Online Marketing Strategies For Small Business – Part 1
Hey there, online marketers!
Whether you are a solopreneur, or have 50 people in your organization, you operate a Small Business.
Imagine that you are the master of your destiny, carving a path through the vast online landscape.
As a young adult navigating the thrilling world of digital marketing and entrepreneurship, your dreams of big profits are within your reach.
Now, let’s be real though—starting out can be like stepping into a maze of bewildering choices. Some people freeze in their tracks, caught in the web of choices.
Others charge ahead, driven by the hunger for financial freedom.
But here’s the exciting twist—you have the power to defy the norm. Your journey can be a series of calculated moves, a road to the edge of greatness.
The secret?
A strategy that shields you from the distractions that derail the rest.
Here’s the golden secret: the online marketing world isn’t an enigma.
It’s a puzzle YOU can solve.
With laser-focused choices that align with your aspirations, you’re poised to conquer the online marketing world.
At every crossroads, there’s a decision to make, a challenge to embrace.
Your guiding star?
A blueprint. A game-changing, seven-step guide tailored for young adult entrepreneurs like you. No more drifting in uncertainty, such as chasing every shiny new object that comes along.
This roadmap points the way, revealing tasks that lead to your goal.
Step 1: Conduct Preliminary Research to Find a Profitable Market
The first step in your digital marketing career is to conduct some research to ensure that the market you want to tap into holds ample profit opportunities. While it’s true you can earn money with just about any topic online, you don’t want the process to be a struggle for you.
You want to start by considering the niche you feel will be a good fit for YOU! What you’re basically doing is looking for an audience that you can serve that is based on things like your own knowledge and passion, your skills, and even your interests if you simply want to teach others as you, yourself are learning, too.
Your Niche
Your niche can be anything from cooking to raising pets, gardening or even making money online, which is the very topic you are interested in. Not only do you want to think about the niche itself, but you want to think about the target audience that will be following you.
You have to consider what their needs are, what obstacles they face, and what their goals are as well as any personal preferences when it comes to content they absorb online or solutions they prefer to invest money in.
You want to take a look at how much interest there is in potential niches that you are considering. Evaluate whether or not there are enough products in the marketplace for you to promote as an affiliate. This is especially relevant if you are an info product developer.
Take time to use keyword tools that can give you insight about search volume and look on social media platforms to gauge interest and see whether or not this is a niche that can serve you well over time.
Trends or Breaking News in Your Niche
You also want to see if there are any trends or breaking news in your niche. You will want to see whether or not there is any competition. Lack of competitors is a bad sign.
You want to have a diversified income when it comes to digital marketing online. That means you’ll be pursuing a mix of different business models and possibly different niches so that you don’t have all of your eggs in one basket.
Step 2: Solidify Your Online Entity
In order to set yourself up as a bona fide business online, you need branding and a website. Don’t worry that a site is out of reach for you as a newbie. It should cost no more than $5 a month to get your own site, and branding is easy to develop on your own.
Start With Branding
Let’s start with branding. It’s not so much the commercial aspect of it, but you need branding for recognizability with consumers across all online platforms. You want them to know you by the look and tone of your content.
Do you need a logo? Not necessarily. But you do need a look that relates to your niche. It can reflect the style you’ll be teaching, such as fun, professional, for women, budget-friendly versus luxury, and so on.
Branding is about more than just a look, including in the context of Online Marketing Strategies For Small Business – Part 1.
Your audience needs to know that when they read content online, they can immediately tell if it came from you and aligns with the strategies outlined in Part 1 of your online marketing approach.
This branding consistency is important not only with email marketing, blogging, and social media marketing but also in establishing a strong online presence.
You want to make sure you speak about the values for your brand and the purpose for your digital marketing business. Come up with a tagline for your brand. You can then include it on your website header and on social media profile bios.
You Must Have a Website That You Own
Some people will tell you that you really don’t have to have a website. This can be costly advice.
To have a website you need a domain name. You BUY the domain name for a few dollars, and it is YOURS. The domain name and your website are the only things YOU OWN online. Everything else you RENT. If you rent, you can be cancelled or evicted on a whim.
People have lost their business and their income by being ‘evicted.’ Don’t let this happen to you.
Another reason you want to have a website that you own is that you have your own digital real estate online for your marketing business.
Start by choosing a dot com domain that is easily recognizable and that reflects your niche topic.
Look for a coupon code, such as a $0.99 code through GoDaddy, and purchase your domain before moving on to the hosting selection.
You want to choose a host that has good support and an excellent reputation for uptime, which is showing how their performance is in terms of not having servers go down.
