Rashaad Patrick PhD - 12-Point Checklist For Building an Online Business (Part 4)

Building an online business is never an easy task. Either if you are a business veteran or a beginner pursuing a dream, there are numerous challenges to overcome, trends to keep an eye on and a need for tremendous preparation. To make it at least a tiny bit easier, I decided to put together a 12-point checklist in a 4 part series, covering all the essential steps for starting an online business.

10. Analyze and implement

If your test phase seems to be 100% positive, the participants weren't honest probably. At least you should be receiving a few remarks on the colors of the buttons on your homepage, or that your background image is not "that" cool, or that your "About us" page is glitchy. These test phases get you valuable feedbacks and even if you are 100% sure that everything is perfect, it is usually not. Analyze the feedbacks you have received and implement any additional functions, or changes that are recommended by the bigger percentage. Obviously, you won't be able to offer a product that fits everyone's needs, but you should be paying attention to the needs of your future audience. Don't be upset if you run into a bunch of negative comments or weird suggestions, remember, that there is a possibility that one of them is a real game changer. Don't get sloppy and spend time on evaluating your new data.

11. It's launch time!

You've got everything in place, so it's time to hit the big red button and go viral. Spread the word on social media, send out your first newsletters and watch closely. This is it, you are running an online business! Enjoy it for a few moments and after that, get prepared for the new challenges. Focus on creating engaging content on social media to draw more attention to your website, start ad campaigns and advertise your service as much as possible. Your number one goal from now on is to build an engaged audience, followers, who will tell everyone about your business. Be an active part of the community that you are building and be approachable. Spend time on preparing and launching marketing campaigns to get traffic to your brand-new site. Invest in PPC advertising and look for other options of cooperation to get noticed.

12. It's always lab time!

It is impossible to achieve success, without paying attention to the details. With the constantly changing online environment, you have to remember, that it is simply always lab time. That means, that you will have to closely analyze all the data that you have about your new website. Who are your most frequent visitors? Did you correctly identify your target audience? Is your service receiving positive feedback? How are my competitors reacting? These are just a few of the questions which you should pay attention to. Be prepared to change your original plan or to re-scale your business. You will have to react to the changing needs, fresh feedbacks of your potential customers, which means a never ending cycle of the following 4 things:  

• Gathering insights - Analyzing Data - Modifying/Implementing - Testing. 

If you keep these 4 things on your daily schedule, you will surely be able to react to the needs of your audience. This enables your online business to become a successful one.

I hope that these 12 points will help you in building your own success story. These are only a few basic ideas that can get you closer to achieve your goals and building your own online business. Obviously, everyone's story is different, however, these 12 steps seem to be vital, when it comes to turning an idea into reality. Don't be afraid to step out there and give yourself a chance! I wish you the best and hope that your great idea, successfully transforms into a great online business! 

Till next time:)

Dr. P

Rashaad Patrick PhD - 12-Point Checklist For Building an Online Business (Part 2)

Building an online business is never an easy task. Either if you are a business veteran or a beginner pursuing a dream, there are numerous challenges to overcome, trends to keep an eye on and a need for tremendous preparation. To make it at least a tiny bit easier, I decided to put together a 12-point checklist in a 4 part series, covering all the essential steps for starting an online business.

4. Take a look around

Okay. You have an idea, which seems to be interesting and also figured out a business model, that would generate constant revenue for your online business. Now it's time to turn the focus on the other players. Dig up everything on any other online companies, or solo entrepreneurs who are offering the same service as you will be. The chances are high that you will bump into a bunch of future competitors, where the best scenario is ending up with a few big names who are doing something similar. Why? Because it proves that your idea is already working - only it's making others successful at the moment and not you.

Don't get nervous about discovering that your idea is already out there. In these cases, you can either get back to the first point and think of another one (not the easiest thing), or alter your present idea, so that it can offer something better, faster, cheaper, easier compared to your future competitors. Also, if it seems like that there are hundreds of others doing the same as you are planning to, don't simply just give up on your idea, but start thinking about how you could make it unique. Surely if there are hundreds like you, they were able to do the same, so why give up? The next point might come in handy in this case.

5. Analyze and learn

It's time to get back to the lab! Gather every detail that you can on your future competitors. Know them and know them well. If you are going to join the competition for online success, it is vital to know the business model of the others. How do they generate revenue? Who is the most successful? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What is their target audience? It might take considerable time but these insights are vital in the long run. Why? Because this can help you create value and transform your idea into an actual piece of art, that offers better capabilities compared to others. Furthermore, it helps you to make your future product or service: UNIQUE!

