When it comes to starting and growing a business online, you have plenty of options. This is true for anyone just starting out, and even for brands and businesses that have been around for years now.
To run a successful business online, there is a whole set of rules and tips that should be followed.
These can range from the basics of how to start an online business and build out a legitimate business plan, to what steps you should take after your first website or mailing list is set up.
To help with this process, we’ve laid out some of the most important things to remember when running a business online, while also applying them to email marketing in the process.
Let’s get started!
Knowing Your Business Goals
No matter what type of business you have, you need to make sure that you know what your current goals are. Do you want to get more followers so that people will become updated with what you want to offer? Would you like to sell more products soon? Your goals can help you choose what your next steps are going to be.
When applied to email marketing and lead generation, this can be as simple as setting a daily limit on leads or your advertising budget. For example, if you were running a lead generation campaign with AfterOffers, you could set a minimum level of 100 leads per day and a max of 200.
This way, you will have a clear understanding of your budget and expect grow results and expectations month after month.
You cannot base your business goals on business goals of other businesses. Businesses will always have certain differences. Some of them may require other strategies as compared to what your business currently needs.
Be the Authority of What Your Business Can Give
If people were to ask what your business can offer, will you be able to say what your business can provide? You want people to check out your business because you can offer something that other businesses will not be able to provide. When people see and realize that you are good at describing what you can give, they will become more at ease about checking your blog and what you can offer.
When you have a mailing list or a newsletter, people are on it because they want to be.
They either signed up for it directly, or maybe in-directly through another process, but in either case they did make an attempt to find information on something and acted upon what you have to offer.
When growing a mailing list, your brand or name is the authority behind each mailing. Make sure your message and branding matches that of what you want your business to be seen as.
Have an Optimized Website that Works On All Devices
Can you imagine if you would have an outdated website? This may be something that you have not considered for a long time. The time will come when people will become unhappy about checking your website. They will become unhappy about looking at the products and the services that you are meant to provide.
Look at your website the same way that you would look at your most prized possession like your house or your car. There will be instances when you need to renovate your house or your vehicle to ensure that they will be in their best condition. Make some changes to your site and optimize it. A faster and more responsive website will also make a huge difference in the number of hits that you will get.
How does a website matter when you are talking about email marketing? Simple — people are going to be visiting your site and landing pages from their desktop, tablet, and mobile devices all the time.
Without the necessary site design and specs in place, you might be wasting the time of your end user, and also a lot of time, money and effort for your business.
Before you start sending out any mailings, make sure all of your sites and landing pages are fully optimized and compliant across all platforms.
Try to Make People Visit Your Website More User Friendly
The moment that you have fixed your website, you have a higher chance of getting people to visit your website. How are you going to do that properly? There are various platforms that you can use to make people notice you. You can check out various social media accounts and do not forget to share the link of your website from time to time. If people are interested, they will check out your website for sure.
Through the use of remarketing, pulling users back to your site (whom are already on your mailing list) is really quite effective.
This can be done through Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, and many other third party tracking solutions. When integrated with online webinars and sales funnels, this process can work extremely well.
Know Your Target Audience and How to Reach Them
You will hear about this again and again but you really need to know how to do this. You need to know who your target audience is and make sure that you will reach them successfully. It is a good idea to research your target market extensively. The more that you know, the better that you can come up with strategies that will surely make them interested.
Some of the things that you have to know about them are the following:
- Their buying habits
- The type of things that they “like” on social media
- Their other interests
The moment that you know these things, you will be able to come up with details that will help you promote your business more.
Depending on where and how you set up your next email lead generation campaign, be sure to try and have these targeting options and permissions in place before hand. If you were to run a webinar or freebie lead generation offer, you can use social platforms Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads to do exactly that.
Write Great Content — On Your Site and in Your Emails!
Do you know why there are some websites that come with blogs on the side? This is because they want to make people have the ability to view their website more. If you are going to write long content, make sure that you will place a lot of relevant keywords. The content should be great enough that people will be compelled to read.
It will also help if you would know what your target market would like to know. For example, they may have some questions about the products that you are offering. If you would be able to answer their questions through a blog post, this will not go by unappreciated.
There are rules for writing blog content, and there are also rules for writing emails.
- Create killer titles and headlines that get opens
- Don’t write super long email ad copy and content
- Never jeopardize your list for a quick buck
- Always use your name in your mailings
All of these methods will also help you to come up with fresh content from time to time.
You can write about something that other businesses have not written about yet. Remember that having stagnant content and subscribers just sitting in your list host account will not help the stats and growth of your business at all.
Now that you’ve had the chance to read through some of the top email marketing and business tips in the industry, be sure to contact us today and get started with a 100% opt-in email lead generation campaign of your own.