Andrew: Hey guys it’s Andrew here and I’m here with Markus of a drop shipping entrepreneur Shopify drop shipper and this guy is awesome, I’ve hey you know I’ve met some guys who can do who talk a game but this guy really actually puts the money to where his mouth is and Markus been doing this stuff for about a year and a half or so. and he’s at revenues of almost 500k but he’s got other stores so roughly about a million dollars in revenue which is quite amazing you know.
He is a master drop shipper and a Facebook Ads guy you know ninja all around kind of person. I mean he just gives a ton of ton of information and value to his group if you’re not part of his Facebook group you got to join, he’s just overall, I mean just amazing character. You know he was just over in Portugal for a little vacation there are our I guess for thinking that, yeah and so Markus dude tell me what I missed.
Markus: Yes, basically I’ve been doing e-commerce since I was around 10 years old, with my dad and then I started my own company, one and a half years ago I should talk about jumped into drop shipping and start off with an auditing store.
We’re just out over 500 K together with my other stores there are over a million dollars in revenue and yes since that I’ve been jumping into digital marketing investing into different projects and really also been growing my digital marketing agency to help other people and how about the company is especially both drop shippers in general but also really like physical stores and local stores and went.
I like the stores where they have stock as well to really grow their business into through social media right and, it’s just super powerful the way that you can really go ahead and change a business and really grow them exponentially with digital marketing and it’s all about the way that you go ahead and target your products and the brand store so that’s what I’m really been working on but with my own stores and of course with that the clients that I’m working with and it’s actually it also talked about these Facebook group really has a look great knowledge both about targeting and marketing and drop shipping and everything like that.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean that group has grown like I mean I think it’s going crazy I mean you’ve got like now 5,000 closes to 5,000 members
Markus: On that 5k today actually and then it’s been growing like 2,000-3,000 just the last couple of months so it’s going super-fast
Andrew: That’s amazing yeah, so to I think what you know what we were talking about earlier was that we were going to go over some problems that people have, I think when you know in this space of like you’ve got a product you want to try and grow your brand your products you know, how do you do that with Facebook Ads right I mean there’s a lot of factors in that stuff right and so we’re not going to go over like everything about Facebook Ads but what we what we decided that you know what is a key thing.
I think that people really want to know is like you know the psychology aspects of like interest targeting you know on Facebook and the reason why you choose this kind of stuff because, I think you know obviously over the avatar kind of thing but then you’ve got to figure out how am I going to reach those people like what is that type of thing and then you know since you’ve got grown your business so greatly I think it’s you know I think you’ll really help our users and everybody else you know kind of understand that psychology behind that how you came up with this and how you do this for you on a daily consistent
Markus: Yes, so definitely with the specific Facebook AdWords our Facebook Ads is one of the biggest platforms in the world especially traffic-wise Facebook use like goes at least 50 to 60 percent off the traffic that comes to my store.
I really like Facebook because there’s such a back-end that you can go out and target with different interests but of course when people come on to their ads if they’re just starting out when you’ve been doing Facebook ads is super easy to go ahead and know which interest to target book if you come on to ads Facebook for the first time and you’re going to target it could be really hard to know how to do it and especially the different interest cost well there are so many different ones they can choose.
Where it’s super to set up personas or try to figure out what time to do what I need to sell this product to like what do they like what are they interested in that the whole idea not like just dogs or something like that but a great thing to go ahead let’s say he wanted to sell that dog collar for example right led don’t collar you have a dog niche store and a great thing to go ahead and do psychological wise.
If this program and the personas of the of the targeting and turning on Facebook ads it super inch is super important to put yourself in the place of the customer right so if you’re having a nice dog nice or and you want to sell it there are some different aspects you can go ahead and do but if they’re already interested in buying dog products right they’re super engaged of course a lot of people have thoughts pet is like a another family member so going ahead and targeting similar brands works super well so you have to put it like this if that specific person comes onto Facebook and goes on to their favorite brands and like that page that means that they’re super engaged and they have a favorite in that brand so by targeting people who have like a brain dog pages on Facebook that works really well does that mean they are like another level of engagement with the dog community right yeah I love dogs on Facebook or like Petco or something like that.
Andrew: Right so when you’re like going to build out this sort of avatar that customer are you looking like age, demographic social like you know things that they read hobbies that they like you know what goes into your kind of like figuring out the avatar that and then we’ll go back to kind of like figuring out the targeting kind of stuff because I want to I want to come back to that?
