Have you ever considered starting an online business? Placing your business online has a number of benefits compared to a traditional brick and mortar location. To achieve success, an online business owner should consider these 8 steps to solidify that success.
1. Know your market – Find a need and fill it
To be successful with any business venture, you need to do your due diligence. What are your customers looking for and how will you fill that need? Questions you may want to ask yourself include:
- Are there other businesses profiting in my niche of choice?
- What are they doing well?
- What are they doing poorly?
- Does the market present opportunity or saturation?
- How can I differentiate based off those weaknesses?
- Why will customers ultimately choose my product/service?
To answer these questions, you need to conduct market research which includes interviews, online surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, and more. After you’ve collected enough information, analyzed the data, and formed solid conclusions to each of your questions, you’ve built yourself a solid foundation on which to continue.
2. Create a professional website
As a user interface designer, I’ve seen how a website design can make or break a business. If your website comes across as “scamy” or untrustworthy, that will ultimately hurt your success. Although there are a number of website templates you can buy, there are still many things to be aware, some of which include:
- Using HTML vs Flash
- Styling based on brand guidelines
- Intuitive navigation architecture
- Page load times
- Automatic video/audio
- Low quality or plain stock imagery
- No clear calls to action
- Responsive to mobile devices
3. Establish yourself as an expert
With a solid research foundation and a quality website, it’s time to establish yourself as an expert. This can be accomplished in any number of ways, some of which include:
- Writing blog articles
- Youtube videos
- Building a social media following
- Writing a book
- Host your own podcast
- Host webinars
- Create online courses
4. Provide massive value
Creating quality content/products/services ties directly in with establishing yourself as an expert. If you don’t provide high value, it’s hard to establish yourself as an expert. Providing massive value will be the cornerstone of your business. If you provide low value, why would anyone care to consume it? Fill the consumers needs with great value and you will be successful.
5. Create a lead magnet
In today’s online environment, it’s difficult to reach your market through all the noise. One great way to reach them is to provide a free download of high value. You could provide an e-book, a workbook, a checklist, or anything that will spark interest and the subsequent download of your material. Eventually, people will notice your high quality free content and consider purchasing your premium products.
6. Improve SEO and Social Media
To reach as many people as possible, it’s important to optimize your SEO so search engines place your website higher in the rankings. There are a number of ways to improve this and a few of them include:
- Write quality content
- Use keyword research to your advantage
- Unique titles and meta tags
- Create an XML sitemap
- Use image alt tags
- Link to other pages in your website
Along with stronger SEO practices, it’s important to build your social media following. Try Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, SnapChat, anything you can to reach out and find your audience. People prefer different forms of social media, so be sure to create a presence as many ways as you can.
7. Email marketing
Utilizing the steps above, you should now have a decent list of subscribers on your email list. This list should immediately be placed within your sales funnel, which breaks down to something like this:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Loyalty
- Advocacy
With email automation, you can turn potential customers into raving fans over a period of time. Each rung of the sales funnel will narrow down and eventually build your following of true fans.
8. Up-sell
Once you have a potential customer in your sales funnel and ready to purchase, don’t miss out on an upsell opportunity. By offering a number of high value products, who wouldn’t want to save a little money by purchasing a number of products at once? By offering products of great value and providing a discounted bundle, your sales are sure to benefit.
As you can see, building an online business takes a lot of work. The research, website creation, exposure, product creation, and relationship building all tie into a successful online business. Given the right expectations, hard work, and persistence, I’m convinced anyone can achieve financial freedom.
