I Am Very New to Internet Marketing, Where Should I Start?
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As a member of several internet marketing forums this is a question I see several times a week.
Some of us are product creators, coaches, affiliate Marketers, writers, and so on. Since we are a diverse group, I am sure we will having varying opinions on this topic.
What advice would you give a newbie in regards to starting out online (business model)?
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I believe you must start by first defining your business. This has several components and without this you don’t have a focus and tend to go round and round in circles
- Define Your Business
- Recognize Your Brand / Vision & Share It
- Know Yourself, Your Strengths & Weaknesses And Making Them Work For You
- Find a Connection with your Audience and solve their problems
I think there are several things you need to do before you start so here is my summary.
Define Your Business
Defining Your Business means creating a Business Plan
The plan (it should be no more than 1-2 Pages in length) defines your business, so when you take action you can check back and say “Does this task work within my business or take me away from my core business plan, values and beliefs? If the answer is YES then go go go… If NO, then how can you adjust it or just remove it to continue on your plan.
Ask yourself:- Do you sell products or services?<br />List them and give details, including that problems are they going to solve. If you don’t solve a problem that why do your customers come to you. For example as a fitness coach you may what to help people get fit, but that not a problem. Less look at this group – 40 year old women are finding it hard to loss weight because they children are growing up and they are not as active, but the are still busy. So their Pain Points are being less active but still time poor. To solve their problem you could create a product that gives a great workout in a short time.
- Why do you want to do this?
What will motivate you to do the hard work to achieve the success you want, what is your end goal - Are you going to work on this Full-time or Part-time?
- How are you going to monetize it?
Examples: Coaching Clients, Retreats, Courses, Books, Seminars, Webinars to name a few ways. - How can you scale your business to reach more people if you don’t invest in it?
Maybe start with a free book to build a list, then a small course or service and then a bigger one etc. If you are working one on one is there a way to reach more people?
Recognize Your Brand / Vision & Share It
You might not need or want brand recognition to the extent of the big labels such as CocoCola, but you do need a basic look and continuity where possible.
You also need to share you look and vision with as many people, platforms or places as possible, because if you build they won’t come you have to find and engage with them.
When you think of a Brand, you may think of the big ones such as Coco Cola, Nike or McDonalds, but a brand can be created for a small business. Here are some of the things you need to create a brand.
Who is the audience you are talking to and what do you want to convey.
If your audience is 20-30-year-old Males, then your look would be different to 50-60-year-old females. Understand what you want them to think of your business – for example, it is fun, serious or thought-provoking?
What colours are you using and why?
Do your colours work online, do they work in print, and are they attractive you your audience?
Do You have a logo?
Getting a logo created that will be relatable to your audience and with your colour scheme. It is important as it is an instant way for your business to be recognised. It also adds credibility to your brand.
Are you Portraying Your Business or Yourself consistently?
Is the message you are giving out the same all the time. Think of some of the bigger brands or business celebrities they have a ‘look’ that works for them, for example, Tony Robbins is known as a great no-nonsense sort of guy, totally passionate and motivational. Oprah is known to be compassionate, caring and determined.
You would never see them out partying and rolling around drunk. Why, because they understand that it would damage their brand.Knowing Yourself, Your Strengths & Weaknesses And Making Them Work For You
This can be very confronting because sometimes you think you have it all together. In fact, the opposite may be the case, and after you acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses, you can find solutions to make them work for you. Make sure you do this as it is important, instead of just pretending they are not there or they may be an issue now or in the future.
For example: One of my traits is being Enthusiastic (I am in 100% in whatever I am doing) this a great strength and I can get very deep into what I am doing and will take the extra time to work things out. Looking at being Enthusiastic as a weakness could mean I tend to neglect other parts of my business or burnout over that one task instead of finding balance. By being aware of this trait, I make sure I schedule my time.
Another example is your strength could be that you are very knowledgeable on a particular subject so as a strength your client is going to get value for money. But, as a weakness, you must be aware of not giving them more information than they are ready for.
Otherwise, they may be overwhelmed and probably not come back to you. This could mean the value you have given them is lost, and for you, a client is lost. Now, decide what you can do to make the most of your strengths and counteract your weakness.Find a Connection with your Audience and solve their problems
Finding your audience, the people who connect with your brand or vision is what helps you to take your action to reach your goal.