Markus: Yes so really one of the most powerful tools that you have in Facebook Ads is the one called audience insight, so what is insight it’s basically a whole sort of a platform inside of Facebook Ads while you can similar interest magazines and demographics for all the different interests let’s say that you jump onto audience inside your right dog you can then see the social status the demographic room
The magazine that they like to write the pages on Facebook that they are most likely to like and stuff like that and that is really taking the targeting to the next level because another thing is you go ahead and target interest that other people might not be targeting and that will give you a lower CPM they will give you a lower cost per click and in this way, of course, you will spike up your rose because it’s really targeted because you’re turning magazines that other people might not begin targeting.
It’s more cost efficient because fewer people are bidding it’s the whole Facebook Ads platform it’s basically a bidding platform so I wanna do you wanna pay for half this I put on the newsfeed so if I’m targeting interest that other people might not be doing gives you a cheaper place and it actually could give you higher quality traffic so audience inside it’s inside the ads manager it’s really powerful so I like to set up personas in that way because I can really find some really interesting and I’ve been of interest to go ahead and target and that has been working super.
Andrew: Right so, when you’re doing that audience insights familiar with that right so you do say you’re looking up Petco just for example right and then you’ll see all the other sort of things that people might like are very you know sort of the affinity audiences and things like that right yeah they have high affinities for this type set so if you’re going to go and run an ad for this and you’re doing that targeting would you and they were like I don’t know ten different options would you put all those interests in there or would you pick like two or three like how do you group how do you build those interests because I mean it could be daunting
Markus: Yes, some of my questions so what I do is I try to keep the Atlanta : levels of stacking right because you can flex target so it’s super important to keep each stack of interest clean within what the interest group that’s for example magazines for it selves Facebook pages for itself more like brands for itself
I like to stack interest when you choose several interest in one level but they need an algorithm clean and that will help with giving a lot better results so there’s a lot of different ways to do audience sizes I like to keep it between six hundred and three million that’s the audience sizes that has been working best for me so why did you go ahead and do that in the right section when you’re doing the expert is that you can see the audience size and then you can go ahead and sort of like put another level of flex targeting to increase the audience size and then find that sweet spot that you want to test with.
Andrew: Okay so if your so if you’re doing this type of flexor so you say you start off with say brand so you say you went let’s just keeping the dog space right you did KOB Petco and Petsmart and dog XYZ as the brands and then I might end just in Co taking notes and then the next level down might be people who like might like German Shepherds or you know things like that.
Markus: That’s what works super well so I would start off with maybe just online shopping that’s one of the biggest ones are showing the ads people who have shown an interest prior to your ad begin buying online, but this I just choose then what I normally do I start with online shoppers like a billion people but it’s just a decrease to people who are interested in buying online
Then I choose a very pro interest in what you’re trying to sell to so just dogs that’s about 300 million people and then I go into the specific interest like friends or like three dogs and stuff like that and in this way you’re really decreasing this huge audience like those specific people who are really engaged and but sort of like interested in buying products to their dogs right, and just quick notice on let’s say you’re running a dog ad for a dog collar or something like that has been showing really great results is actually taking the specific dog breed and only timing that and have several ads for each specific dog breed because if you see as an ad and you have a German Shepherd right and the app is another German Shepherd.
You’re instantly gonna feel connected with that because it’s the same dog as you have competitive, I don’t know like a fool or something super well it’s okay to have a generic dog – all breeds but it’s just funny to test with.
Andrew: So you can keep all the targeting the same if you’re doing a breed you might do so you had a pod-like say Peka Peka that’s our online shopper you know dog owner and then if we’re in Shepherd one at once they had set and then poodle would be an ad-set and then xyz ad set
Markus: You can see wigs type of audience that’s working the best and then you can move forward with that.
Andrew: Okay and then you don’t really worry so much about age demographic things like that you kind of let that fly and run.
Markus: It’s just in the beginning I just lied to you, so, if that’s for the dog niche and he’s right. I like to keep it off 20 years old but they just have more money to spend and then just told 64 mostly or 65 plus sometimes well normally when I’m finding out testing just to test out I like to keep the demographic age group really broad cause you can go ahead and break it down and see which age group that works the best for you.
I will make a separate ad set for that demographic group on saving little if it’s women or men’s or it be a specific age group right, but for example if you’re selling like an iPhone case or I don’t know like a pair of shorts for women it’s great to go a bit lower age-wise because maybe 16 years old because they’re buying fashion as well ends so I don’t sell products right um I would go with 20-plus could they just have more money to spend and you will get high-quality traffic on to your store.
