Solved: Community Building Advice Needed Before Product Launch

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on thinking about your advertising strategy, especially with your store launch coming up.

You mentioned thinking about running engagement ads now, even before the store is live. Honestly, my first thought there is that it's likely a bit too early and potentially not the best use of your ad budget for a dropshipping model.

I'd say you need to think about your objective...

With dropshipping, you're generally looking for pretty immediate return. You send traffic to a product page, and you want people to buy. It's quite a direct-response model. Building community is great for long-term brand building, definitely, and doing that organically through social media content or building an email list is a solid play.

But paying for engagement specifically, especially two months out from launch, usually just gets you likes, comments, shares – which are 'vanity metrics' for sales focused campaigns. They don't necessarily translate into people who are ready to whip out their wallet and buy something when your store is finally open. The audience you build via engagement might not be the same as the audience who actually purchases, or they might just forget about you by the time you launch.

Think about it: paid advertising works best when you have a clear action you want someone to take, and you can track that action and optimise for it. For dropshipping, that action is typically a purchase, or at least adding a product to their cart. You can only track and optimise for that when your store is fully live, working, and has all the tracking pixels (like the Meta Pixel or Google Tag) properly installed and configured for purchases.

Trying to optimise for 'engagement' isn't going to teach the ad platform's algorithm how to find people who *buy*. It's going to teach it to find people who *engage*. Those are different things. We've seen this with campaigns where clients initially focused on traffic or engagement, and when they switched to conversion optimisation (once their site was ready), the results for sales were dramatically better.

You really need a solid website ready first...

This is absolutely crucial before you spend significant money sending traffic anywhere. Even if you were to run ads closer to launch, sending people to a store that isn't ready will just burn your budget. Based on my experience running eCommerce campaigns (we've had some cracking results for clients, like a 1000% ROAS campaign or driving thousands of purchases), the website is just as important, if not more important, than the ads themselves for dropshipping.

What makes a store 'ready' for paid traffic? Well, thinking about common issues we see, it's usually things like:

• Speed: If your site takes ages to load, people will bounce before they even see a product.
• Mobile-friendliness: Most social media traffic is mobile. If your site looks clunky or is hard to navigate on a phone, forget it.
• Product Pages: This is where the magic happens (or doesn't).
  • Are your product images high quality and show the product clearly from different angles? Are they persuasive?
  • Do you have compelling product descriptions that highlight benefits, not just features?
  • Is the pricing clear? Are shipping costs and times clearly stated? (Crucial for dropshipping!)
  • Is the 'Add to Cart' button prominent and working perfectly?
• Overall Trust: People are buying from a new, unknown store. Why should they trust you?
  • Do you have clear contact information?
  • Are there customer reviews or testimonials (even if initially from friends/family or product testers)?
  • Do you have trust badges (secure payment, money-back guarantee if applicable)?
  • Links to social profiles?
  • A clear returns policy?

If your website isn't dialled in, you could have the best ads in the world, but people will arrive, be unimpressed or unable to easily buy, and leave. This gives you a terrible conversion rate, meaning your Cost Per Purchase (CPP) will be sky-high, making your dropshipping business unprofitable very quickly. You need to fix the funnel first before you pour paid traffic into it.

What to do before the drop?

Instead of paid engagement ads, you might consider these pre-launch activities:

• Finish the Store: Make it absolutely perfect. Address all the points above. Get feedback from people who don't know anything about your business.
• Build an Email List: Set up a simple landing page offering a discount for launch day or early access in exchange for an email signup. Promote this organically or with very cheap lead generation ads if you must spend something, but email signups are typically much cheaper than engagement and give you a direct marketing channel. Then nurture this list leading up to launch.
• Organic Social Media: Keep posting, share behind-the-scenes, showcase products without direct selling yet, engage with potential customers in relevant groups (if allowed). Build genuine interest.
• Refine Products/Suppliers: Double-check your suppliers, shipping times, product quality. Order samples. Make sure the operational side is smooth.

When to start paid ads?

I'd say start running paid ads closer to the launch date, maybe a week or two before if you want to build a little buzz, or right at launch. When you do, your primary campaign objective on platforms like Meta (Facebook/Instagram) or Google (Shopping/PMax) should be 'Conversions', optimising specifically for 'Purchases'.

You can test different creative types (images, videos, carousel) and different targeting initially (interests related to your products, maybe competitor audiences if available, or broad targeting letting the algorithm find buyers). We've seen various approaches work depending on the product, for example, video ads can be great for showing a product in action or building connection.

Google Shopping or PMax campaigns are also essential for eCommerce, putting your products directly in front of people who are searching for them on Google. This is high-intent traffic.

Retargeting is also key - showing ads specifically to people who visited your site but didn't buy, or added to cart and abandoned. This can recover lost sales at a lower cost.

Overview of Recommended Steps:

Getting paid advertising right for dropshipping can be powerful, as shown by many successful stores and results like teh 691% return we saw for one apparel client. But it requires a solid foundation (the store), the right strategy (conversion optimisation from day one), and continuous testing and refinement after launch.

It's not always straightforward to get profitable quickly, and scaling can bring its own challenges, as we've seen with various eCommerce clients. Knowing how to structure campaigns, interpret the data, and make the right optimisations is key.

Given the complexities involved, you might find it beneficial to have a chat with someone who has experience in this area to make sure you launch on the right foot.

If you'd like to discuss your specific situation in more detail and get tailored advice for your launch, we'd be happy to offer you a free consultation. Just let us know.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh