Niche marketing and doing business online
Today’s businesses are learning to harness the power of niche marketing, and many modern small businesses are being built entirely around niches.
This smart strategy puts small businesses in a position to target a smaller and more well-defined pool of customers.
Niches are effective for business models in the brick and mortar world, but they’re even more effective when you’re doing business online. Read more
An introduction to doing business online
Many of my clients do business offline. And by offline, I mean they do all of their business in the three-dimensional world that exists far from the computer and way beyond the internet.
Some of them are new business owners who are just starting out and want to make sure they establish an effective online presence. Others have been in business for years and are finally ready to harness the Internet to expand their customer reach and product or service offerings. Many want nothing more than to update their website with current information, a fresh design, and compelling copy. A few would prefer to keep it entirely offline, but they know better. Read more
These days, having an effective online presence can make or break your business. Even if you have a traditional brick and mortar location, setting up shop online will give you access to a larger customer pool, provide a cost-effective avenue for information sharing, and dramatically open up your opportunities for marketing.
More and more entrepreneurs are skipping brick and mortar altogether and are exclusively doing business online. For small business owners who are used to working behind a storefront or in an office, making the switch or expanding into the online arena can be challenging, confusing, and overwhelming.
The benefits of doing business online are undeniable. A website costs far less than a shop or office. You can communicate with hundreds, thousands, even millions of web users at a fraction of the cost of doing a television commercial or major ad spread. And you can sell your products or services across the globe, removing geographical limitations entirely.
How you handle the details of doing business online will depend on your industry, target customer demographics, and professional goals, mission, and philosophy. You might sell products using an automated online store or you might sell a service to a small, select group of clients. You may use your online presence strictly for marketing but keep transactions offline. You might even offer free products and services, like a blog or informative newsletter, as a strategy to entice customers.
While the opportunities for doing business online are limitless, there are some basic strategies that every business owner can use. Here are ten strategies that will prove beneficial to all entrepreneurs who want to harness the power of the internet to make their businesses more successful.
A great website is one that helps establish your brand online, provides relevant information for visitors, and works to convert those visitors into customers by issuing a clear call to action. Plus, it has to have an aesthetic appeal and be user friendly in terms of navigation. It can be as simple as one page or as elaborate as Amazon or eBay. This is one area of doing business online where you’ll want to take your time, learn the ropes, and make sure you hire the right people to get the job done.
The Internet has a worldwide reach. For some business owners, this is a boon. Using e-commerce, you can set up an online store with all the same merchandise from your brick-and-mortar store and reach millions more customers. For other business owners, the global reach of the web is a conundrum. How does an electrician or a consultant harness the Internet to expand a customer pool? Be creative and consider all your alternatives. Can you do phone consultations? Write an ebook and sell your expertise? Is there any part of the service you offer that can be done remotely? If so, package it and sell it on your site. If not, create a complementary information product and sell that instead.
Once you figure out how to sell your product or service online, you have diversified your income stream. However, you can continue to look for new opportunities to generate income online. If you’re a gardener, write an ebook with gardening tips and sell it online. If you run a clothing boutique, post your merchandise online and add a blog with fashion tips. Information is one of the biggest sellers online, but you can also publish free information to round up visitors (and then convert them into customers). Some ideas for doing business online and diversifying your income stream: consultations via phone, Skype, or chat; information products, such as ebooks; training with videos and multimedia; and affiliate marketing and website advertising.
Get familiar with how other professionals in your industry are using the web by perusing their websites. You’ll find important trends and as a newcomer, you’ll be able to spot attractive opportunities that your competitors might be missing. Sign up for their newsletters and email lists, pay attention to the ads they’re running, and strike up conversations on blogs and forums so you can get involved in the online community. Reach outside your niche too. Explore similar companies and those that offer products and services that complement or enrich your own.
The Internet has a heartbeat and before long, you’ll realize it belongs collectively to the millions of people who are sitting at their computers and connecting online. People who have a knack for networking will do well on the web. The bonus is that people who suffer from shyness may find that it’s a lot easier to network online than off. Your next big contact could be just a click away. As you travel around the web, look for people who work in your industry, professionals whose services you could use or who might need yours, and watch for folks you might want to team up with. Strike up conversations in forums and in the comments sections on blogs. Make friends and expand your contacts with your online professional network.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help you with your networking activities. Through these sites, you can easily connect with tens, hundreds, even thousands of people instantly. They are all free to use and you can upload your address book and immediately your existing contacts will become your first connections. Check out each of the social media sites to determine which ones are a good fit for your goals and purposes. LinkedIn is great for professionals. Twitter is excellent for link sharing and brief conversations. MySpace is a valuable tool for artists, such as musicians. Facebook lends itself well to just about any business imaginable. You can also get involved in social media sites like Flickr and YouTube. Publish your photos and videos, build your brand into them, and use those sites to share media and spread the word about your business. Put yourself out there!