Andrew: Right and how long do you think you take to figure out audiences like I mean and when you’re when you’re going to a new market what do you what do you do to like give me yet that I understand that there might be a potential you know revenue in this marketplace you know I mean
Markus: Like timewise of testing
Andrew: Well I mean more than so like if you’re gonna sell so say you don’t know you know that there’s a possibility of like it’s going to be say you’re doing clothing right for girls fashion or something like that but you’re not really knowing exactly things just for example right and you’re not sure where that’s all or do you go to the affinity or do you go to the targeting the audience insights to figure out kind of like guessing what those areas of interest might be or do you like how do you define a new you know product to go into like what’s the product research?
Markus: Yeah product research that’s really one of the struggles for a lot of people especially, if they’re true dropship that’s really what products to choose and especially what niche to go into, I have a ton of different views about that and my YouTube, as well but it’s when people go into a specific niche if they want to choose a niche for a store, I often recommend to go into something that they’re passionate about.
That’s really especially coming into the e-commerce world doing a niche that you’re passionate it above is super important because that’s gonna give you a drive and motivation to improve your store and it’s gonna give you driving motivation to really work on it, of course, you could combine it with niches that actually works well right so if you have if you could to sort of try to find several pet things that you’re passionate about maybe take the ones that really gonna work well but
The whole idea of finding a niche is finding an audience where people are super engaged about something that you can create a community about that could for example be, cooking right catching me is a really phenomenal niche because it’s like something that people can connect with each other about on your Facebook page on your Instagram page like you can really do great email marketing for it and ads and stuff like that because you could really build up an audience which is super passionate about making food or making pastry stuff like that
This is all about finding an audience or like the target audience a group of people who are super passionate about something like a hobby or a specific thing to do or something like that, that’s why I also recommend pet stores because people really love their pet it’s like an extra family member so that’s why they don’t really care about buying a lot of products for them that’s the same with like kid stores because, mom’s likes to buy products for their little baby right they don’t care really anything about what it cost, of course, to somewhat extent but, they buy a lot of products for their babies the same goes for their dogs all their cat if it’s a crazy cat lady, right but the whole idea is basically finding an audience whether you can create a community.
Andrew: Right! and I guess when you’re doing this audience selection and you’re coming I mean it’s just a trial and error kind of stuff I’m assuming till you figure out the right thing
Markus: Yes, what I like to do is jump onto Facebook and see the different fan pages that there are people engaging with each other are there writing how do they connect with each other online example could be like for the kitchen needs there are some really phenomenal different groups.
I love cooking and there are some great targeting options are that’s something I look for as well, how can I go ahead and, target I really sit down take a piece of paper really old-school but I like to do, that and then I write down which type of target audience which personas as we talked about before and I made for this niche what type of interest I jumped into audience insight as we talked about what type of pages magazines are there really any extent of great targeting for this
That’s if there is for the kitchen niche that’s why I brought it up it’s a really fit I really like that need right I have had some credit for it as well some winning products for it and you can make some great phenomenal video ads for it so of course if you’re interested in cooking or like baking some like that, hey we win right or something like that so, I like to jump onto Facebook do some research for the niche if there are some winning products how the community interacts with each other and stuff like that
Andrew: Right yeah so I guess that’s just trial and error and figuring out where that niche is and that passion of that of those people are and then you obviously haven’t have some sort of or passion or some sort of insight into it like going into something if you’re you know coal miner and then going just women’s fashion and make it like good it might be a little hard right.
Markus: Exactly! Exactly!
Andrew: Well you don’t understand the market I mean not that you can’t learn it.
Markus: I know by the time you can jump into women’s fashion as well as a man, if you like to targeting options because there’s a great ton of influencers that you can use so it’s all about really what one gets you motivated and to what you really like about the niche and the type of targeting that you can make with it another thing to make you look into this the saturation of the niche.
How many people are trying to do it for example the women’s fashion niche you really need to differentiate yourself from your competitors because there are so many different ones trying to sell women’s fashion for example from AliExpress so it really need to brand as well even though there are great options for branding them they cost you more to get going the women especially need compared to like, the kitchen is you can go ahead and find a winning current for it great product really fast.
It’s not really the same thing about like branding of them as it is in women’s fashion so, or fashion in general so it’s also about sort of like the barriers and stuff like that within each’s certainly loved different things that which goes into it I have some videos about it but it’s really of course what you’re really passionate about and then what you can make some money is right so.
Andrew: Right so, in intensive like where you are and how you got to where you been are most of them passion-based stores, I guess?
