How to Launch and Grow Your Online Entrepreneurial Venture
Featured Image: iStock/Overearth
Gone are the days when people used to cook up ideas for business ventures in their living rooms in the evenings; hoping against hope that they would beat the competition and come through victorious. Today, the internet has simplified things to an extent that would never have been achievable in the past. Apart from gaining tips and tricks, the internet provides an open pathway to individuals looking to start a new business with just a few clicks of a mouse. It also helps to create an attractive and memorable brand identity design people can see globally. Let’s look at how.
What Do Successful Entrepreneurs Say About Starting A Business?
Before we begin with the tutorial, it is important to understand that launching a business is just like planting a sapling. When you first sow it in soil, you do not know whether it will grow into a fruitful tree or if it is going to die away in the middle of the journey. Like every gardener, you are going to put in your time and money, expect nothing in return at first, and will just hope for the best.
However, sapling doesn’t always mature, and it may die away. Like business startups, hope will not do the work. A dead sapling must always contain a reason behind its stilted growth; perhaps not enough effort, no related research, or maybe no experienced advice.
This is where expert advice from successful entrepreneurs comes in, and we will first look at a few as a gesture of goodwill and blessings.
Kevin Rose, Co-founder of Digg, said, “Don’t let others convince you that the idea is good when your gut tells you it’s bad.” This is very true because for your startup business, consider yourself the mother and the business as your baby. A mother’s gut never lies.
One of my favorites, Arianna Huffington, the Co-founder and Editor-in-chief of Huffington Post Media Group, says, “One of the greatest skills of leadership is being unflappable. Anytime you do anything in the world; there’s going to be criticism.” Surviving through the criticism until you please your critics is going to become your first successful milestone.
With these intellective and motivational quotes in mind, let us proceed towards the four proven steps of the sequence that warrants success in businesses, be it a startup or a running one.
Five Steps Towards Successful Launch Of Entrepreneurial Venture:
Step 1 Do Your Homework – Find Your Target Market
Prior to starting a business, look for a targeted market before working on the product. Most people amongst us commit the fatal mistake of disregarding to search for a need beforehand. We have thousands of businesses around us that are rendering some sort of service to consumers—what makes you think was their strategy? They looked for a ‘need’ before they ‘filled’ it.
That’s right. Put in your time and money in searching for what people are most questioning about, yet are unable to find a solution. For this purpose, the internet eases your way marginally. In order to search for your market, you can visit online forums where people are often questioning their problems, and pick out the issues that aren’t tagged along with a suitable result.
You can also do a “keyword research” to narrow down the keywords users Google in most frequently. And finally, log on to the existing sites of your competitors to learn their tactics. Observe the way they are working to fill in the said need and then begin your startup with an improved product. The pivotal part is to make sure you are going about it better than your competition!
Step 2 Hire The Best Copywriter In Town
Copywriting comes in as the second step to the sequence. There is a reason why a copywriter can earn thrice than the other writers. They are going to do the elementary marketing before products are put on the shelves, and thus they are as valuable to a business owner as the product itself. What’s more; a perfect sales copy of your product is going to change your visitors into purchasers the moment they step into your market.
There are certain pointers we have in the proven sales copy formula; let us have a look:
• The headline comes first, and a compelling one at that is going to invite interest, even for the most uninterested visitors.
• It will describe how the product in subject solves your problems or facilitates you as a service.
• Once your copy convinces you as the solver, build your credibility as the best one.
• This point may go live a bit late, but testimonials have always been the perfect way to establish real trust. Ask your customers to write in a testimonial and broadcast it in your sales copy.
• How does it benefit me? This FAQ is an essential for your copy as you need to enlighten your audience about the product’s benefits and advantages.
• For the remaining copy content, make offers, make guarantees, instill a sense of urgency, highlight the unique aspects and put in everything what a typical customer will look for.
Once you have your copy laid out, proceed towards the third step which is designing your product’s official website. Competing amongst websites is tough because online marketing is a personal branding tool available for every contender there is. Try your best to stand out with your site—make it simple to operate and easily accessible.
Step 3 Entice Audiences With Professional Website Design
The crucial part is capturing a visitor’s interest within the first five seconds; a website’s first impression and the interesting headline we talked earlier about becomes the weapon. Think of it as your first storefront—a virtual one. Navigation on the page must be very easy, and the option to purchase just two clicks away. You need to use techniques to optimize your landing pages to generate leads, and making your website functional is a huge part of the deal. You can collect email addresses by asking for an opt-in, so that your subscribers may later convert to buyers.
The next important step in the process is building a reputation for yourself, online. You are relatively new to the online globe with your product and in order to be viewed; you need links directed to your page, contents that talk about your products and activeness on online forums.
Step 4 Build Up Your Reputation And Authority
Give away free information to people by sending it to other sites; your search engine rankings will rise significant notches up. Sell content about your reputation for free in order to become familiar with audiences. Think about inserting a “Send to a friend” link on your website. The trick is to establish an expert reputation for the first phase of your business because nobody is going to help you with it.
After building up your reputation amongst your target audience comes in the tool of e-mail marketing—a tool that grants you the permission to remind, alert, and convince your subscribers to turn into customers.
Step 5 Use Power Of Email Marketing Intelligently
Gaining subscribers is another powerful tool that can boost the health of your business. Sending emails to subscribers means you can advertise anything new to a measured audience. And in the world of email marketing, it is vital to understand how to stop spam emails as a sender as well as a receiver, since it’s a matter of organizational integrity. Your relationship with your email subscribers is more or less of a lifetime—unless they decide to update their email addresses.
Importantly, email subscription is extremely cheap as compared to other channels, for instance, TV or print. The narrowed targeted audience makes it more effective to market a product.
Upselling and back-end selling are the next few tips in this sequence. Always remember that the internet is a powerful tool we have in our access—people who invested five years equal their efforts to just one year online. For any startup business in any area of interest, make use of the internet and artificial intelligence in the way it has been taught because the principles of growing a business online has not changed over the years, and never will.
Which step do you think is the most important?
