certain certifications in order to be able to come into the EU and if your supplier doesn't send those products with the required certifications they're going to get held up it's going to delay the process and ultimately you're going to get disappointed in the angry customers that want their money back final point then always always always use google trains to see if your product is in demand for two reasons number one you want to make sure that it's selling a product that is currently popular that people are currently wanting to buy and number two is as long as you set this to worldwide so as an example this is led dog color it's going to tell you where the popularity for this product is coming from so if you put something in here and it tells you that say canada is popular for this product or that sweden is popular for this product then you know exactly what countries to focus on with your facebook ads which is what it says here in brackets important for marketing purposes as well with that being said then let's move into the third core element which is your facebook marketing campaign my main focus over the past three and a half years now has been facebook ads so that's the strategy in which i'm going to use for this video starting from top to bottom then step by step i want you to have a maximum of five ad sets in a purchase cbo campaign and i want you to select the lowest cost bid strategy obviously we want the cheapest conversions possible with a daily budget of 100 pounds now the reason i want you to do max five ad sets is so that you don't spread your budget too thinly one of the things coming into q4 more and more people are spending more and more money on facebook advertising facebook ads are a bidding platform so you need to be spending as much money as possible per ad set to give that ad set the best chance possible if that makes sense 100 pounds per day is quite a lot so make sure you watch your ads every six hours and if one if they start to tank all the results are really poor then it's completely your decision which ones you switch off which ones you decide to keep but in keeping with this strategy this is what i recommend so keep an eye on the cost per link click not cost per click there has to be this is quite a key factor that's important make sure it's the link click because this shows intent with the customer that they're actually interested enough to click on your ad and then actually click on the link to go to your site which shows more intent they're simply just clicking on your ad under 30 pence in my opinion is ideal obviously the cheaper the better so if you can get around that number or lower then great each ad set then i want you to use one interest flexed with engaged shoppers usually i don't use engaged shoppers but with it coming into q4 more and more people are going to be buying things through facebook ads there's going to be fresh people coming into that particular category that particular audience and the fresher the audience in my opinion then the better because obviously the more likely they are to make a purchase next point is i want you to keep the audience size under one million purely because if you do the maths with a daily budget of 100 pounds and five ad sets you're looking at 20 pounds per day roughly per ad set depending on whether you set the rules or not and 20 pounds spent on an audience size of one million people it's a tiny tiny percentage so as a very maximum then to make sure you test the audience adequately make sure you stick to an audience size of maximum one million people let it run for two days then this gives it a chance to optimize somewhat and after those two days any ad sets with zero purchases then turn them off once you've turned those ones off then that haven't made any purchases let the current ones run for another two days and then start to scale them by increasing budget and as long as the sales keep coming in consistently then i would keep increasing the budget every couple of days now you might have watched some of my previous videos where i've said let the ads run for four days the reason it's over a shorter period now is because with it being q4 and a lot more people buying and spending through facebook then it should be easier to get those purchases therefore it should be easier for your ad sets to optimize that bit faster moving on then into the targeting quite an important part and this is where google trends comes into play i want you to follow the demand so use google trends see where the popularity is coming for that particular search term and then use those countries as the one that you want to focus on and target next point though something worth considering is in my opinion i do this now i tend to stick to the u k and the e u only purely because it's much less competitive than us and when i say much less if you take the drop ship industry in america in the united states and compare it to the rest of the world and this is through the orders that are processed through ibelo too then there's more orders processed for america through ibelo than there is through every other country in the world combined so that just gives you an example of how competitive the u s is compared to other countries moving on then to facebook strategy part two so if this all goes well and you want something a bit more advanced or you want other ways of scaling then this is what i recommend so i want you to go ahead and create look-alike audiences based on the highest quality traffic as soon as you have 100 people look-alike audiences the key to success with them is using the highest quality base audience as possible so the look-alike audiences i want you to create then are view content and add to cart purchase and then video views for 95 percent and 75 percent as soon as you've got 100 people in those custom audiences go ahead and use them to create the look-alike audiences if a look-alike audience then proves a winner and it's profitable you've got consistent sales coming in then what i want you to do is create another look-alike audience based on that same custom audience not many people know you can do that but you can and if you can create one look-alike audience of it the chance is how you might be able to create two, three, four or five so it's all about doubling down then and what's actually working the final couple of points then is make sure you retarget all vc and a to c minus the purchase that way you're going to be showing people who have come onto your store and haven't purchased showing them the same ad again and the more they see your ad up to a kind of around four or five frequency score tends to be the sweet spot for me anything more than that then people tend to start reporting your ad or commenting on it saying i keep seeing this damn ad how do i get rid of it so keep an eye on your frequency score when it comes to retarget and add set your budget to five dollars per day monitor it look at the frequency score after three or four days and then adjust your budget accordingly the final point then to wrap this video up is retarget all purchases so everybody who's made a purchase retarget them with a different product with a discount code that thanks them for shopping with you when it comes to facebook ads the more specific and relevant your ad is to your audience then the better results you're going to get and with that being said then guys i'm going to wrap the video up i just want to say a massive thank you if you've watched this video all the way through i really hope it helps you and i'm really confident and believe in this as a strategy so please do make sure you head down into the video description or the comments download these notes and just work through them step by step and i'm confident that if you follow this then you'll be able to get some decent results anyway with that being said make sure you comment like subscribe and let's get into announcing the winner of the previous video then to see who's going to win that one to one call so this is the previous video that i uploaded the support and this has been really good in fact i just want to say thank you to everybody who asked for this full q4 strategy video but anyway let's get into announcing the winner of the call so i'm just going to take the url head over to our random comment pick a 20 unique comments which is awesome so thank you very much and the winner of the previous video then is day m s so thank you very much for your comment hit me up on instagram we can get that call arranged and guys if you just want to get straight down to business book a call right away i've had quite a few bookings actually recently so thank you very much you can do so check out the link in the video description below and yeah we can get that call arranged that'd be something guys i feel like i've been talking for absolutely ages thanks again for watching and see you in the next one