Markus: Thing that really got me going I started off just doing some iPhone case, it’s just a background when I started off just jump some different products into my store didn’t really drop shipping wise tested out of different things and the thing that really hit that was actually fidget-spinners so we were one of the biggest suppliers of the fidget spinners, will ride the week before and that that came out in Denmark and then of course when that truck down everything just went into a failure
There was really not anything to sell because people didn’t care about fidget spinners anymore need to find something else and that was the whole of like niche research, I went in and really try to figure out okay, why do I want my story to grow right a really great niche just to drop some knowledge that has been working super well for me lately and especially in the first quarter of the year that people can actually go ahead and make a store on now and prepare.
For a first quarter of 2019 is the fitness niche because that really sells like crazy off the new year because people have that may be the resolution and they’re like hey I’m gonna be all healthy and stuff so the sales just absolutely go nuts especially on the first of January minority store that had a lot of different fitness products and like my sales tripled from the one day to another because the Fitness niche is a great niche this world to jump into and then what something I was passionate about so I didn’t fit this myself so that’s how that all connects together right.
Andrew: Right yeah so, I guess that that passion finding that target audience to go in there running ads I mean when you’re doing this kind of stuff with the interests paste-up do you do more of video ads or a more single image or carousel-type ads and things like that that you find work fairly.
Markus: It all depending really on the niche for like, kitchen, for example, it’s really great to do videos ads because then you can show the features of the product so, specific product video as there are a lot of platforms where you can actually use non copyrighted videos, which is great that you can go and download for a specific product while some of those like product research tools they will give you a video as well so I could say that it would be a great idea to sign up for that not to using videos that it’s copyrighted right, so they will give you a video they can use for it.
Yes in the kitchen is for example, video ads works really well but you can show the feature of the product and the way the video works as well it can make Google like audiences based on the amount of view time so that’s super well that’s what I like to do is all with video as in case you can make it look google like audience based on those people who have viewed 95 percent of your video and those more of course interested in the product otherwise that wouldn’t have worked the full video so that’s what my video ads and they just performed well on Facebook
Facebook is moving into want it to be a video platform that’s the same thing with that he suggested videos. I think it was like a year ago or something that they implemented that if you watch a video on Facebook you can keep scrolling for new videos, so like put you in this trap the same as recommended videos on YouTube that’s what Facebook was trying to do they want you on the platform so by doing video ads, you are slightly favored in the Facebook algorithm so that’s why it works so well at the moment to use video as a women’s fashion some of them of those people watching my field of the brand movement watch is one of the biggest watch friends.
I started with drop shipping I moved in so of course not have their own products but they do picture ads off their thirty-third um launches and they’re making millions so picture ads work as well if you have some really high-quality clear photos that you can make a nice outcome you are so right I like to test so for the women’s fashion it’s great to use photos but more niche wise where you have a product that has some specific features video ads works wonders
Andrew: Wonders okay, well that’s really yeah it’s an awesome thing I mean yeah Markus I mean there’s this I mean I could go deep into everything to hear time and you know I do want to have you come back and talk about things but you know what I do want to know is like you what are your top three tools of choice today that you use to help you know to expand your empire and go where you are you know in terms of growth of your business.
Markus: So, in terms of growth?
Andrew: Yeah, our tools the tools that you use that are you know valuable assets to help you build your you know your online goldmine.
Markus: Yes so what I really like is using Clipman, that is a tool a video major tool basically which can create, slideshow videos which works super well from pictures and I use that all the time when, I don’t have a video ad and that has really been making some really great ads which has been making me hundreds of thousands of dollars from those only ads so, basically draws in pictures that you can upload or you can put in an URL and then it will combine a video based on those specific features and that, of course, is them being for a picture and into a video ad and in this way you can actually go ahead and use all of those different targeting options as we talked about to make it look like audiences based on the view type are you being favored in the Facebook algorithm.
So Clipman is but I started I bought it just that as it came out at the beta version I’ve been using it since and it’s really well it works super well and in terms of that I really like it another thing that is really powerful it’s the back end of the email marketing so that really does something to increase your growth and the profitability of your ads is using a backend email marketing tool I use cloudy because I just use it both for clients for my own stores it’s really working well unless there are so great segmentations options so you can go ahead and really choose the specific audiences but you want to email it as well too.
