4 High-Impact Ways to Market Your Online Business
If you don't market your online business, you'll fail to reach potential clients, customers, or sponsors. Here are 4 high-impact ways to make an impression.
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The world is filled with great ideas and broke business owners with fabulous products but no sales. Why is that? Bad marketing.
Ideas are not what drives most business success. Marketing does.
You can't get new customers, new sponsorships, or new clients without a plan to market your online business. Even if that business is blogging, being an influencer, or running an online course. If you make money, it counts.
So if you want to make it as a business owner, whether you're selling digital products, physical products, or your services as a coach or freelancer, it pays to have a solid marketing plan in place.
Start with these 3 popular marketing ideas to get your creative juices flowing. Remember to make the most of every marketing effort so your business will continue to grow.
Free Webinars
For information product sellers, coaches, and service providers, one of the best sources of new clients is in free training webinars.
If you're new to online marketing, like new new, you might be wondering "just what the heck is this webinar thing?"
A webinar is simply some sort of live broadcast that your audience can tune in to. You teach them a little something for free, then pitch a paid product.
No matter what your niche is, the promise of in-depth live training at no cost is enough to entice potential clients to part with an email address (which you’ll be able to market to later) and an hour of their time.
Not only that, but webinars are a fantastic way for those potential customers to get to know you better. And the better they know you, the more likely they are to buy.
Free Video Training
If you're worried about doing your training live, you can opt for in-depth video training instead. Record the hour you'd normally dedicate to a webinar and post it as an on-demand, available anytime video workshop.
You can still collect subscribers, pitch a product, and give people a better impression of who you are even without the live aspect.
Content Marketing
Not comfortable hosting a webinar? Hit the keyboard and start sharing your thoughts and ideas via your blog, ebooks, guest articles, and other written content.
For internet marketers, this gives readers a taste of what they can expect from your product. If you sell physical products, it provides the perfect opportunity to share useful tips and other important information with your buyers.
Of course, there’s another important benefit to content marketing, too: search engine optimization (or SEO). Google and other search engines index the words on your website and use the information to present search results to their users.
Content marketing is a tool you can use to make the most of these results and bring more potential buyers to your website. People searching on Google are often already in the mindset to buy, especially if you target keywords that people would search for when they want to make a purchase.
Paid Advertising
Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Google and plenty of other sites all offer paid placement. With today’s powerful analytics tools, it’s easy to create ads and drive traffic inexpensively.
Consider starting with Facebook, since the cost is low and it’s easy to target (and retarget) your ads to your ideal client. Pinterest is the next best choice since you can target specific keywords.
Once you’ve perfected your funnel, you can branch out into more costly ads with a larger reach, such as Google AdWords or another ad network.
Even if you don't plan on advertising right away, it’s worth it to learn how to install the tracking pixel for each network on your website so you can start building a warm audience to retarget once you do decide you’re ready to buy ads.
There are two important keys to keep your advertising efforts profitable instead of a money sink:
- Never buy ads just for traffic to your site. Always have them lead into a funnel that will turn some of the people that sign up for a free offer into customers.
- Constantly test and tweak your ads to optimize your conversions—this is a sign-up, sale, or some other action that you want people to take after they get to your site.
Market your online business with what's best for You
Now that you know what's possible, it's time to figure out what's best for you! Take some time to consider your options and research how to get started with each of these methods.
- Content marketing is easy to get started with,
- Webinars do require a little bit of tech setup to get running (though in most cases if you've got a camera and some presentation software, you're ready!),
- Video training requires a bit less tech, but you'll need video recording software instead of webinar software,
- And you should definitely learn how to make paid ads that pay for themself before you try to use them.
You don’t have to limit yourself just to these three marketing methods, though. There are tons of others that you can try, such as:
- Affiliate programs
- JV partnerships
- Automated funnels
- Direct mail campaigns
- Television advertising
It may be easy to get caught up in the creation process, but remember that marketing is the most important thing you can do for your business. You can have the greatest product ever, but without marketing, you won't get the sales you need to be profitable.
