Making a success out of an online business is among the most challenging of tasks.
Take an environment where online businesses are ubiquitous, the entry barriers are low, and everybody is looking to sell online – what you get is a business ecosystem where online success can be very hard to attain.
There are some programs like the Sam Ovens Consulting Accelerator which can teach you how to start a successful consulting business. On that note, here are some growth hacks that could help.
1- Understand Your Traffic Sources and Competitors
They say success comes at a price, and in the case of online success, this “price” is definitely your hard work and research.
But what kind of research are we talking about? Well, for starters, figuring out who your competition is.
Use this information to assess your capabilities and figure out whether you are on par, or even better, when it comes to meeting the needs of your users.
Your next order of business should be to determine the prominent sources of traffic. Why? Because it’s not an easy task to convert leads to sales in any business, even when the leads are plentiful in number.
So, when you have a grasp of where your traffic is originating from as well as its contents, you can easily convert the leads. Not just that, you can track the sources of leads to identify new channels from which to gain visitors for your website.
Make sure you understand the interests of the prospects and formulate growth strategies based on the analysis of your competition. Tools such as SimilarWeb can assist in this task.
2- Don’t Blow Your Entire Budget on Content
Content is one area where you constantly need to hunt for fresh ideas and perspectives and deliver them in the form of articles and reports on your website and elsewhere.
Whatever be your type of online business, you constantly need to disseminate information through video demonstrations and how-to guides, press releases, podcasts from senior management and infographics demonstrating your standing in the market.
Without having such strong presence in terms of content, you can never hope to establish any kind of market presence. But this doesn’t mean allocating all your funds towards the development of good content.
Yes, nobody denies its importance, but at the same time, you must learn to be cost-efficient.
Try to use tools like Fiverr for the job. This nifty program allows you to get a variety of content done without any compromise in quality. The best part is, you do not have to spend too much. With basic costs starting as low as USD 5, it’s a steal.
3- Manage Your Social Presence
Your online presence is a vital asset that requires constant protection and nurturing.
When you have a well-maintained social presence, it provides numerous benefits, including customer engagement, retention, and general visibility for your business initiative.
Taking care of your social presence requires you to post updates frequently, look after your branding, and set up a complete profile that will provide visitors with the necessary information.
All these tasks can be hard to keep track of, but thanks to tools like Drum Up, this job becomes a whole lot more manageable. Remember, it is entirely up to you how far you wish to take your social media, but controlling it and increasing its effectiveness becomes a whole lot easier when you have good tools at your disposal.
4- Pay Attention to What Goes On in Social Media
The first reactions to using a product or service land on social media sooner than we realize.
A budding online business in particular is highly sensitive to feedback posted on social media. This is where social media listening comes into play. It involves making sense of the data compiled from social media, like comments and mentions, and taking action.
Social media listening improves awareness about the business, generates leads, helps companies to know where to find prospects, and get feedback and reviews. If this sounds like a lot, that’s because it is.
Rather than handle all these tasks yourself, you can easily leverage a tool like Brand 24 to perform social media listening and keep track of both negative and positive experiences.
5- Nurture Your Leads
Lead nurturing programs allow business to send targeted content to leads based on their actual interests and activities. This allows them to see what they wish to see.
What’s more lead nurturing is useful for reviving inactive leads and sending personalized emails. However, an entrepreneur will find that nurturing leads is a lot difficult in reality than it sounds. It requires thoughtful communication rather than a simply copy-paste job of generic sales emails.
Hence, instead of handling such a burden by themselves, a business can use tools like GetResponse’s a marketing automation solution that makes lead nurturing really easy.
Once leads are captured, the solution gives you a number of templates that can be used to create email campaigns and newsletters, as well as the ability to monitor open and click through rates which can be critical in identifying your best performing emails.
There are a number of growth strategies that can help online businesses face the challenge of growing user base, revenue and profitability even amidst the volatility that is typical of the start-up environment. But implementing these strategies requires a lot of planning, effort, and hard work.
What entrepreneurs can do instead is install tools that utilize those same strategies to bring prosperity to their business initiatives. I have covered 5 of them above; keep learning, and keep growing.
