What’s the difference between a dropshipper and a brand owner?

By now you realize that conventional drop-shipping isn’t going to work so well and you need a brand if you want to succeed.

So you go for it. You invest in buying inventory. You stick it in a third party fulfillment center and you begin shipping it out to customers with a label on it.

Maybe you think that all you have to do to create a brand is design a fancy logo and come up with a cool name that you’ll imprint on your products.

The reality is there is so much more to branding than just this.

Most dropshippers do this out of fear of competition and see no lift in sales or increase in customer retention.

I had a client recently that did this.

I saw her do quite well dropshipping clothing in q4. Of course, as q4 passed, her sales naturally declined, and her self-prescribed cure was creating a brand.

She ordered stock to a warehouse and had her logo embroidered onto the clothing.

She continued to run the same ads, to the same tacky website, all containing the same generic content.

The result? Nothing . . .

Nothing happened, because she doesn’t have a brand. She just has a product with a name.

Don’t be naive and fall for this trap, just because that guy posting in the Facebook group is saying “dropshipping is dead, build a brand”.

Here are some things you should consider to set up a brand.

1. Content: You need to have content that has a personality, or specific message. This message needs to be consistent throughout all of your marketing material.

2. Community: Your customers should be a raving community of advocates that will recommend your product to their mother, father, and dog. Some of our coolest clients have FB groups where customers share their results with their products, and support eachother.

3. Experience: You must deliver an incredible experience, right from clicking on that first ad, to receiving and unpacking the product, to the support that comes well after the sale. Think Apple.

Think about it. Are you just sticking a label on your product and calling it a brand?

How are your efforts to create your brand going for you? Let me know and I’ll let you know if I can help.