- Second, an online t-shirt business gives you a way to start understanding online marketing, before you sink some real time and money into a more serious business. Remember, and never forget, you’ll learn 100x more from actually starting a business, than you ever will from just consuming articles, blogs, books and podcasts.
- Building your email list is a crucial & proven step to grow your business online. There are a few ways to build a list of subscribers: the fastest way is through paid advertising. However, not too many people building a business online have the budget for paid advertising nor do they understand how to write effective ad copy.
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But before you expect your online business to bring in the buck, you have to understand what it means to exactly grow it. You will be needing to set some sort of standard that you can measure things up against, should the time come when you need to evaluate how well your business is thriving. Elcome to the 2019-2020 edition of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Wisconsin Small Business Resource Guide. The SBA helps make the American dream of small business ownership a reality. It is the only federal agency dedicated to helping this country’s 30 million small businesses start, grow, expand, and recover after a disaster.
Jay Abraham is one of the world's leading business consultants and mentors to people like Tony Robbins, Daymond John, Joe Polish, Stephen R. Covey and Russell Brunson. Over the years, he's built and scaled eight- and nine-figure businesses, and is constantly sought after by some of the most successful companies to help grow their businesses fast.
I recently spoke to Abraham about the ways in which he grows an online business, and what he told me was that it boiled down to three primary strategies applicable to growing any business, whether it's online or offline. Most people who struggle with this know that it's hard to grow or scale a business.
They think that to grow a business, they need major capital or funding. While that might help, it's also a shortcut that doesn't always pan out. Sometimes, having the coffers filled can actually sidetrack you. Instead of looking for ways you can become profitable, you look for ways to grow by spending more.
The answer to growth is not in merely scaling out your spend. It doesn't equate to having more employees or a bigger office or any of those things for that matter. The best way to actually do this is organically by bootstrapping. If you're a solopreneur or running a small business, then this information is integral to your own growth.
Rather than trying to spend more, you have to focus on conversions. Conversions are at the heart of any business. If you don't have an offer that converts, or the cability to track those conversions, then you're wasting your time. You can't scale by any measure without a properly converting offer in your business.
Rather than spending money on the superficial, you have to spend it wisely to get that converting offer working. That means that if you spend $1 to acquire a customer, you have to ensure that you're making that $1 back and earning more. Otherwise, you have a business that's losing money, not one that's making money.
That's the premise and basis for building and growing business. You simply can't scale to any degree without that. There are many ways to actually do this. Creating a converting offer can be done through a variety of mediums. One of those mediums is the webinar.
Russell Brunson often tells the story about how a single webinar saved him from bankruptcy twice. Liz Benny and Kent Clothier have used a single webinar to generate millions of dollars in sales. It's a powerful medium you should be using to sell something.
There is a particular process to selling through the webinar. Most entrepreneurs confuse selling through a webinar as teaching. You shouldn't be teaching at all. You should be breaking down limiting beliefs through the vehicle of stories.
The truth is that most people don't buy through webinars because they have false or limiting beliefs. These beliefs are attributed to the vehicle, or offer itself, as much as they are to internal and external beliefs. Successful webinars focus on destroying those false beliefs. Once those dominos topple down, selling becomes almost effortless.
Related: 7 Key Steps to a Growth Strategy That Works Immediately
Abraham talks about three primary strategies for growing your business fast. Each of these strategies has several tactics tied to it. But, at the heart of it, there are really only three paths forward. If you can heed one of these paths, you can likely achieve your business goals.
However, keep in mind that the path from zero to seven figures is not going to be the same as the path from seven to eight figures or from eight to nine figures and beyond. The skills you need to use to get to seven figures in your business are not going to be the same skills you use to move you further up. And it's easy to get stuck in one cycle, often repeating your revenue year after year and not moving beyond that.
Anyone who's serious about making money online understands that there are challenges when going from one phase to the next. It can be frustrating to say the least. And without a proper sales funnel, actually growing the business will be difficult. You need the right systems in place in order to capitalize on the process.
What most people fail to focus on are the email sequences. How can you bridge that divide between leads who enter your world and those who become customers? The answer is through the email sequence. The email sequence is key for building a relationship with the lead by telling your story.
Guide To Growing Your Online Business In 2016 Free
Related: I Tried Sheryl Sandberg's 'Spiral-Notebook' Productivity Hack for 30 Days. Here Are My 5 Takeaways.
1. Acquisition
The first strategy for growing your online (or offline) business is through acquisition. How can you get more customers? Often, to do this, you need to setup a front-end sales funnel. You need to have some sort of offer that will bring the customer into your world, whatever that might be.
Abraham says that there are loads of different tactics that work here. Webinars are one strategy. But, there are also free-plus-shipping offers, other tripwires (which are low-ticket front-end offers usually from $1 to $37) and other lead magnets such as free ebooks, checklists, cheat sheets and so on.
When you sit down to think about how you can acquire customers, you have to envision their pain points and how you can go about adding some value to their lives. You might lose some money on the front-end. But, if you have a proper sales funnel, you can maximize the average cart value with up-sells and one-time-offers that will make your ad spend profitable.
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2. Ascension
The second way that Abraham says that you can grow your business is through ascension. How can you get your customers to ascend a value ladder? What email sequences can you plan that will move the customer up the progression of value in your business.
With the proper sales funnel and email sequences in place, you can take a customer from your low-ticket, front-end offers up through your value ladder to a high-ticket offer. During each step of the ascension, you have to ensure that you're adding tremdous amounts of value in the exchange.
If you're not adding value, then the customer simply won't ascend and you won't grow your business (fast or slow). That's what it takes. Be sure that you're adding loads of value during each step of the process if you want your customers to ascend and make more money.
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3. Frequency
Guide To Growing Your Online Business In 2016 Pdf
The third way to grow your business is through frequency. How can you get your customers to buy more frequently? That's the big question. Can you do this through a continuity plan or through new offers or some other monetization? The challenge is doing this without zapping too many of your resources.
Some people struggle to understand how they can grow their business. Others have growing pains. When you grow, you need to scale out your infrastructure. You need more employees and systems in place. Again, the same strategies that took you to seven figures won't take you beyond.
Take a look at your product or service offering and figure out how you can get your customers to spend more frequently. How can you monetize your customers while still adding more value in the exchange. Don't just look for ways to extract more money from current customers. Look for ways you can get them to spend more often and monetize that.