A business plan represents the crucial foundation of your company. Regardless of how big or small this company is going to be, you need to put together some sort of plan for your future.
In the end, you want to create a roadmap that will accomplish two things:
It’s going to be specific enough to help you define what needs to be done over the next year, two years, or even 3-5 years.
It’s going to be open-ended enough to help you make adjustments no one could have accounted for earlier on.
Establishing a plan which incorporates both of these things is not impossible, or even that difficult. Nonetheless, it is still something that needs to happen, before you can move on to other aspects of establishing and launching your business.
Creating A Viable Business Plan Outline
Understand at this point, you’re simply crafting an outline. It needs to have some measure of detail, but it doesn’t have to account for every single little thing. You want to have something that will make it easy to define the next few steps.
A good business plan outline is going to offer the following:
Executive summary: This element is going to summarize the plan as a whole.
Company Description: With this, you’re going to not only focus on what your company is going to do but how your company is different from similar entities.
Market analysis: Research your industry. This should include your marketing and your competitors.
Organization/management: This is going to come down to discovering the optimal organization and management structures for your company.
Service/product line: This is going to describe your product or products. What are the benefits? How about the lifecycle?
Marketing/sales: Sales strategies and marketing plans are going to be discussed at this point.
Funding: How much are you going to need? How is the money going to be spent? Transparency is key in this arena.
Financial projections: If you do need funding, projections are going to be important.
Appendix: Resumes, permits, and leases are just a few things one would include in an appendix if this needs to be part of your business plan.
Different businesses are going to utilize the above facets differently. Some businesses will be able to disregard some of those facets entirely. This is something you will discover for yourself, over the course of putting together a plan for your business.
A hobby can be turned into a business but a business can never become a hobby. There are some rich and famous people who have the luxury to conduct business while indulging in leisure. For the lesser mortals, business and leisure don’t go hand in hand. Any business requires serious investments, be it material such as money and infrastructure or immaterial as time and effort. Here are some of the many reasons why you should treat your business like a business and not a hobby.
• A hobby is more of a pastime in which you have substantial passion. A business can never be a pastime. There are serious consequences. You may lose money. If you have employees, then those jobs are at stake and hence their livelihoods. If you have products or services that people depend on then you are risking that and your consumers or customers will be left high and dry if you fail to deliver. A hobby is absolutely personal. No business is completely personal. A business will have direct and indirect impacts on the lives of many people. A startup can still be treated as a hobby until there is serious money in it and the potential or actual impacts on others. Beyond that point, a business must be treated like a business.
• A hobby has a lot to do with emotion over pragmatism. Most hobbies develop out of sheer love for something. There is little or no aspiration to monetize the skill or whatever you are creating. The purpose is to give form to your feelings or the skills you possess. Essentially, a hobby is about emotions. A business can stem from a particular or cluster of emotions but it can never be managed or run emotionally. You must always have a pragmatic take on your business and that will not happen if you treat it as a hobby or an emotional endeavor.
• A hobby often has to dabble through spells of procrastination. You cannot allow procrastination to seep in when you are running an actual business. There are deadlines in the real world, bottom lines and real money at stake. You cannot take your own sweet time to develop or deliver something. Treating your business like a hobby will be the recipe for disaster and sooner than later your enterprise will cease to exist or be unsustainable. Also, a hobby is principally about personal satisfaction. A business is not.
10 Ways you can drive traffic to your website for FREE
If you can go and ask any business owner what is it they want, you will get a common answer. They will tell you they want more customers. In today’s internet-dominated world, you will find more customers online. But the only way to achieve this is to have enough traffic to your website. I am not talking about the traffic in the busy road. I am talking about your website visitors. In this post, we are going to look at how to get traffic to your website for free. Including ways to boost traffic for free.
For you to be able to drive traffic into your website, there’s one thing that you need to invest. You need to invest time. Doing everything I am going to suggest you do won’t get you traffic instantly. You will need to be persistent about all of them, after a certain period of time you will start to see traffic on your website. If you feel like you can’t invest time and you want to see traffic instantly, I would suggest you consider paid traffic and invest more in your marketing. This steps won ‘t guarantee you traffic overnight, Although I cannot really specify how long it’s going to take, for you to start seeing traffic on your website. Sometimes it can take days, weeks, months even year before you start seeing traffic on your website.
Let’s look at several ways you can get Free traffic on your website.
Give attention to On-page SEO
I know you might have heard that SEO is dead, Think again. Optimizing your content for search engines is still valuable and helps your website rank higher. Are you making the most of image alt text? Also investing in videos helps. Are you creating internal links to new content? What about meta descriptions? Optimizing for on-page SEO doesn’t have to take ages, and it could help boost your organic traffic.
Target Long-Tail Keywords
Do you have your High intend and Popular Keywords basis covered? I strongly recommend that you target Long-Tail keywords too. They account for the majority of web searches. You are going to miss out if you are not targeting them as part of your SEO efforts.