6. Uniqueness

If you have done your homework, you should be aware of the similar services out there. The information can help you to hone your future product or service and make it more unique. All the data that you have gathered in point five and two, will get you a bunch of vital insights on your target audience, the best business models out there, the various pricing possibilities, and on the unique functions, services or extras which are needed to differentiate your own service from your competitors. This is your way to uniqueness. 

Part III is on its way

Dr. P

An Increasing Internet Culture Social Media Optimization

Social media optimization is not a tool but it is today’s internet culture. With the social media sites on internet, people have got a good platform to become more social, more interactive and more communicative. Social media optimization doesn’t only allow discovering and reading the content and information but also encourages you to share the knowledge what you have. It is no more a one-way process but is a two way communication.

Social media optimization stresses the fact that your target audiences are real people and you need to be friendly and real to them as you are with your friends and acquaintances. A great way to understand your target audiences is to engage then in an honest conversation and to know them. In social media optimization, you have to provide your target people with grounds like video, audio, mobile accessibility, widget etc. There should regularity in updating the content and providing them a fresh content. You have to expand your network of influences (bloggers, digg etc) and expand your network of content too.

Key factors in social media marketing are to focus on social media sites and knowing your target spectators. Apart from creating a quality content, you have to track and measure the conversion to calculate ROI. Social Media optimization enables the advertiser to create a conversation with the target audience. Social Media can spread across multiple mediums very quickly, and increase your advertising reach. It also creates instant brand awareness. Social media optimization enables us to position your brand to your customers on their own terms and in their environment which results in a more authentic marketing message.

Social media optimization works on the fundamentals of getting people into a conversation and winning them. It is really important to arouse their interests and encourage them to talk about themselves or the things they like. Don’t be afraid introducing a new topic and reward helpful and valuable users.

There is the need to prepare some ground work before you actually start with your social media optimization campaign. Before getting your Social Media Optimization campaign into full swing, your SEO campaign should be put into place to have the highest-ranking site for the keywords that you will be promoting. Once you have ranked your site for all of your important keywords you will be ready to receive all of the new searches. You may call social media optimization a new approach to Word-of-Mouth medium. Social media optimization allows you to efficiently spread the word and generate a curiosity and interest for a relatively unknown or a new product or service.

With every profit you have to be prepared for losses too. There are certain risks involved herein too. There is no guarantee that your submission will be popular and hit the first page of the social media site.

Evaluating The Response To Your Internet Marketing

Starting an Internet marketing campaign is only the first step in the battle. Sure it is a good idea to start an Internet marketing campaign if members of your target audience are likely to use the Internet to research or purchase the products you sell or the services you offer but these marketing efforts may turn out to be a complete waste of time if you are not diligent about evaluating the response to your Internet marketing. This means each time you implement a change to your marketing strategy; you should evaluate the results of the change to determine whether or not it generated a greater profit for you. This is important because it can help you determine what is working and what is not working for you.

Evaluating the response of your Internet marketing can be done in a number of different ways. Customer surveys and embedded HTML code are two of the most popular methods of evaluating the effectiveness of an Internet marketing campaign. Customer surveys can be as simple or as complex as you like depending on the amount of feedback you would like to receive. However, one of the most effective ways to find out how well your different marketing tactics are working is to include a question asking the consumer where they first learned about your products or services. This is important because if you find a great deal of your customers are learning about your products or services through a particular venue, it is a good indication this method of advertising is working quite well for you.

Embedding code into your advertisements for the purpose of receiving feedback is also a popular method of evaluating the response to your Internet marketing strategies. Advertisements can be coded so the business owner receives feedback each time an Internet user clicks through a particular advertisement. This is useful for letting the business owner know which of his advertisements are attracting the most attention. If the business owner is using two different designs for his advertisements he may discover one design is attracting more attention than others and may make the decision to convert all of the advertisements to a more effective style. Similarly a business owner who is running the same advertisement on several different websites may discover he is receiving more traffic from one website than others. He may also discover some websites are not attracting much attention at all. This would give the business owner an indication of which advertisements to cancel and which ones to keep running.

Finally, the response to an Internet marketing campaign can be evaluated by carefully reviewing website traffic statistics after implementing changes to the marketing strategy. This information is useful because an unusual spike in the amount of website traffic immediately after implementing a stage of the marketing campaign can provide positive feedback that the change was well received by potential customers. While this method of evaluating the response to an Internet marketing campaign can be effective it is important to note implementing multiple changes at once will make it difficult to determine which changes were the most effective. Therefore if you plan to use website traffic as feedback for how well your marketing strategy is working it is important to only implement one major change at a time so they can each be evaluated separately.

Niche Marketing Vs Internet Marketing Niche

Comparing niche marketing and an Internet marketing niche is equivalent to comparing apples with oranges. Apples and oranges are both fruit. Niche marketing and an Internet Marketing niche are both forms of Internet marketing but as different as apples are from oranges.

