I want to discuss the five steps of a successful, profitable, and sustainable online business.
Now these five steps that we’re going to discuss are truly the foundation for building a successful business online and it really doesn’t matter what niche or market you are serving or what kind of products or services you are selling.
These steps are what you will find in common with the most successful online businesses.
The Challenge For Start-up Online Marketer
You know one of the challenges that we have with online marketing is there are so many different experts, gurus, and teachers out there teaching you so many different things, there really is such an abundance of information and that’s really a bad thing for entrepreneurs and start-up online marketers as well.
This is because it’s hard to really decide what are the things that I need to focus on and so we’ll see so many different marketers and trainers out there telling you so many different things about what’s important in your business what you need to focus on.
You know one day it’s Snapchat the next day it’s Facebook lives and everyone is telling you that you need these things then you’ll get a marketer telling you that email marketing is dead and now you’ve got to be using Facebook Messenger Bots.
Is Your Foundation Right?
As important as all of this is I discovered that really the success of the business is not dependent on some technique or trend or new technology.
The success of a business is really dependent on the foundation. Making sure that the business is built on a solid foundation and making sure there are several pillars, several key elements that you have in place and what I discovered over the last few years is that the businesses that are successful, all of them have developed each of these five steps.
The businesses that are struggling, they have not developed the five steps strategy. So if your goal is to build a successful, profitable, sustainable business it is absolutely my belief that you need to focus and build out each one of these key five steps.
Now let’s start. The Question that I get all the time and I’m sure that you’re wondering as well is what is the best marketing strategy to get me results? The problem with this question is there is no cookie cutter approach or cookie cutter solution.
Just because webinars work for one business doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best option for your business.
When we look at this question what is the best marketing strategy we have to really understand what is a marketing strategy because a marketing strategy is not limited to just one concept, strategy, or technique.
The definition of a marketing strategy and I got it from businessdictionary.com. It’s really important that we understand this.
What Is A Marketing Strategy?
An organization strategy that combines all of its marketing goals into one comprehensive plan. A good marketing strategy should be drawn from market research and focus on the right product mix in order to achieve the maximum profit potential and sustain the business.
So what can we learn from this definition is that having a start to a marketing strategy means that you have to have a comprehensive plan and that it combines all of your marketing goals.
The focus on the right product mix created in a way to achieve maximum profit potential means you have different elements, different marketing techniques and different advertising avenues that you might be using and that’s all built into one comprehensive plan.
So when people ask me what is the best marketing strategy, how should I get traffic to my website I found that most business owners don’t have a comprehensive marketing strategy. Somebody told them that they need to do a trip wire so they start putting together tripwire products. Then they heard that they should get on Snapchat and the problem with all of this is that it is reactionary.
If you don’t understand the five steps of a successful online business you’ll continue to do what unfortunately so many struggling marketers online do and that is jump from one thing to another, waste money, and waste time without actually creating any results.
Being really focused on building your email list is just one part of your overall marketing strategy.
It’s been really popular for a lot of marketers to tell you that all you need to do is have a capture page like a lead magnet to generate leads, to build your email list, send out emails, and send out offers to your email list.
There is some truth to this but for most people that is not a complete marketing strategy and for 99% of marketers, that is not going to be enough.
So let’s talk about these five steps and the foundation of your business.
If you understand these steps and you focus on building these steps out I can virtually guarantee that you will increase and improve the results in your business.
1. Content Marketing Strategy
Step number one is content marketing. Every successful business online has some type of a content marketing strategy and leverages valuable content in their marketing strategy. This is only becoming a more and more critical and crucial element and more important step in your business and that’s why I’ve actually got it as the first step.
Now what I need you to understand from this is that content marketing includes things like blogs, your blog post articles, and guest posts but it’s not limited to just a blog.
As important as a blog is and I do believe that a blog is important for your business you don’t need to have a blog for a content marketing strategy. You don’t need a blog to build a successful business online but it is a valuable tool to have. For content marketing you can also use videos, youtube, and live videos.
You can use Facebook, Instagram, all other social medias for content marketing. Other tools you can use are podcasts, audios, webinars, teleseminars, and even email marketing can be a content marketing strategy.
