How To Start and Market Online Business: Essential Tips
You don’t have to rent an office, hire a lot of people, or make a huge capital investment to start a business.
Heck, you can just buy an existing business. You can view all the businesses available to buy through various brokers.
If you still want to start a business from scratch but have no idea how to start and market it, you are in the right place
We have some pointers below:
Step 1: Pick a niche
The best online business ideas are always on the surface. You don’t have to be extremely innovative and reinvent the wheel.
To successfully choose a niche, strive to comply with all 3 points:
1. Choose an idea that you personally like;
2. Make sure there is a stable, high demand, and your offer is something people are looking for;
3. Choose a business that you have sufficient experience/knowledge in.
Step 2: Create a business plan
Once you decide on the niche and unique selling points of your business, you need to calculate projected ROI, expenses, and potential risks. A business plan software can help you with this task. This software will help you understand how profitable your business will be.
The business plan should contain a detailed description of the product with options for its further transformation, market analysis with a description of competitors, and the characteristics of potential buyers. A business plan must include the following information:
• A production plan and project cost calculation;
• A promotion plan and cost estimate for advertising and marketing;
• A financial plan that takes into account all sources of funding and income (this should cover both one-time expenses and taxes).
As a result, the business plan should show how much money you need to invest in order to launch the project. The report will also reflect the pay-off period and the approximate profitability curve.
Step 3: Do market analysis & planning
A well-written business plan is half the battle. It is necessary to analyze the market, outline the main expenses and incomes. We recommend checking your future competitors, assessing the quality of their service, prices, etc. Thanks to the market research you will be clearly aware of the development prospects.
In addition, competitor analysis allows you to answer the question of whether you will be able to compete with existing companies on the same level.
Thankfully, there are helpful resources and platforms for newbie entrepreneurs. You can read more about that here. With Sleek you can incorporate your businesses anywhere (even abroad) in a few minutes.
Step 4: Plan a marketing strategy
Every business needs to have a marketing strategy because without marketing you won’t make sales.
You could have the best product or service in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, you might as well not exist.
Marketing is essentially any activity that your business engages with that promotes or encourages customers to shop with you. There are countless tactics, but PPC (pay per click) advertising is probably the best one to start with because you will only pay for the actual leads (i.e people who click on your ad).
Unlike other types of advertising, like radio and TV advertising where you pay for every ad slot or impression, PPC is really cost-effective way to reach a lot of interested buyers.
One of the most underappreciated marketing disciplines is scent marketing. If you work in entertainment, run a lifestyle, wellness, or fashion company, use scent in their premises. We, customers, just don’t know about it.
Scent marketing is when businesses use particular scents to invoke positive feelings from customers and to encourage sales. When you enter a grocery store, chances are, you’ll get a waft of fresh bread or pastries when you walk in. this is to encourage you to head to the bread aisle, also encouraging hunger, which can see you buy more food around the store.
Disney engaged with scent marketing in the 4 realms of experience. Stores like Hollister or Abercrombie & Fitch use scent marketing to create the desired atmosphere in their stores.
Step 5: Find the startup budget
Any business requires financial investments. There are 7 ways to finance your business.
Of course, you can do without large expenditures, but in this case, the development will greatly slow down.
After creating a business plan and completing all the calculations, you will know the approximate size of the initial equity.
It is good if you already have this money. Otherwise, you can attract investors or apply for a loan from a bank. In the former case, you can use dedicated platforms to find an investor for your startup online, such as Our Crowd, FundersClub, SeedInvest, and many more.
Step 6: Create a website
In today’s economy, the development of any business is not an easy task. If you want to ensure the success of your company, you should be online.
Discover the world of online business, promote your services and products on social media, and get new customers. Here are some of the key functions that once again prove the importance of a website:
• It is a company’s business card;
• It serves a purpose of a powerful communication tool;
• It provides for effective interaction between you and your existing/new partners;
• It allows your business to enter new markets;
• It earns money for you;
• It is an inexpensive form of advertising.
In order for your website to perform at the max, you need to invest in SEO services and develop an effective content strategy. Follow the below online business tips to produce digital content that converts:
Create quality content
Create original content that answers the questions of your target audience. The content that you produce should match the search intents of both your existing/ potential customers.
To achieve this:
• Use different content types – you can write a blog article, post infographics, or record a webinar or a video. When deciding on a content type, keep in mind its target function. For example, a promo video is the best way to introduce a new product/service; infographics work well to visualize stats, while the long-read format is best suited for sharing data enriched with details and facts.
• Follow content trends – one of the last digital content trends is videos with subtitles; such multimedia perform well not only on corporate sites or blogs but also on social media pages. So if you strive to get high user engagement rates with your digital content, a professional video subtitle editor will come to the rescue. Take care of the SEO part – use relevant keywords in the digital texts that you post. This will help search engines to “match” your site with relevant search queries.
• Post content on a regular basis – you should have a content calendar and stick to it. Making a bunch of posts in one day and then staying silent for a week is not the best approach. Make sure that you have something to share with your audience at least every other day.
Step 7: Run marketing research
Marketing research is carried out when launching business projects, introducing a new product/service, attracting customers, or making management decisions that affect the efficiency of a company or enterprise. With the help of such analysis, you can get up-to-date information about the market situation, choose the right marketing strategy, and increase sales.
Let’s take a closer look at the frequently used areas for marketing analysis:
• Market research allows identifying the main startup challenges, prospects, pitfalls, and risks;
• Product research is needed to determine whether a product meets consumer demand in the market and to assess its competitiveness;
• Consumer research determines what reasons and motives influence people when making a purchase decision;
• Advertising research involves the implementation and testing of various advertising techniques.
The market situation is unstable and constantly changing. Therefore, it is best to conduct comprehensive marketing research regularly.
The collected information will allow you to solve existing marketing problems, expand the segment of the occupied market share, develop a strategy to promote business and attract new customers.
Step 8: Develop your product continuously
Take small steps and make minor changes to the product.
After you launch a project, collect statistics and analyze the response of your audience.
The world-famous Starbucks coffee chain is a good example. At the time when the company appeared, there were no coffee chains in the United States yet. It was a completely new product on the market. The founder of the chain, Howard Schultz, completely copied the Italian coffee shop and innovated the business model with the time. For example, the man noticed that people were not ready to stand in a long line; therefore, he accelerated the process of making coffee. He was also the first to come up with take-away coffee and replaced the opera music in the cafe with jazz. As a result, Schultz built a coffee empire that was not like other chains.