Just to give a very brief example so let’s say I buy an iPhone case right, they jump they have pulled your iPhone case awesome then the confirmation email or the email of the day after you can set up time too late come say hey thank you find out our case for your iPhone do you want a like a screen protector or a tempered glass so your screen doesn’t crack right and then they say something like if you want a new screen for your iPhone X, it cost you may be like a thousand bucks this tempered glass or a screen particular because you cost you five bucks or ten bucks you really want that right
Then they’re like okay hey I can get this for free shipping or you may be gonna give them a discount of 50% because they already bought from your store right that so then you go from like a six dollar case to a sixteen dollar order with that tempered glass and then you increase average order value two and a half times so the email backend is really where a lot of money is to be made because, too many people are trying to make the profit on the front end on, yeah if they don’t, if they’re not making over to like two in rows they’re gonna kill the app but if you’re able to also make bundles and volume discount and emailer back you can really increase the average order value and increase, of course, your profits and that’s really for them
To do the same goes like abandoned carts emails you can set those up in Klavio as well if you don’t have an abandoned cart sequence you’re losing a ton of money a lot of people who just walk from your store, there’s a lot of reasons for it may be you have some shipping cost, or they were too expensive or they thought distracted or something like that
Hitting them with a discount in the abandoned cart sequence works wonders is going to recapture a lot of orders so that’s really important that’s really something that is really expanding my stores also I’m a client in my own stores is really something we’ll have and make 20-30-40 percent extra revenue compared to how much you dig into it so klavio it’s been expensive but if it’s set up correctly it’s gonna make you a ton of money.
Andrew: Okay cool so those would be your choices do you use like Facebook Messenger for abandonment cart type stuff or do you still think email is working best for that kind of stuff?
Markus: Yeah usually I’ll use an app called record and I really recommend to go, I have a look at jumper as well just to have some really quite of different ways you can go ahead and make ads for it and that’s the whole idea what you’re doing ads on Facebook is differentiating your suffer to competitors and you can do that with jumper because you can make some a big different ads that were you triggering the messenger buying options in a whole another way people have experienced before and that’s gonna really engage them and keep them longer in the buying sequence.
Even though it goes a lot faster than going on to the store that’s the great thing about jumper right but you can really easily a fast I a specific product for that ad that’s the whole idea of differentiating yourself so using jumper in your ads and in your sort of like marketing strategy to really work wonders specially for drop shipping stores because the ads are getting so saturated so differentiating yourself and the way to the buying process can really work well on the appliance I use messages well that has really high growers because it has a lot of high open rates on messenger.
Andrew: Right okay so would you say email or messenger gets you the better return on your ad spend for your products today would you say?
Markus: So the abandoned carts that is definitely messenger because it has a lot higher open rate compared to emails but for the email back-end, of course, that is what it can upscale stuff on the messenger is just getting so powerful I think they just said that there is over 1.2 billion people or something like that unless they’re at the moment so the audience size our message so huge so by collecting those subscribers for your messenger list can really help at the moment that’s the same as having an email opting
You should definitely set up a messenger activation so you get those subscribers into your messenger list because that can really spike the revenue because message is such a great platform and it’s really where a lot of the money is to be made now compared to emails a lot of people are really focusing a lot of messenger, in general, you have such a huge audience high open rates, it’s like a modern way of connecting with your customers
Andrew: Sure yeah that’s true I mean that’s where we see with jumper you know it’s kind of that that messenger is this in the next wave of what we call social commerce right that’s kind of like that and I think people want to connect on the platforms that they’re on and that’s kind of where we’re sitting.
Markus: You are coming 2.0 right
Andrew: Right exactly um so let me ask you where it so if people want to get in touch with you find a little bit more, what’s the best channel to connect with you and if they want some of your services and things like that?
Markus: So the fastest way is probably dming me on Instagram or is sending me a message on Facebook because I’m on both of the platform each and every day life so that’s definitely the fastest way to get in touch with me I get my social to be below or something like that but yes so on Instagram or Facebook or something like that that is definitely it’s just Markus Evers on both platforms that’s definitely where you could go ahead and get in touch with me.
Both the Facebook group that is a great place to go ahead engage with the other drop shippers and other business entrepreneurs but, if then you have any questions you can always just reach out to me you know any of my socials right so.
Andrew: Yeah and Markus is really very active in that group I’m on there as he’s always you know he’s always dropping knowledge giving things got videos you know like unselfish really stuff that like a lot of people would pay a lot of money for he’s just free willing giving on that his channels and everything which is really nice you know because a lot of times it’s just like, I don’t know you get these guys and they’re just like I’m gonna charge for this and he’s just sharing so it’s really awesome but you know he definitely can help you know if you need that stuff you just can’t do it you know he’s the guy you go to I’m gonna pick you guy on that kind of stuff so awesome so this has been a fantastic time. I hope you’ll come back, and time to chat.
Markus: Yes, we will most definitely talk about targeting and personas.
Andrew: Yeah, I want you to kind of focus on the thing its really important people need to know that we can go all these other different things but I do want to appreciate you for your time today I know you’re busy so I want you to get back to making money
Markus: yes, dropping knowledge
Andrew: Exactly and all right I’ll talk to you thanks so much for your time.