The critical point to understand is there is lots of mediums you can use to deliver content to your market. It does not matter which one you use. The question is do you have a content marketing strategy that you can use to deliver to your market, to your leads, and to your customers.
The really important thing to understand with your content marketing strategy should always be strategic and should always have a purpose. Your content should support and enhance your online presence and your brand. Do not create content just for the sake of creating content.
Remember the definition of a marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan with a goal to drive profitable action.
You should not be creating content unless you have a strategy on how that content supports your brand, create engagement, support trust with your market and your leads, building your list, or driving your leads into a sales funnel which helps you make sales.
Your content ties all of your marketing together.
Use content throughout the entire sales process to attract website visitors, generate leads, and convert those leads to sales. We can also use content marketing to up sell to our existing customers. The last thing is to use content marketing to gain referrals, for instance thru the viral sharing online of our content.
This is why content marketing is so important because it is used throughout the entire sales process. You cannot have a successful business online without an effective and strategic content marketing strategy that is going to drive profitable customer action.
2. Lead Generation Strategy
Step two is lead generation. We are now talking about building your email lists. Your email lists are still your most valuable business asset and your most engaged audience.
Your email list is traffic and sales ON DEMAND. This is why you want to focus all of your attention and energy on building this business asset. Whenever you want to generate more traffic and sales you just simply send an email to your lists. It is incredibly valuable to your business. No matter where you are building an audience or platform you want to focus on bringing them to a lead capture and getting them on your email lists.
We have to wait to see how email marketing will evolve over the next few years. We know that email usage and open rates are going down so when we see tools like facebook messenger bots we have to pay attention because this concept of lead generation, this second step is never going to go away but the medium and the tools that we use might change.
Right now we should focus on building an email list and also on messenger chat.
3. Monetization Stragety
The third step is your monetization strategy. This is how we make money by having an effective strategy.
An effective monetization strategy will help you create profits in your business. This is one of the easiest areas in your business. Traffic is not the solution and the wrong area to focus. Smart marketers understand that the offers are what counts and creating a profitable monetization strategy and therefore traffic becomes so much easier.
An effective monetization strategy has multiple streams of income.
Do not try to start a business with just one product. Multiple streams of income helps you to get into profit quickly. Number two is to create a tiered product mix which is different products at a different price point.
Back end profit multipliers. A new business might not have all three of these elements at first but I do encourage you to create a plan so you are working towards your business having all three of these types of income streams.
4. Follow Up & Engagement Strategy
Moving right along to the fourth step. An effective follow up or engagement strategy is critical to create conversions. The fortune is in the follow ups.
An effective follow up strategy creates rapport, builds trust, and establishes authority. These are the three key things you want to think about when you are creating your follow up strategy.
Now you have to understand this, I am going back to content. Your content ties all of your marketing together so your follow up strategy should be closely tied to content strategy. Effective follow ups are more than just a simple email autoresponder sequence.
The online buyer today is much more complex and sophisticated and just a simple email sequence just will not cut it any longer.
You want to leverage a variety of medium and multiple platforms. We want to change the conversation. We want to engage with people not only through email but we want to be able to engage with them on all social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
What I want you to pull away with this is you have to leverage a variety of mediums and multiple platforms in your follow up.
The purpose of your follow up strategy is to create engagement and sales. The sales will follow if you are focused on engagement.
5. Traffic Strategy
The fifth and final step is your traffic strategy and you’ll notice that this is the fifth step and not the first step.
You must build out and have a solid foundation with the first four steps and then traffic becomes easy. Traffic is the final piece of the online business puzzle. The vehicle is the first four steps and the fuel is the fifth step – Traffic.
You have your offer, your content strategy, your follow up strategy, your monetization strategy, your building your email list with your lead generation strategy, and that is the strong foundationthat is nailed down and then you add the last which is traffic.
There are no traffic problems there are only offer problems or you can say there are only strategy problems. Your having a traffic problem because you don’t have the first four steps in place. So your afraid to spend money on traffic or to run an ad and to really focus on getting traffic into your vehicle, your business.
Traffic is always flowing so you need to position your marketing message in the flow of traffic. There are tons of places to get traffic from, certainly there is no shortage.
So let’s recap
To have a successful, profitable and sustainable online business you need to have the five steps in place, content marketing, lead generation, monetization, engagement, and finally Traffic.