We’re going to talk about how to develop your marketing plan and the most important things that you need to have in place so that you can have the best chance at success. So, by the end of this post, you’re going to have a clear idea of what you should focus on to get started and get to the tools and everything strategy-wise in place that you’re going to need to be set up for success.
If you’re thinking about starting a business or if you have an idea that you want to take to the market or you just have a passion that you want to try to monetize? you’re probably in a spot where you’re thinking “well I need to take the next step”, “what should I do?”. It can be pretty confusing and complicated but the simpler that you make it and the better planning that you do at the beginning, the easier it will be for you to get more success later on.
Find a place to sell your products
First things first, if you’re starting, the most important thing that you want to do if you want to be in business is to have a place to sell your products. This may sound easy and it’s like a no-brainer! You are probably saying to yourself “of course I need to sell my products”, “how am I going to make money”. But you need to figure that out. If you are selling physical products, WooCommerce or Shopify will be a great way for you to do that.
If you’re doing a service-based business, you’re going to probably need a different kind of site, because you’re going to surely have more content, thus it’s very important to get this figured out.
1. What are you going to sell?
2. How will you sell it?
Find a Way to Receive Online Payments
If you can’t collect money online then you’re not going to be in business in a way that you can use digital marketing to grow. If you have a restaurant for example, sure you can’t collect money online, you can drive people into your business. But if you’re trying to start a business where you’re going to be selling things, you need an online payment process, you need to have that setup. So, make sure you set up your payment processing. Ensure you have a way for you to collect payment from people so that they can buy what you’re looking to sell. It doesn’t have to be complicated though. You should make it as easy as possible.
Where is Your Audience and What are They up to?
You need to think about where your audience is, what are they spending time doing, and are there places that already have customers built-in that you can take advantage of. Let’s say you’re making handmade crocheted hats for, there is a marketplace that has buyers and customers (people who are looking for handmade crocheted hats) called Etsy. So, you don’t necessarily have to set up your website, you can create a site on Etsy and they will take a cut of the sales.
It all depends on what business you’re doing or what you’re trying to grow. You don’t necessarily have to create a website. You may be thinking to yourself, “well you know I want to have my own website” or “you know what? It’s too complicated I’ll figure that out down the road”. There are several benefits to having your own website and there’s a few benefits to not having your own website and using a platform like Etsy for example.
If you want to have more control over your product and your service and you don’t want to necessarily be at the hands of Etsy where basically whatever they say goes and they can shut down your business and work with your competitors as well, then you’re going to want to probably have your own website. Whereas, if you’re just wanting to get started and you’re just wanting to sell and get your income coming in, you don’t want to worry about all the administration and the programming of the website and where it’s going to be built and the hosting of the website and all of these other factors then going on Etsy will be the best solution for you.
You can also sell physical products on Amazon. You can create an Amazon store, you can do fulfillment by Amazon, you can create a business where you don’t have any infrastructure by basically just using Amazon to sell your products and that’s okay too, but with Amazon there are very strict rules on how you can communicate with customers and how to remarket to customers.
If you want more control over your business, you should have your own website set up. Try to always figure out where your customers are and where they are spending time.
What is the Offer Going to be?
Once you have figured out how you’re going to collect money and what you’re going to be using selling (if it’s your own website or if it’s going to be a marketplace that you’re going to use), the next thing that you absolutely need to figure out is what the offer is going to be. What are you going to be selling to your customers? And my suggestion is that if you don’t have a lot of experience in selling products to people and you’re just guessing what they’re going to be interested in, actually go out there and see what other people/competitors are doing, try to make yourself different (branding) and actually make a few test sales to have an actual idea of what the people want.
To sell your products/services to people, you need to make sure there’s an actual demand for what you’re trying to sell. So, seeing what other people are doing is a great idea and obviously, you know you want to make yourself different, interesting, and unique rather than just copying somebody else. You want to ensure that you’re actually a viable and unique player, especially if you’re in a market place like Etsy, where there are some more established channels, who’ve already got reviews and they already have everything in place. If you just try and duplicate somebody else’s work or product, you’re probably not going to be successful because they’ve been around longer.
So, make sure that you figure out what you’re going to be selling, make sure that there’s a demand for it (people want it). This takes testing and if you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s okay but you need to figure out if there’s a demand for something before moving forward. Don’t go out and buy a huge amount of inventory of products, only to find out that it’s not something that people would like to have or people are actually interested in buying. You can test out inside Facebook groups or different audiences where your potential customers hangout. This will be a great start.
How to Reach Your Target/Potential Clients
Once we have it figured out how we’re going to sell and collect money, what the product, and who are we serving by selling this product, the next thing is to figure out how we are going to reach these people. How are we going to get traffic or potential customers to the different channels and offers that we’ve put out there? There are a few things you can consider! You can decide to go for paid methods, such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads and the like, but for a start, we recommend you focus on Content marketing and email marketing.
a. Content Marketing
Content is so important, as it lets people get to know you at scale. It’s how you reach out to potential customers without having to go and physically talk to them. For instance, this article is a great example and it’s targeted for small businesses and persons looking to start out a new business and grow it easily. Once the content gets traffic from the search engines, more and more people just like yourself will get educated and some of which could be potential clients.
The same thing goes for whatever business you’re in. If you’re in a landscaping business for instance, you can do this as well. It doesn’t matter what business model you have, you can do it if you’re a plumber or a carpenter, if you sell painted rocks, if you sell jewelry, and so on. The whole idea is to basically put yourself out there and differentiate yourself from other similar products and service providers. That’s how you can grow.
You don’t need to create written articles like we do, if you are comfortable creating videos, then start YouTubing and showcase your products or services, if you prefer audio, consider podcasting.
So, you need to create content. Figure out what kind of content you want to be creating, and then actually go out and create content. My suggestion would be that you create at least a post once a week just to start out with. Doing so every single day would be amazing, especially if you’re doing mediums like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, posting every single day is important. Plus, you can use scheduling tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer to prepare and schedule posts in advance (this will save a lot of time, and in digital marketing, time is money). If you decide to create blog posts as a content marketing strategy, please be sure to check our guide on finding easy-to-rank keywords. It’ll help you identify low competition keywords, which is something important especially for new blogs.
b. Email Marketing
Some recent studies show that over 50 % of small businesses plan to use email marketing in 2020, 2021 and beyond, and these figures are highly underestimated. Email marketing is very profitable, especially at a time where other channels are becoming saturated.
People have a general tendency to take emails personally and friendly, thus are more likely to take action and interact with your brand than they would do on social media for instance where their attention is focused on several things at the same time.
So, be sure to leverage on email marketing and start building an email list. If you’ve been around digital marketing for a while, you must have heard the saying “the money is in the list”, and this couldn’t be truer in the era we live in. Just ensure to follow the best practices and avoid spamming your email subscribers. Nurture your email leads with frequent and valuable information about your product or service, or even just informational content (build your authority).
Conclusion
Starting up a business, be it an online business or not is pretty exciting, but you need to properly plan in advance. Figure out what product or service you want to sell, if it’s in demand, where your potential clients are, how you are going to receive payments, and how to get your product and service in front of the right customers, be it through content creation or other paid methods.
If you are still unsure on how to get started, just sign up for this exclusive course which will teach you how to practically set up a successful online business from start to finish with almost no capital.
We’re curious, let us know in the comment section, which of the tips/strategies mentioned in this post do you consider the most vital.