Today, we’re going to talk about how to build a successful drop-shipping business leveraging Instagram. My name is Asia Abston. I’m the CEO of the Luxe Life Academy, and I have helped over 2,000 digital entrepreneurs launch passive income streams. Stick around until the end to learn how to use your IG as a free sales channel for your drop-shipping brand.
Listen, Instagram is still that girl, and it’s a really great platform to assist you in building your drop-shipping business. First, let me hit you with a couple stats. Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users. One third of the most viewed stories on Instagram are from businesses. 90% of accounts follow at least one business page on Instagram, and 71% of US businesses use Instagram. So clearly, it’s a great platform for businesses to make money. You just have to figure out how to use it for your business. So we’re going to get into some tips right now.
Step 1: Set Up Your Instagram Account
Okay, so step one, you need to set up your account. Always want to have a business account, not a creator account, not a personal account, a business account. This is your drop-shipping brand, so it only makes sense.
Another thing to do when you set up your account is make sure that you use a human face for your avatar, not a logo. I don’t know why people do this, but this is social media. People want to socialize, and they want to be socializing with a actual person, not a business. So always put a human face, preferably the face of your customer avatar or somebody that they identify with in your avatar on Instagram.
Step 2: Have a Clear Instagram Bio
Next up, have a really clear and concise bio with an “I help” statement. So someone should be able to check out your bio and quickly understand who you are, what it is you do, and who you help to serve when they look at your platform. And then of course, always have a call to action. Your call to action should be pointing towards your link in bio. Your link in bio should be taking them directly to a sales page, your product page, not your About Me or FAQs or any of that. Take them somewhere where they can make a purchase right away, okay? That’s just a little tip for you when it comes to selling on Instagram.
Step 3: Set Up Instagram Shopping
Next up, you’re going to set up Instagram Shopping. So this is how you connect your Shopify, your Facebook, and your Instagram so that your entire Shopify store is shoppable on Instagram, and this is so dope. This is free. It’s seamless. It makes so much sense. That way, instead of telling customers to click the link in your bio, to go purchase something somewhere else, they can see product tags, prices, and information directly on Instagram. So this is super helpful because you can do things like product tags. You can tag your products in your Instagram Lives. You can tag your products in reels. It’s just a super effective and efficient tool to get your products shoppable on Instagram in a bunch of different Instagram channels.
Step 4: Map Out Your Content
What types of things are you going to be talking about? What different types of ways are you going to be showcasing your product? Are you going to be the face of your brand on Instagram? Remember that as drop-shippers, we don’t have to be the face of our brand. There’s no need. That’s one of the coolest parts about the business model. So if you’re not going to be the face of your brand, what ways are you going to put faces to your brand and to your content? Are you going to do reels? Are you going to do carousel posts? Are you going to repost tweets? Figure out what your content style and your strategy is going to be. Canva is super helpful for making graphics for Instagram as well.
And don’t forget that your content that you show on your Instagram should be congruent with the content that you show on your actual website. Everything should be seamless. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but when they go from looking at a post on your Instagram to going to your actual website, everything there should make complete sense. That’s the point.
Another really important factor of your Instagram content is kind of the objective behind it. So you need to have a mix of content that is informational and entertaining as well as flat-out product information shot. So informational content could be things that appeal to your target audience, where you’re informing them about your knowledge and your expertise, and that niche and entertaining content. What niche key topics will your audience find really cool and really interesting? And the point here is to show that you know your stuff. You know what you’re talking about and that your product is a solution to whatever problem it is you’re solving, but you can do that in entertaining and informational ways. And then the straight product shot or straight product video or reel is just letting them know that this item is available. It’s cool. It does X, Y, Z. It’s useful for X, Y, Z, and you needed to get it at X, Y, Z link in my bio or website. So it’s always good to mix your content like that.
Step 5: Create Instagram Highlights
I think Instagram Highlights are super underrated. People clearly just don’t use them enough, but they’re super helpful. I would suggest putting up FAQs, maybe a highlight where people can contact you with different types of ways that they can get in touch with your business.
Another great one would be customer testimonials or reviews, or maybe ways to use your product or ways to clean your product or ways to … Whatever your product is, if there’s any kind of unique or cool or distinct factors about it, make a highlight about it. You can share highlights. You can always repost highlights in your Instagram Stories, so do not sleep on that tool. They live right on your page underneath your bio for a reason. They’re really underutilized, and this is me telling you they can be super helpful for your drop-shipping brand.
Step 6: Post 3 to 5 times a day
Also, I recommend posting three to five times a day on Instagram, and I know that’s a lot. I’ve done it for years, so I know for sure it’s a lot. But this is the number that I’ve found helped to grow your account, plain and simple. All of your content is not shown to all of your followers on Instagram. It’s just the way the algorithm works. So it’s really important to be putting out enough content where your audience can see you. They can find you. They’re seeing that you’re being consistent. The algorithm can do its thing and work in your favor.
Not only that, Instagram has analytics where you can see what content is performing well, what content is not performing so well. You can see likes, saves, shares, reposts. You can see all of that, so it’s super important to have a lot of content, a lot of quality content so that when you go to look at your analytics, it’s super clear to you what’s working and what’s not working. And that way, you’ll know what to do more of and what to stay away from. So three to five times a day, and that’s reels. That could be feed posts that could be carousels. It’s up to you how you mix it, but it’s really important to put a lot of contact out there.
So my question for you is, are you using Instagram to build your drop-shipping business? It’s an incredible platform. There’s so much money to be made on the platform. I grew my following by tens of thousands of followers in 18 months. I think I grew 40,000 or 50,000 followers. So I love Instagram. The platform has been good to me, and there’s a ton of money to be made there. Also, what are your questions about growing on Instagram? I would love to help you out. I would love to continue this discussion over on my Instagram, getrichorgetdrunktrying.
All right, drop-shippers, that’s it for me this week. If you need more information about drop shipping, how to launch, how to grow your business, how to get in the game, how to pick products, I have a free beginners masterclass going down right here. It is an incredible way for you to learn about the business from me. I mean, it is my pleasure. It’s my favorite thing to talk about. So I want you to register. I want to see you in class, and let’s continue this conversation over on Instagram.
