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Venturing into business is not an easy game. For ensuring success, you need to be cautious in every step. The growing number of small businesses are now bolstering their trade by making an online presence. They believe that having an online presence is essential to increase sales.
Venturing into online business has several benefits. It does not incur you the huge expense, unlike offline business. With proper marketing and other business promotion strategy, chances are higher that your profit will increase manifold.
What Does Stats Say?
As per a recent survey by Statista, more than 51% of medium and small-sized business have an online or social media presence. This means that they are running their small business online and are earning a good profit from it.
Also, people are more inclined towards online shopping. They would rather prefer to sit at the comfort of their home and browse through thousands of online options than visiting the physical stores. Don’t you think then having a small business online is more profitable than having a physical store?
If you are thinking to start a small business online, then you need to follow a few crucial steps that will ensure your success.
1. Identify And Solve A Problem
Often most of us make the mistake of focussing on products first. This is where they make a grave mistake. The initial focus should be on focussing on market research first. Your main focus should be on finding an audience group who are looking for some problem to be solved.
So now the question is how should one identify a problem?
First, you need to join some social media groups or online forums and list down the issues and questions which people generally put forward. From the list, you can easily find out the common issues which people generally experience.
Next step is to conduct your keyword research and look at what the other competitors are doing to respond to their user’s needs.
2. Design Your Business Website
You will only nail down the sales process if you are completely done with your marketing errands. After you are done with the entire marketing process, you are now ready to start your website.
Remember, you got to make your website an enticing one as you only have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention or else they are gone forever.
Your website should not be too ornamental. It should have minimal graphics, navigation should be simple and clear. Also, it must ‘call-to-action’ messages to bring the users directly to your landing page.
For instance, you can include a strong ‘call-to-action’ button, where there will be an option for free e-book or whitepaper giveaway. Interested users will definitely go for downloading it.
Related Read- Progressive Web Apps – 5 Proven Reasons Your Business Needs It Now!
3. Apply The Proven Formula Of Sales Copy
Are you aware that there is a proven formula which directly takes the visitors to the sales copy form?
This magical formula of sales copy aims to convince the users to take some kind of action either to buy a product, download a free report, join your email list, inquire about your service, or follow you on social media.
Your sales copy should primarily focus on your products or services. You just need to find out if your products and services can solve your user’s problem or not.
Things are always easier if you think from the perspective of a customer.
4. Drive Traffic To Your Website
Building a website is not just enough. You need to toil hard for bringing users to it. Pay-per-click advertising is one of the best ways of directing people to your new website.
Marketers now prefer pay-per-click (PPC) than organic campaigns. The PPC ads make your products appear at the top results. This ensures that your products or services are the first things which people would view when they search for something related online.
5. Establish Your Brand Reputation
“Rome wasn’t built in a day” and so ain’t your business.
It takes time to build good things and earn the desired fame.
Establishing a brand reputation is not an easy thing to do. Remember, people are highly hooked into the internet and you need to leverage this opportunity to the fullest.
Build a strong yet simple website that will not only focus on selling products or services but will also provide useful info to the users. For instance, you can create a blog section where you will update high-quality needful content.
You need to link every tidbit of information with your products or services, and this is only possible through high-quality content.
Also, you need to be very active in social media so that you can reach new readers. But even better, every site that posts your content will link back to yours. Search engines love links from relevant sites and will reward you in the rankings. The more you rank, the better is your brand reputation.
6. Leverage The Power Of Email Marketing
Although some of the business owners consider email marketing as one of the most backdated forms of communication, actually it is one of the best ways. For an online business, the email list is one of the most vital assets.
This means that your customers have permitted you to send them emails.
You are providing them something which they are asking for. You are now developing a sustainable relationship with these people.
Anyone who comes to your site and willing opts into your list, ultimately turns into a lead. There is no better tool than email, as through this tool you can easily follow up those leads. It is indeed one of the most cheaper options than media and that is the reason why it is highly targeted.
Wrapping It All Up
Things are constantly changing with the rapid progress in digitalization. However, these crucial guidelines for starting a small business online have actually endured time’s test.
So, if you are planning to start with your online business, then be sure that you stick to these guidelines. All you need is to gain your customer’s loyalty and they will become even more loyal. For starting a small business online, you consult with the best mobile and web app development company who can provide you with expert tips on online business growth.