Be Social
Its useless creating content and hope people will read it, you will have to be proactive in social media platforms. One of the best ways to promote your content is through social media. But you have to ensure that you are promoting your content to the relevant audience. I would strongly suggest for B2C businesses you promote your content through Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. For B2B businesses you may use Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.
Start Guest Blogging
Securing a guest post on a reputable guest post will help increase your website traffic and can help you with building your brand. Proceed with caution, standards of blogging has changed for over a year now and spammy tactics can lead to some penalties.
Invite other people in your niche to Guest Blog on your website
Guest blogging is a two-way street. In addition to posting content to other blogs, invite people in your niche to blog on your own site. They’re likely to share and link to their guest article, which could bring new readers to your site. Just be sure that you only post high-quality, original content without spammy links, because Google is cracking way down on low-quality guest blogging. Don’t worry about driving traffic to them when they guest blog on your website, its a win-win situation. They drive traffic to your website and get some from yours.
Ensure your Website is mobile friendly
Today, more than ever before people are accessing the website on their mobile phones. If your website is not mobile friendly, you are simply telling mobile users to leave your website and go elsewhere. Ensure your website can be accessed and view-able in different mobile devices.
Make sure your website is fast
The faster your website loads the better. If your website takes a long time to load. Your bounce rate will be too high, this will result in losing too much traffic. Make sure that your pages are as technically optimized as possible, including image file sizes, Videos, Pages structure and the functions of third-party plugins. I know sometimes having a live chat plugin makes it more convenient to chat with visitors. But from my experience, some Live chat plugins make your website to be slow. Make sure that your plugins, not only live chat plugins don’t slow down your website.
Make your Voice heard in comments
You probably have joined social media groups, follow certain hashtags and visits few websites relating to your business, if not I suggest that you do. Commenting doesn’t provide an immediate boost to your referral traffic immediately. But providing insightful, thought-provoking comments will help you make a name for yourself. This can result in driving more traffic to your website.
Be Active on Social Media
Its not enough to just share content on social media, you need to participate actively in the community too. Are you on twitter? Then join in group discussions with relevant hashtags. Are you audience leaving comments on your social media posts? Answer questions they may have and engage in conversation with them. People are turned down quicker by people who use social media as a broadcast channel.
Don’t leave Email Marketing behind
Email Marketing can be a powerful tool, and a successful email blast can help drive lots of traffic to your website. Don’t overlook word of mouth, especially for people who are already enjoying the value your product/service brings to them. Sending a friendly reminder of a new product/service can help increase your website traffic.
Thats it for today. If you have your own tips on how you can increase website traffic, I would love to hear them. Please comment below I would love to hear your thoughts.
Every online store’s main goal is to increase traffic and conversations. But even after you have placed together a basic marketing strategy it can be challenging to select which tactics you should try first.
This is the main reason I have put together effective tactics along with some ideas to help you implement each approach. The ideas run from straightforward acquisition to help you generate more repeat purchases from your existing customers.
Try implementing 1 or 2 ideas every day for the next few weeks. On your last day take a look at your stock and figure out which ones best worked to drive new sales.
Before we get into it, with your own understating what do you think ecommerce marketing is? Well with me, I think ecommerce marketing is using promotional tactics to drive traffic to your online store. Converting that traffic into buyers.
You can use ecommerce marketing to launch or promote your online store as a whole or to drive more sales for specific products. Below are a few practical ideas you should try.
Marketing ideas to increase online sales
1. Upsell your products
Most of us have visited Mcdonald to buy a hamburger but end up buying a burger, chips & soda and you would hear a cashier saying, would you like to upsize your order? Its an example of what upselling is. You went to buy 1 item but end up buying more.
For many businesses, upselling can be effective than looking for new customers. Sometimes your customers may not know that you have a premium product available or they need to understand how an upgrade is a better fit for their needs.
For example: Usually, when a client contacts me for logo design, I would offer business cards and letterheads, sometimes a complete brand manual. Sometimes a customer comes for a website, I would offer a website with standard SEO package.
When using Upselling to increase sales consider the following:
Be sensitive to the price range of your customers
Ensure your upsells are related to the original product.
Your product has to fit the customer’s original needs, and they may not be enthusiastic about a higher price point once they have an anchor price in mind. An anchor price is often the first number a customer sees, and it’s the number against which they compare other price points. The new product must be a discernibly better fit than the original for it to be worth the additional cost.
2. Launch a Facebook store
Although Facebook has undergone a number of changes, it remains a viable platform for social media and ecommerce marketing.
It’s fairly straightforward to start making sales through your Facebook store. Better yet, your Facebook store can integrate directly with your Shopify store so you don’t have to keep a separate inventory.
3. Capture more email subscribers
Dollar for dollar, email marketing is one of the most effective channels at your disposal for making sales and generating repeat customers. Roughly 17% of digital marketing spend happens in email, but it contributes 24% of revenue, according to a 2015 study by Forrester Research.
There are too many tweets and Facebook posts for us to keep up with, and email can offer a more intimate interaction. People are still more protective of messages sent to their personal inboxes versus their social feeds. Plus, email gives you the space to say things that can’t fit into a social media post.
4. Improve your email campaigns
It’s not enough to simply capture a bunch of email addresses. You then need to send regular, valuable emails for the channel to be an effective ecommerce marketing activity.
There are many occasions that are perfect for sending emails that your subscribers will actually appreciate:
Send a welcome email as soon as a customer makes a purchase.
Provide exclusive promo codes and free gifts.
Send regular newsletters to alert subscribers of new discount offers, product tips, and, when appropriate, company news.
Share relevant content to help customers get the most out of their recently purchased items.
Run a BOGO campaign in time for the holidays to promote self-gifting during the season, too.
Thank your highest-value customers. Send a personal note expressing your appreciation for their business.
Solicit feedback. If someone visits your site but doesn’t make a purchase, ask about their experience and how you can improve it.
5. Make it easy for your customers to get what they want
If your store is poorly designed, then you’re losing customers. But what exactly does a poorly designed store look like?
Besides appearing untrustworthy, the store could be suffering from some combination of the following: lacking a clear value proposition, hard-to-read font, or confusing navigation.
Even when you’ve improved the dimensions above, you could still be making a few design mistakes. Are you properly segmenting your products or are you putting too many products on a single page? Have you figured out the right balance between text and visuals? These are just a few of the many things that you should consider. If your theme isn’t converting well, consider some of the other great themes available on Shopify.
6. Engage online store visitors with Livechat
There are other high-impact ways to engage with site visitors and customers outside of email. For example, you could use live chat to engage with shoppers on your site.
Many live chat tools let you target browsers on certain pages, after they’ve been on your site for a certain length of time, or even after they’ve arrived on your site through an email newsletter. Live chat also enables you to have direct conversations with your customers so you can answer and address customer concerns right while they’re planning to buy.
7. Start a content marketing program
Every ecommerce store should consider blogging regularly to connect with customers and to rank better in search engines. If you’re already creating content, consider actively featuring your blog on your online store.
Don’t forget, there are more ways to take advantage of content marketing than simply blogging:
Start a podcast to feature your expertise or build a stronger community
Guest post on other websites and blogs to build awareness and generate backlinks, which also help with SEO
Create long-form content and guides to help customers use your products more effectively
One unlikely brand that has used content marketing to increase online sales is River Pools and Spas. Their company blog has earned them kudos from New York Times, but they don’t just stick to blogging. In time for the 2018 summer season, they have a downloadable guide featured on their homepage to help customers buy the right fiberglass pool as well.
8. Integrate Instagram
With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram is one of the fastest growing social apps around, connecting consumers, influencers, and brands.
If you take compelling photos, use hashtags strategically, and post at the right times then you’re well on your way to building a large Instagram following of people who are interested in your products. The key to mastering your organic Instagram presence is engagement with your followers.
What are some ways to engage with your audience on Instagram? You may try running contests or going behind the scenes to showcase your product development process. You can also pay to play on Instagram. For ecommerce marketing, adding products to your Instagram posts and stories gives your followers a direct path to purchase, which is key for increasing your online sales.
9. Embrace personalization
Personalization is another effective marketing tactic to drive online sales. Using behavioral data, personalized experiences are served to the visitor, according to their past actions and preferences.
According to BCG, personalization can lift sales as much as 10%, but the opportunity is greater than that. Only 15% of companies are using the technology to its fullest extent.
You can also account for location in personalization to create an experience catered to where your customers are in the world. Someone in southern California may be looking for bathing suits in October, while your Maine customers probably need coats, for example.
Alloy Apparel shows a “what’s popular” carousel of products for online shoppers, but personalizes it with trending items local to the visitor.
10. Reduce abandoned carts
Harsh truth: You’re losing money every time a visitor abandons their cart without purchasing.
This phenomenon is well-studied. Visitors add items to their carts, but abandon their carts during the checkout process. According to the Baymard Institute, 69.23% of shopping carts are abandoned.
It’s worth directly addressing as many hesitations as you can because some shoppers who abandoned their carts could have been reminded to complete their purchase. Perhaps they could have been persuaded with a discount or free shipping, for example.
One simple and effective ecommerce marketing idea to reduce the frequency of abandoned carts is an email recovery campaign, which can convince your visitors to make a return visit and complete their original purchase. Another one is to take advantage of the Facebook Pixel. Having a facebook pixel on your website will help you retarget customers who left your store before completing their purchase.
Move forward with your own online store
Now you have a sizeable list of tactics and apps to help you generate more traffic and increase online sales.