The term ‘niche marketing’ means selling a specific product to a specific type of buyer. There are far less competitive niches than an Internet marketing niche. Most niche markets are more open to the latest marketing strategies, as well. Small niche markets are not over stocked with gurus and wise men and are much easier for the beginning marketer to break into. A niche market allows you to promote your own niche product or that of a niche affiliate product. There is a niche market for anything and everything you can imagine. All it takes to break into a niche market is a good idea, a good product created by you or someone else that will appeal to certain people, some advertising and the desire to succeed.

The Internet marketing niche, on the other hand, means that you will be promoting your own Internet marketing product. This is a very crowded field of endeavor and really difficult to break into. It’s a world filled with gurus and wise men who have been playing and winning the game for a long time. This doesn’t mean that it is impossible to cash in on the Internet marketing niche because, of course, you can. It is a world still built on demand and that means that if you have a product that can compete and if you have the willingness to play hard ball with the big boys then you can succeed at the Internet marketing niche game. Just be aware that there are easier niche market nuts to crack.

Tool Talk All About Internet Marketing Tools

Who doesn’t want inexpensive internet marketing tools? In this day and age when advertising your business online is the way to go, it’s a must that you avail of internet marketing tools at the lowest cost possible. How can you avail of them? How can you make the most out of these low cost internet marketing tools?

These low cost internet marketing tools aim to better your website and promote them thoroughly. Read on to know more about them:

1. Software

There is software specializing in internet marketing. These programs are affordable internet marketing tools. They attract traffic, communicate your site to anyone online, harness and trim down your keywords, track your site visitors and create links to other sites. Of course, the phrase “low cost” emphasizes that you must not spend exorbitantly. Watch out for internet marketing tools that do nothing but suck your budget.

2. Website packages

Take note of low cost internet marketing tools that do the following: hosting and designing your site, getting your domain, offering technical help, configure and upload your files, campaigning for your traffic. These are available in website packages that you can avail of anytime. Choose a package caters to your site’s needs.

3. Mailing lists

Notice that when you visit the Bulk Mail folder of your email, you read nothing but website promotions. That’s email marketing? It boosts your business like no other. Don’t worry about spamming. There’s such a thing as “safe lists” that make your mails spam-free. This is so easy to obtain. Look for mailing lists for sale and let the fun of emailing begin.

4. Data Submitters

This is a money-saving internet marketing tool that works like magic. Have a data submitter of your own and amass tremendously huge hits!

5. E-books

Integrate an e-book in your site for people to download. At such a cheap price, you keep people clamoring for more and visiting your site in the process. That’s one affordable internet marketing tool for you.

6. SEO tools

Internet marketing is not complete without the standard SEO tools. Search engines remain as the major powerhouse in marketing so never leave this part out. Generate traffic through this effective low cost internet marketing tool!

Here’s a reminder: when you see the low cost internet marketing tool banners online, never get persuaded easily. Study the package deals; analyze the contents and benefits before deciding if you want one.

5 Tips For Developing A Website For Your Audience

Developing a website is important if you want to be a player in e-commerce. However, you don’t want to just develop a website any old way. Instead, you want to develop a website for your audience. When doing research online you have probably seen generalized information on how to develop a website, however it is unlikely you have found significant information on how to develop a website specifically for your audience. The following tips will be really helpful to you to develop a website just for your audience.

Tip #1 Goal

First you need a goal when you are developing a website for your audience. If you do not know what you are looking to achieve then it will be very difficult to be successful. Also, it takes a goal to drive your website where it needs to be. A goal is what allows you to develop an initial plan for your website and helps guide you in developing your website as well.

Tip #2 Audience

Your audience is very important and should be considered in conjunction with your goal when developing a website. Basically, you are developing your website for a certain audience and these are the people that will help meet your goal so this is very important to consider. Just make sure you determine who your audience is before you begin developing your website.

Tip #3 Content for Audience

Once you have determined your goal and your audience it is time to determine the content that will be used for your audience. You might not realize it, but the type of audience you are focusing on will really affect the content you use on your website. So, make sure you have your audience targeted so you know what content will work best for these individuals.

Tip #4 Update

Another important tip for developing a website for your audience is to plan when you will provide updates. This might seem like something you could consider down the road when your site needs updating, but is really not the case. You need to know when your audience will most likely be viewing your site and when they won’t so you know when to provide updates. A little bit of planning will go a long way.

Tip #5 Format

The format of your website is also a very important aspect and one that will really affect whether or not you reach your audience. Once you know who your audience is you will have no problem developing a format that will reach them. Also, your format improves your site’s message, so it is beneficial in a variety of ways.