As the saying goes nobody is an Island and what that means is you can’t do this alone, you need to connect either to your customers, people that will help your vision grow and to people that are like-minded so you can work together to achieve more.
Finding out where your target audience can be found. Then the next step is simply to engage by answering questions, comments and generally becoming part of the community.
Becoming part of communities respectfully and engaging without an agenda allows you to be more genuine and valued in the eyes of your audience. Isn’t this the Goal!
Ok that’s my thoughts and I hope this helps 🙂All things Digital
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Tina has given a pretty detailed reply. It is always good to have a business plan over winging it. Otherwise you are heading out on a journey without a map or clear destination. I would take several days to consider, add notes and answers to her outline.
A common problem I find in helping people with any business is they don’t follow through and that includes me.
People will usually succeed in time with what Chet Holmes called pig headed determination, trial and error, they will eventually fail their way to success if they continue, even with a poor beginning plan. Sean kept trying things until he found something that worked and then tried more of it and other things, kept at it adjusting based on his results, rinse and repeat.I want people to find this pig headed determination and sense of mission before we talk about anything else. In any business or even life you are going to find days when on a one to ten scale, today is a ten on the good reasons to quit scale. I want people to find their eleven on the one to ten scale of reasons they must achieve their goal. That way, when they reach a bad day that is a big bad ten, the eleven behind them pressing them on will overcome a ten on the bad day scale.
When we define a ten level reason to quit as the maximum and an eleven level reason to never quit, then we have already settled all of that when things get tough. The eleven flips the switch to on and welds it there. No turning back. We burned the boats. No wasting energy wondering if we should quit when we run up on this problem, we use the energy to solve the problem.
In working with people I now do a pre-business plan. A bit of education and a bit of soul searching. When you get this right you have a foundation you can build on and then make a good business plan. You will have your eleven.
For education, I want people to understand they must exchange things for money. Somehow people often miss this, I think they were sold the idea in some marketing piece or want to believe in something for nothing. They think there is an Aladdin’s lamp and they want their free wishes. They come to me with the most amazing things they think people will pay for.
What they exchange must have value to the customer.
To have value means it makes a positive change in their client’s life.
The anticipated positive change must be worth more in the client or customer’s mind than the money.
It has to be something you can communicate. You have to transfer your emotion about the product or service to the client. If you don’t have a positive emotion to transfer you will find it very hard to make the sale.
If I just ate breakfast I won’t be paying you twelve dollars for a hamburger, it won’t change my positive experience of life much, I am full, it might even make me sick if I overeat. If I am starving hungry, I might pay you twenty or thirty dollars, even more for a hamburger, it will end my hunger and change my experience of life for the better.
Having something to offer a hungry person is one side of the coin, the other side is knowing your life purpose, the thing you were put here to do. I worked in Fortune 500 companies for 22 years and I was as logical and down to earth as anyone that had a desk and office. In spite of seeing things that didn’t exactly add up, I believed in standard business models and the usual advice, work hard and you will get ahead, discipline is the answer, the more education you have the better prepared you are for life and success, those sort of things.
When I started my own business I soon learned there was a spiritual side to success. 2 plus 2 didn’t always add up to 4. Sometimes the result was a negative 2 and at others when you really needed a break it was a positive 16.
Lasting success is based on faith. You have to believe in you and what you do. You must believe you can help your client. If not they pick up on that no matter how pretty your presentation folder is or how shiny your shoes. It doesn’t hurt to believe in a higher power that is a resource to you outside of yourself. When you run up on a problem that is greater than your internal resources, if you don’t believe in external resources, what would make you continue to try? Every great achievement is almost always made two feet beyond what is physically possible. Once you give your all and still will yourself forward, that is when the miracle occurs.
In our food service business my wife and I quit several times before we succeeded. Thank God we never quit at the same time! Then when we ran up on a ridiculous tax bill (they had raised our taxes 600%) and it was life or death for the business and we were about to lose everything, I spent the house payment on a warehouse of merchandise from a chain of stores closing. I thought I was buying candy, cookies and chips for our vending machines. I had examined three or four boxes and was satisfied with what I saw.