There are lots of reasons why website owners rail against the idea of including a blog on their websites. A blog adds a whole new dimension of technology and maintenance, requires regular post writing, and in many cases a blog will need a separate marketing campaign from the core site. However, the benefits can be vast. Business blogging allows you to communicate with customers in an open forum, acts as a vehicle for company news and announcements, and is ideal for staying fresh and focused on SEO keywords. In short, a blog expands opportunities for marketing and doing business online, and it’s worth considering as a potential investment.
Make it a point to keep track of your online presence. You’ll probably list your business in dozens of online directories. You’ll leave comments on blogs. You’ll also have all those social media profiles. Be aware of your own presence and don’t let anything get too outdated. You never know who will surf into an old profile. It could be your next big client! So keep everything current and let people know about your offerings and availability.
Nothing grabs people’s attention like an act of charity or a good old-fashioned contest. Find a cause you believe in or add a little publicity about the organizations that you donate to or volunteer for. People are drawn to the positive message of giving back and may well choose your company over one that is seen as uncharitable. Throw a contest for your customers or readers as a way of saying thank you. It’s good karma and great for publicity!
Keep your online presence up-to-date by maintaining your website, social media profiles, and other online content. Be sure you track the performance of your online marketing campaigns by running and analyzing statistical reports. Ramp up marketing efforts that deliver proven results and scale back on efforts with little or no return on your investment.
These are tips that any professional, entrepreneur, or website owner can use as they start working to establish their business in the online environment. People who are used to doing business in a more traditional, brick-and-mortar format might find these newfangled tools awkward at first, but part of being successful in business is having the ability to adapt with the trends.
So log on and get busy doing business online!
Most small business have established an online presence. They have a website and are running ad campaigns and using marketing strategies to draw targeted traffic to their sites. But some small businesses are missing online opportunities for diversifying their income streams because their efforts to draw traffic are too targeted or their offerings are too limited.
Take, for example, a small nursery with a simple website that provides their location, hours of operation, and listings of plants and flowers that are in season. The only customers they’re targeting are people who live within a reasonable driving distance and who are interested in gardening or landscaping. They have an online presence but are not doing business online — yet.
Then, the owner of the nursery adds a blog to the website and begins writing regular entries about the growing process, including tips for taking care of plants and ideas for creating beautiful gardens. Several of the nursery’s customers start reading the blog but many more readers come from regions beyond. Within a year or two, there is a large following, which is not constrained by geographical limitations.
The nursery’s owner puts together a collection of her best, most popular, and most informative articles and self-publishes a book, which generates some much needed extra revenue during a year that’s otherwise slow for business.
Now, instead of selling plants, flowers, and gardening supplies, the nursery owner is also selling information — information that was obtained through years of experience and that people are willing to pay for.
Selling information products is just one of the many models that business owners can adopt to expand their offerings, increase revenue, and diversify their income streams by doing business online.
There are several ways to harness an online presence that can breathe new life into the bottom line. Here is a small sampling of other possibilities the nursery owner might have explored:
Once a business decides to branch out in new ways and create multiple income streams, there will likely be a shift in the target customer demographic. Our friend the nursery owner used to advertise strictly to local gardeners and landscapers. Once she realized that people were actually interested in her blog, she had to change her marketing strategy.
She should still advertise locally, but online, she can launch a broader marketing campaign, one that appeals to hobby gardeners and professional landscapers all around the world. Her prospective audience has grown from a few thousand to several million.
As more and more of those prospective readers subscribe or visit her blog, more and more of her books are selling and not just to folks who live in her hometown. People who live on the other side of the country are buying. People who live on the other side of the world are buying. Meanwhile, she’s enjoying an increase in profits.
Because gardening is her passion, the nursery owner enjoys writing about it and with relatively little effort or work, she is earning larger sums each year as her blog audience grows. During a time when most folks are strapped for cash and the economy is in dire straits, the nursery owner has demonstrated true enterprise through a willingness to think creatively and try new things.
Millions of small business owners have websites but have not seized the opportunities that an online presence provides. Launching a new income stream involves planning and research, some elbow grease, and may even require an initial investment of either time or money, but the payoff can be great.
If you already have a website for your business, there’s no better time than right now to start looking for new ways to generate revenue online. You may even decide to launch a second website devoted entirely to your new pursuit. In difficult economic times, like those we face today, it will be the entrepreneurs and creative risk-takers who ride out the storm and rise to the top.
