A Few Tried and Tested Steps
Starting a business online can be really hard in any industry, from shipping to car hire. But, did you know that there is a proven series of steps that you can follow to guarantee that you succeed when starting a small business online, regardless of what industry you are in? If not, you do now! In this article, we will outline the steps needed to succeed and will provide information about each specific step in the sequence.
The Sequence
Find a Hole and Fill It
Usually, most people who are starting out make the big mistake of looking for a product first and a market second. However, to increase your chance of success, you should start by choosing a market and then choose your product. The trick is to find a group of people who are looking for a solution to a problem but are not finding any helpful results. The internet makes this kind of market research easy, and you can do the following:
- Check out online forums to see what questions people ask and what problems they’re trying to solve.
- Check out your potential competition by visiting their websites and making a note of everything that they are doing to fill the demand for their industry. When you have done this, you can use what you have learned and create products for an already-existing market (and do it better than your competitors).
- Perform keyword research (or have an agency do so) to find the specific things that people are searching for on Google, and dominate the search results for those terms.
Build a Website
This is something that you can do yourself or have a specialist agency/professional do it for you. We recommend the latter, but there are a lot of online website builders out there that offer ready-made templates and other things to help you along the way. You have around 3-5 seconds to grab the attention of a website visitor, so it’s important that you keep the design of your website simple yet aesthetically pleasing. There are a few things to consider when designing and building your website, such as the fonts and the background, making the navigation of your website easy, using images and videos correctly and making it easy to buy your product/service. Your website is your virtual shop, so we recommend keeping it as simple and customer-friendly as you possibly can.
Establish Your Reputation
Establishing an expert reputation as quickly as possible will help you succeed with your online business. People use search engines like Google to search for answers, products and services from reputable sources, so it’s important to both search engines and customers that you are providing relevant, expert and high-quality information on your website. One of the main things that you can do to generate a reputation for yourself is to send free articles to people containing relevant information, with a link back to your website. This helps to build an online reputation and convinces people that you actually know what you are talking about. You can also be an active forum and social network poster, interacting with your target market directly. Do these things right, and you will have a great reputation in no time at all.
Utilise Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing can turn website visitors into buyers. When you create something known as an ‘opt-in list’, you are creating one of the most valuable assets of your online business. When someone chooses to opt-in when visiting your website, they are giving you permission to send them emails containing information about your products, services and business as a whole. This means that:
- You’re developing a relationship with them.
- You’re giving them something that they have asked for.
- The response is 100% measurable.
- Email marketing is cheaper and more effective than print marketing, TV and radio as it’s only targeting people who are interested in what you offer.
Any website visitor who chooses to opt-in to your email list is the best lead you will ever receive and there’s no tool better for following up on those leads than email.
Upsell Your Customers at Every Opportunity
A popular internet marketing strategy is to develop a ‘lifetime value’ of every one of your customers. On average, just over 30% of customers who have bought from you before will purchase something again if you follow up with them. Closing the very first sale is the most difficult part of the entire process (and the most expensive). So, you should follow up with every single one of your customers and try to upsell off of the back of their original purchase. You can offer products or services that complement their original purchase, offer related products on a specific ‘Thank You’ page after they have purchased or even send out coupons that provide a discount on their next purchase. If you reward your clients for being loyal, their loyalty to your business will increase even more.
Remember
The internet is an ever-changing world, but the steps to starting a successful online business never change. If you’re starting a small online business we recommend following the steps above and if you already have a business, review your strategy and see if you are neglecting any of the specific points. After all, you can never go wrong with the basics.
