How to Start an Online Business: 7 Easy Steps to Get Started Today

Wondering how to start a business? Well, it may be easier than you think. Whether you are looking to start a multinational or just looking to earn some extra cash, you need to find the right strategies to get started. If you’re considering becoming an entrepreneur, these 7 simple steps will help you get started so you can jumpstart your new career!

Step 1) Conduct Market Research

What is Market research? It is a process of gathering useful information about your business buyers’ personas, target audience and determining how successful your product or service would be among these people.

By understanding your buyer’s problems, pain points and desired solutions you can craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them. There are two main types of market research that your business can collect information on your products or service including primary research and secondary research.

Primary research is gaining first-hand information about your market and the customers within the market. It is very useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.
Secondary Research, on the other hand, is referring to all the data from public records, commercial sources and internal sources, which you can base your conclusions on.

Step 2) Develop A Marketing Strategy

The end result should be enticing, captivating and memorable most importantly fun and should sell to people. What makes people drive them back again and again.

Begin with your strongest benefit: In advertising, features tell and benefits sell. It makes marketers focus on and highlights the benefits of product or service.

Expand on the most important benefit: Make your strongest benefit hard to ignore by describing the most positive impact it can make on your buyers’ persona.

Explain in detail what the prospect will get: This is where you can drop teasers or features on your product or services. Give them something to visualize.

Backup statement with a proof: At this point, your reader has given you time and attention. She will need some proof if she’s to be sold. Your chance to flash some facts, statistics, testimonials, awards and anything that will give truth to your claims.

Tell them what they’ll lose if they don’t act: People are far more driven to avoid pain than they are to acquire pleasure.

Sum up the most important benefits: Recap all those terrific benefits that will captivate the reader in the first place, reminding why she should buy or acquire.

Present call to action: Tell the reader what to do next after reading an ad. Keep it simple and direct.

Step 3) Create a Website

Once you have your target audience and product or service it’s time to have a website. In this time of age, it is essential to have a website for a business.

Obtain a great domain name – It is also known as your website address. It is important to make a good impression for usability purposes as well for SEO.
Purchase secure and website hosting with good tech support – A website host is a company that offers the technology and services needed for a website to be viewed on the internet.
Create an engaging and user-friendly website – Websites should be easy to navigate and easy to understand.
Regularly create and publish content – It is important that you create a plan to publish quality articles and blog posts on your site for SEO purposes.

Step 4) Drive More Traffic to Your Website

Pay-per-click advertising is the easiest way to get immediate traffic to your site. It has distinct advantages, such as when your ads show up on the top of search engine pages, or when they allow you to test different keywords. It also discovers your best and highest converting keywords.

Step 5) Establish your reputation as an expert

Most of us use the internet for information. Information that is given for free to other sites and you’ll see more visits and better SEO rankings. Always include a link to your site with each tidbit of information.

Step 6) Email Marketing that turns prospects into Customers

Your target audience and subscribers have given you permission to send them an email. This means that you are giving them something they have asked for. You are developing lifetime relationships, the response is 100 percent measurable.

Email marketing is cheaper and more effective than print. Anyone who is on the site and opts in to your list is a hot lead and there is no better tool than following up through email.

Step 7) Profit from Back-End Sales and Upsells

Most likely, your customers will definitely buy from you again if you follow up with them. Closing that first sale is by far the most difficult part of a business and the most expensive. So, use back-end selling and upselling to get them to buy again.

Offer products that compliment their first purchase.
Send out loyalty coupons they can redeem on their next visit.
Have a “thank you” page after they purchase.

Conclusion

As you can tell after reading this article, creating a startup business website may not be as simple as it could be and no matter what type of business you want to start like selling products, offering services or launching a startup, there will always be ups and downs. If you have finally decided to go into business, it is important to set realistic expectations so that you will not end up disappointed with the progress after the first few months of growing your customer base.

Always do your homework and research more on what industry you’re in and how to continue growing your business before quitting your full-time job and launching if you’re already generating revenue from your business. Then, you will be encouraged to grow from there. Good luck!

References:

1) “7 Steps to Starting a Small Business Online”,Entrepreneur. Retrieved November 3,2021 from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/175242

2) “How to Start a Business From Scratch”, business Owner’s Playbook. Retrieved November 3,2021 from:https://www.thehartford.com/business-insurance/strategy/how-to-start-a-business

3) “7 Steps to Starting Your Own Business Quickly and Effectively”, Small business. Retrieved November 3,2021from:https://www.thebalancesmb.com/starting-own-business-1200678

4)”7 Steps to Starting a Small Business” Due. Retrieved November 3,2021 from: https://due.com/blog/7-steps-starting-small-business/