Once those two are connected, by putting the hosting name servers into your domain registrar, you can go to your dashboard and log into cPanel and install WordPress. This should only take a minute or two, and you only have to enter a little bit of administrative information before your website goes live.
Then, you can go through the process of ensuring that your site is set up properly. Choose a theme that is mobile friendly and that reflects your online brand accurately. You want the design to be simple and the navigation easy for your visitors.
Start learning about everything a website owner needs to know to manage a WordPress blog. This includes things like optimizing images and keeping the page load speed fast. You also need to have an SSL certificate to ensure that your site is protected for the user.
Depending on the business model you are pursuing, you may need to put together some legal compliance pages, such as a privacy policy and terms of conditions. If you are going to be promoting products as an Amazon Associate, you may need to have a disclaimer there as well.
Set Up Google Analytics
You also want to set up Google Analytics, now known as GA4, so that you can periodically look at the metrics associated with your site and see what you need to improve upon based on visitor behavior.
Make a plan for updates and maintenance that you need to handle. This keeps your site secure, so you need to periodically update WordPress, themes, and plugins so that there is no risk of a breach.
Once your site is up and running, you can include some specific branding on it, such as your header image, and things in the sidebar to reflect your brand and message. You can start posting content whenever you’re ready.
Step 3: Create Multiple Streams of Product Income
Your next step as a digital marketer is to figure out what types of income streams you want to pursue online. You never want to simply build an entire business off of one method because anything can happen that could put your income in jeopardy.
Let’s look at some of your options as a digital marketer.
To start with, one of the best ways to begin earning money and build your list is to develop your own information products.
These can come in the form of eBooks, video courses, or even webinars. You can work with broad topics, such as gardening for beginners, or you can narrow down your niche topic and create an entire empire of info products, such as tomato gardening, vertical gardening, or hydroponic gardening.
This is a great asset to have as a digital marketer because it can continue earning for you as long as the content you have created is evergreen.
You can also develop an entire funnel of products, so that your initial buyer of one course is then presented with multiple upsells and downsells to increase the earnings for yourself and your affiliates.
In order to succeed with info product development, you want to pack a lot of value into your course.
You’ll need to brainstorm an idea that will set you apart from what’s already out there, even if it simply means doing it better than what others have done, and then outline the course so that you can start producing it.
Use a Multimedia Approach
Sometimes, it helps to have a multimedia approach for your info products, especially when considering Online Marketing Strategies For Small Business – Part 1.
Suppose you are trying to teach someone how to do something like install a website. You can use a screen capture tool like Camtasia, which not only enhances the learning experience but also aligns with effective online marketing strategies. It allows them to watch over your shoulder as you go through the steps.
In order to begin selling your info products, you’ll need to set up a sales page on your website that explains the benefits of your product, and create a listing on a third party platform such as ClickBank, JVZoo or Warrior Plus.
Whenever you are ready to launch, you can recruit affiliate marketers to promote the product for you. They will send their own subscribers to your listing, and whenever a buyer makes a purchase, your system can send them a confirmation email to put them on your list for future sales.
Another path you may want to take is affiliate marketing. This is when you are not creating the products themselves, but the reviews that promote the products. You can do this through content marketing on your blog as well as on social media.
As an affiliate marketer, your digital marketing process will involve researching your target audience to determine what their needs are. Also, finding the best solutions for them. Plus, making the correct recommendations so that they trust your word from that point on.
You can promote products in both the digital and tangible realms. Find tangible products to promote on platforms like Amazon, Commission Junction, and Share-a-Sale. Also look for digital products on the platforms listed above for info product developers.
You might also want to tap into the world of private label rights sales. This is when you are creating content as if you were an info product developer or affiliate, but instead of using it yourself, you are allowing other people to purchase the content and use it as their own.
Sell Your Content to Multiple Buyers
But instead of approaching this like a ghostwriter would, you will be selling the content to multiple buyers. You would lower the price point. And they can put their name on it and edit it however they wish. And they can use it on their blog and as their own products.
Selling printables is another option for digital marketers. There are marketplaces like Shopify and Etsy that allow you to sell downloadable, digital files that people can use in their personal and professional lives.
These include things like journal pages, calendars, planners, checklists, coloring pages, and more. If you have an eye for design and can create templates that allow you to stock a store with a variety of pieces, this can be a good monetization strategy for you.
Regardless of what business model order niche you pursue, you want to make sure that you are networking with others in your industry so that you can collaborate whenever it will benefit you.
As time goes on, you can expand your offerings as a digital marketer to include things like coaching if it suits your niche audience well. Test each type of income stream to see where you should focus your efforts.
Online Marketing Strategies For Small Business – Part 1. This is not the end of the story:
You can read Part 2 of this article HERE.
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