The Blueprint for a Successful Online Business

Your Strategy: A well laid out plan, or blueprint, is an important part of achieving a highly lucrative business.  You will use this blueprint to bring yourself to the attention of qualified prospective customers. It will also guide how you convert them into paying customers, how to keep them as life-long customers and finally how you encourage these customers to send you referrals.

Social media platforms, email marketing, blogging and your website are all wonderful tools available to you, if you have to use them properly. Shooting up a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter page, sitting back and waiting for instant sucess, won’t bring you the results you want for your business. Your marketing all needs to follow your blueprint and fulfill on your overall strategy.

What if you don’t have a tried and tested blueprint? I recommend hiring a marketing consultant to help you create a marketing strategy that’s based around your business goals. Then design a blueprint for your business that fulfills on that strategy.

I’ve seen through my work with dozens of clients using their new blueprint to make simple changes to their existing marketing results in them having doubled and even tripled their customer base.  Making these simple changes will set you up as an expert in your industry, drive large groups of prospective customers to you, then convert them into paying customers, and maintain them as long-term customers.

If you want to ensure that you meet your business goals within a year, create a strategy and then design a blueprint that fulfills on that strategy.  As the old adage goes “Make a plan and work your plan.”

Your Web Presence: Your new blueprint can guide simple, small adjustments to your marketing funnel, your website and even your social media, such as your LinkedIn profile, Twitter, and Facebook pages.

It is imperative to have an EFFECTIVE and PROFITABLE website along with your social media platforms. Make certain your website is search-engine and mobile-device friendly. Over 50 percent of searches are done on mobile phones, it’s important that you aren’t missing out on these would-be clients. Your website should set you up as an expert in your field. It should be able to translate viewers into qualified leads. Your site should also increase your sales conversion rate, that is it should convert your leads into customers.

Including a built-in blog on your website will make it more appealing to search engines. Being more attractive to search engines will cause you to rank higher on the page making it easier for potential clients to find you.  A built-in blog also provides a platform for you to develop a trusting rapport with your prospective buyers and your current customers.

Your Offerings:  Be clear on what it is that your customer wants most when putting together an offer for your customers.  Clients will gladly pay you to solve a problem for them or fulfill on a need they have.  You need to know what type of offering will do that for them.  A great way to obtain this information are surveys.

Your Traffic: Use well thought out strategies to drive qualified potential customers to your business.

Increase your targeted FREE traffic to your website and social media platforms by writing and syndicating high quality relevant content.  You can add this content to your blog, and in addition you can syndicate it through article directories, bookmarking sites, and social media sites. Then it will be posted on related blogs and websites.  If you do not have the time or wish to do this on your own, you can hire an online marketing firm to do it for you (and it costs less than you probably think).

Your Marketing Funnel:  Your marketing funnel and web presence should attract prospective customers, educates them on your services and/or products and converts them into paying customers if it is effective.

First you need to have a gripping “free offer” for your prospective customers that will be used as a “relationship builder”.  We are living in a "give to get" economy, your potential customers should get a taste of your offerings. This gives your prospective clients a chance to get to know, like and trust you.  It also gives them a chance to understand how your offerings will benefit them. Finally, and importantly, convert them into paying customers.

Less than 2%, on average, of your prospective customers will buy from you on the first time they visit your website.  For this reason it is necessary that you create a way for them to get to know, like and trust you so that when they are ready to purchase, you are the obvious choice.

Another function of your marketing funnel should be to keep these clients as long-term customers, and give them enticements to refer new prospective customers into your marketing funnel.

Your Relationship with Your Customers & Prospective Customers:

Potential customers are more comfortable buying from people that they "know, like and trust".  Use social media, email, and blogs to build a "know, like and trust" relationship with your prospective customers.  These tools make it easier than ever to do. It is easy, it’s inexpensive, produces quick results, and much of the work can be automated.