Long gone are the days when your ideal customer picked up a phone book to find you. Now, whether we like it or not, there are billions of dollars being spent every day online. While there is a plethora of quickly disappearing content and platforms competing for the attention of your target audience, there are, in fact, four core pillars of building a successful business online…and they stand the test of time regardless of algorithm changes, competitors, and economic or market shifts. In this post, we’ll go over each of these core steps and make sure that your business tool box never gets empty again!
Find Your Niche
The very first step to building a successful business online is to get very, very specific about who exactly you’re speaking to, and then to create content specifically for this audience. In other words, “what is your niche?” Your niche will almost always correspond to one of three core markets that have withstood the tests of time: health, wealth, or relationships. Next, from these three core markets you want to extract a sub market, and finally, your niche. Here is an example of how to do a flowchart to discover your lowest common denominator and extract your niche!
- Relationships —> Personal Styling for A First Date —> How A Female Can Make a Good First Impression on An Outdoorsy First Date.
- Wealth —> How To Create An Image Of Wealth —> How to Dress To Make More Money In The Financial Industry.
- Health—> Dressing for Weight Loss —> What To Wear to Appear 10X Thinner.
Try this: What core problem are you currently solving for people? Can you get even more specific with this problem and tailor a unique solution for it?
Use Content To Build a Community
Once you’ve pinpointed what your exact niche is, the key is to create content and media around this topic. Content creates traffic, and traffic creates engagement. From engagement you can build the most valuable thing a business can have – a community! When you have a community you are able to listen to the unique challenges that your audience is facing, and continue creating content specifically crafted for them. In a community, an audience is interested in engaging with you, asking questions, and giving you their opinions and suggestions. Content should always ask questions and prompt a relationship based on two-way engagement (ie. you listen and you respond), and speak directly to the exact problems your customer is facing. You can create a poll or a survey, interview a respectable person in your field, offer a free giveaway, or simply create a private group on a social platform to give your audience a private and exclusive platform open for discussions.
Focus: Start creating content with this formula: Hook > Story > Offer.
What is the unique problem you’re solving in your niche? Can you tell a success story from your hook? What’s the offer you’re ready to tie into your story?
Focus on Warm Traffic
In a customer journey, a person will first research and educate themselves on your product or service. This is called “cold traffic”. Next, they will begin to engage with your brand and content. Once a customer is actively engaging with you online, this is called “warm traffic.” Once a customer has purchased from you, they become what marketers call “hot traffic.” It is much easier to make money from warm and hot traffic, than cold. This means that the focus in your business should inevitably turn to nurturing warm and hot leads. A great way to do this is to start making offers that your warm and hot traffic leads can’t refuse. So many business owners focus on getting “likes” and “followers”, but they don’t end up making any money simply because…they’re not making offers or selling!
Ask: Do I have any warm and hot traffic that I can make an offer to today? Think: who are the people that open all your emails, who continually comment on your posts online, and repeatedly purchase from you are ready for an upsell?
Find A Mentor
One of the most important things a business owner can do to build a successful business is to find a mentor. Most times, people know the steps they have to take in order to be successful, but they do not know how to remove the emotional blockages that are preventing them from taking the steps. This is why mentorship is crucial. Firstly, it’s important to look for a mentor that is already successful at what you want to do. You wouldn’t contact a tax accountant that has terrible finances, so there’s no reason to entrust your most valuable business assets to someone who doesn’t already know the way towards success. The idea here is to find someone who is already on your journey, and model their success! So often, the stumbling blocks we face are there because they are our blind spots (meaning, we can’t see them). A mentor will help you expose these blindspots and keep you on track with your desired goals.
Ask yourself: what is the biggest problem I’m facing? Who has already faced and solved this same exact problem?
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