My wife came home to see literally every room and nook and cranny, upstairs and downstairs filled with merchandise except the bathrooms and said, how did you pay for this? I said, with the house payment of course. She asked “and how do we make the house payment now?” I said, I am not sure, but they mixed up our order and they don’t want it back. I plan on going to the flea market this weekend and it looks like I have enough baby formula alone to sell and make the house payment.
I paid the house payment and the taxes on sales of baby formula, car wax, shoe polish, diapers, jars of pickles, barbecue sauce, tire shine and shaving cream. It wasn’t in the business plan, it wasn’t on the bill of sales for the warehouse, it wasn’t in our wildest dreams. Two feet past the possible the miracle happened.
What are you interested in? A solid interest or more truthfully an obsession for some topic or field is worth a fortune.
You skills and talents will lie where your interests lie.
How do you want to change the world?
What would you do all day, even if you weren’t paid to do it and you would feel your day was well spent?
What can you have faith in?When you know your purpose, know your mission, pick the object that you know ties in with those things, then you can have faith in your success and confidence in your ability and outcome. With a burning desire, an eleven reason to succeed on the one to ten scale, the correct thing to offer others to change their lives that resonates with you and the faith and confidence that comes from knowing your purpose and being on a mission, you won’t fail to follow through.
Or you just might say, “I think there might be money in selling widgets.”
I have never seen that approach work longterm.
It is late, I just got in, I hope I made sense and in someway this helps you.
Scott Hogue CChH
Follow me in the "Use What You Learn Challenge" as I create a website using what I learn from Sean that is a Platform for my niche:
http://www.threestepstowealth.comThe thread on this group that explains it:
http://preneurpal.com/forums/topic/own-the-game-and-win-it/#post-17472 users thanked author for this post.
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I can’t give as detailed a response as the previous two. I’ll answer this in the simplest way I can — build a list.
I know you’ve probably heard that ad nauseum since you’ve been online. I don’t mean it to sound overly simplistic. If you get a list of subscribers, it’s the most important asset you can have.
Market to them over and over and you’re golden.
Find a lead magnet you can offer, or create your own. Send traffic to it (solo ads, Facebook ads, Bing ads, etc.), and get as many subscribers as you can.
If you’re just starting out, that should be the focus of your business. If you can devote an hour or two a day to just building a list, you’ll be amazed at the results a month down the road.
Good luck, and I hope that helps.
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Find a “bleeding neck” in your area of interest.
A bleeding neck is a problem that people are desperate to solve.
That advice is contrary to what many people will tell you.
By that, I mean that it’s easy to get caught up in trying to solve a problem where there are already a lot of solutions.
What you need to do is ask yourself what problems are not being solved.
How do you do that?
Look at a number of solutions in your area of interest.
Then ask yourself what problem they solve.
You’ll have to dig a bit.
If they all solved the same problem, then no one would make any money; so you have to tease out the differences.
When you have that information in front of you, then ask yourself what’s missing.
That’s your niche.
Now follow Sean’s 10 x 10. Fill your blog with articles.
Repurpose them on place like YouTube, SlideShare, and Mention.
There are a lot of place where you can repurpose your content.
Create a squeeze page and put it on your website.
Get an autoresponder, too.
Actually, it might be easier to follow Sean’s Fast Start training.
So, find your niche, and do what Sean tells you to do.
Bruce Hoag PhD
The Internet Marketing Psychologist
The Mindful Writer - for deep and persuasive copy -
This is a great thread . . perhaps one of the strongest here, and interestingly enough, contains 3 of the most prolific folks here . . .
I believe a newbie must study the market to see what kind of business they want to start, and recognize that fly-by-night business models don’t work and never will.
Once they’ve recognized that, Tina’s wisdom goes:
I believe you must start by first defining your business. This has several components and without this you don’t have a focus and tend to go round and round in circles
- Define Your Business
- Recognize Your Brand / Vision & Share It
- Know Yourself, Your Strengths & Weaknesses And Making Them Work For You
- Find a Connection with your Audience and solve their problems
I think there are several things you need to do before you start so here is my summary.
🙂
Then they can follow the basic steps:
1. Create squeeze page
2. Start writing a daily email and daily blog post
3. Start asking subscribers what their biggest challenges are, and creating training or finding training for them.Sean
Do you want to learn how to start a coaching program that stabilizes your income and changes lives? If so, visit http://www.AnyoneCanCoach.com
Sean
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