Online Marketing For Beginners | Where To Start

Online Marketing For Beginners | Where To Start

Online marketing for beginners can be an intimidating field to enter. With so much information out there it can be difficult to know where to start and which social media sites or strategies are best for your new business.

Being your own boss and having a business of your own starts with the decision to make the big leap.

If you’ve found your way here, you’ve already taken that crucial first step.

Congratulations!

Now you’re ready to learn how to start a business from scratch. But where do you begin?

Whether you already have a brilliant product idea or you’re just looking to build a future on your own terms, this article will help you establish your own online business.

One last word:

Online marketing has the potential to reach your target audience, attract new customers, increase your website traffic and even help you generate more sales. However, knowing which strategies to implement and how to do it properly can be overwhelming.

Where To Start?

There is a proven sequence of steps you should follow to guarantee your success when you’re starting a small business online. I’ve seen thousands of people start and grow successful businesses by doing the following 7 steps:

1. Find a need and fill it.
2. Write copy that sells.
3. Design and build an easy-to-use website.
4. Use search engines to drive traffic to your site.
5. Establish an expert reputation for yourself.
6. Follow up with your customers and subscribers with email.
7. Increase your income through back-end sales and upselling.

The first step in starting your online store is to determine a niche market you’d like to serve. One of the biggest mistakes new business owners make is not focusing on the three components of choosing a niche:

• Profitability: You want a niche that is profitable so you can see a return on your investment and build a profitable online store. If a product is too expensive to manufacture or purchase wholesale, it has a low potential for profitability. Similarly, a product might be too expensive to ship and may be better suited for selling in person.
• Searchability: The best e-commerce stores stock in-demand products people search for. If you’re looking to start an online store that sells dog leashes, for example, make sure “dog leashes” is a keyword you target. Use SEO tools to determine products people search for.
• Passion: Consider your passions. For example, what do you enjoy talking about or researching? When you’re passionate about what you sell, you’ll be more likely to stick with it when times get tough. Not only that, but you want customers to direct people to your store because you’re the expert in a particular field, product or service.

Your target audience is just as important as your niche. You want to make sure the products you sell will interest them and that they can purchase what you’re selling with no trouble. Don’t ask people for their opinion on your product if they’re not in your target audience.

Your Niche

Once you’ve determined your niche and target audience, it’s time to decide on your product or service line. This can be the hardest part of starting your online store. You want to make sure you’re not selling a product that’s too expensive to produce or that no one is searching for. It’s also important to make sure you have the resources, such as storage and shipping, to accommodate your products.

If you choose a product that’s already popular, how will you differentiate yours from the best? Can you improve on an existing product? How will you make sure your online store is the go-to source for this product?

Choose A Name

Once you know what you want to sell, the next step is to choose your brand or business name and create your brand assets, such as your logo. For some, this step might come very easy and for others, this can be very challenging. One way that businesses often weed through name ideas is by going to a domain name registrar, such as GoDaddy and searching for available domains. The reason is, ideally, you want your domain name to match your business name.

Have A Logo

If you’re not sure where to begin when creating your logo, Canva is a great place to start. It offers dozens of free and easy-to-customize logo templates. In case you don’t want to try your hand at logo design, you can always hire someone to do it for you from platforms like Fiverr and 99Designs.

Anyone Can Start A Business

Anyone, from newbie to seasoned online entrepreneur, can benefit from this process in learning how to start a business online.

The first step to becoming an online marketing expert is to understand the basics of digital marketing and its various channels. This includes organic search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing. To understand these concepts, one should start by doing some research on the various channels and familiarizing themselves with how each one works.

Once the basics are established, the next step is to start creating a plan for your online marketing goals.

For beginners, consider using tools such as Google Analytics and pull reports to track different metrics such as website visits, time on site, bounce rate and more. This can be done by setting up different goals on Google Analytics and tracking progress to see if you’re on the right track.

Social media is another great channel for online marketing and can be used to grow your brand’s reach and attract customers.

Beginners should start out by creating a strategy for the profiles you’re going to use and determine the kind of content they’ll be sharing.

Utilizing other social channels outside of your main ones can also help with exposure, including platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to interact with customers and engage with their comments to add to the conversation.

Another effective marketing tool for beginners is email marketing.

Start by building a contact list of customers or potential customers and determine what type of content they’ll be receiving. Then, craft emails to send out, utilizing A/B testing where appropriate. Just make sure to stay within the rules of email marketing by including opt-in forms and an unsubscribe button.

For this you will need an autoresponder.

Overall, online marketing can be an effective way to reach customers and generate sales.

It’s important to stay up to date with the latest trends and online marketing strategies, as well as track progress with the help of analytics tools.

Utilize the channels that best suit your business and be sure to create and execute a strategy that meets your goals.

With proper planning, anyone can become an online marketing expert.

Here are a few articles that may be beneficial:

Affiliate Marketing is todays top business model

How to start affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing..worth the effort

Want to succeed at affiliate marketing

Here’s to your success,