With the ever revolutionizing modern world, people are becoming tech savvy, everyone desires and wants to save their time and money whenever and wherever they possibly can. If we look back 30 years, there weren’t any Social Media channels and the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and mass media were never thought of and rarely few people had access to computers but now there is a small world in your hands which is your smart phone. From this mini device we communicate, read, learn, order food, book hotels, schedule appointments, buy our favorite piece of clothing in few minutes instead of going out to the market spending the entire day..
Instead of investing tons of dollars to buy or rent a physical place for starting a business, people are considering to buy very cheap intangible shop in the name of domain and hosting, where their customer can visit any time, from anywhere with a single click. A smart entrepreneur must choose an online portal to start their business rather than investing a huge amount in a physical store with a lot of risk and cost.
1- Plan: Right from the word ‘Go’
To start any type of business, you will need a business plan where you must write everything about what and how you are going to achieve your milestones, create your goals, set your realistic missions, and set a vision where you foresee your business in your next milestone. You don’t need to write it with any special formatting or on any special papers, few sticky notes on your mobile phones would do wonders, later you can get them to any piece of paper or get your mission statements printed and pasted in your office in beautiful frames. In case if you are too busy to write it yourself, well, you can always hire any of the professional business plan writers out there to write on your behalf, right?
2- A captivating business name is your ‘soul’
The days have gone where people loved fruits and named their companies as Apple or Blackberry. Now, it’s one of the most important and difficult task to choose the name of your company as the market is jammed and is full of traffic. Below are some of the expert tips to help you with the naming issue:
- – List down 10-40 unique names on a sheet of paper,
- – Do a proper name search by finding organizations of similar names and their nature of business.
- – Find there meanings on Google,(use Google images for better results), never choose any name which might spell, sound or mean offensive in any other language, e.g.: (Students of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh feel ashamed to study in LUND university in the UK as lund in their language means ‘male private body part ’
- – After the filtration process, go to any domain selling website and check if the name is available on (.com, .us, .org, .biz, etc.) domain extensions.
- – If yes, then check, if social URL’s are available, e.g., facebook.com/nike.com.
- -After checking, the next step is to check the name is not already registered with the government.
-After all this, finalize the name for your company.
I understand it’s a bit laborious process to select the name for your dream but this will definitely help you in future.
Now, we shall move on to the third step for your online business.
3- Market Research and Financial Planning
To consider any product, you need to identify the needs and demands of buyers in order to fill that empty supply gap with your product. If you have already decided the niche in which you’re comfortable working in or have some good contacts and experience, then you may proceed. Otherwise, there are few things which you need to keep in mind before choosing any specific category for your online store.. Check whether the market is not mobbed with a filthy competition. Go to Google, search the products and analyze it from the number of results.
Choose your niche very wisely of which the buyers must be literate, internet friendly. Avoid selling medicines, supplements, alcohol, weapons or gambling memberships hey may be profitable but 80% of the online marketing platforms and individuals do not allow advertisements and marketing of these products. Finally, check the CPC (Cost per Click) of some of your keywordswith any good tool like Semrush so that you run paid advertisements on those keyowrds with a minimal cost. Some keywords are really cheap which can make you a earn millions but others are highly expensive on which, running an advertisement would be a bigger risk. Create your 6 month budget plan and move forward.
4- On your mark, get set!
You’ve done the research part successfully, now it’s time to set up your business. At first, you need an identity in terms of a logo, get your business registered according to the laws of government, get a good website developer and get your website designed and developed. You can also opt for default themes such as WordPress, Shopify, etc. If you’re starting on a low budget scale.
The testing phase!
Connect your website with Google analytics and webmaster tools to have an in depth analysis of your website. Create your social media pages, add descriptions, insert your business logo and invite your friends. Never forget to spend a whole day to test your website and all the operations from start till the end. Keep clicking, refreshing, subscribing each and every page, add products, check out again and again. Test your website in each and every browser as you can’t afford potential customers bouncing from your website because of minor errors.
5- Time for some quality marketing
Once you’re done with setting up your website, it’s time to skyrocket your sales. Although, there are numerous ways to market your website and attract customers to it but as a beginner your main focus should be:
1. Social Media Marketing.
Run sponsored advertisements, attract new likes, keep posting updates and engage users.
2. Email Marketing.
There are various agencies which can assist you to send your mails to thousands of random people which can gain you few good leads to your website.
3. PPC Marketing.
Hire an expert or a freelancer for Google bidding and advertisements.
4. Banner Advertisements.
Get your banners placed on high quality websites which have gigantic readership.
5. Search Engine Optimization.
The results of SEO might not be that quick but it produces the best results in the long run which will definitely help you save a lot of money for your business and marketing strategies.
You can even use SMS marketing techniques run a TVC if there is a big budget. Keep your website updated, provide exciting deals, coupons and offers to your customers and keep your business trendy.
Very helpful and informative..