The Four Super Secret Steps to Building a Successful Online Business
Last time, I talked about how most entrepreneurs make business much harder than it needs to be.
Keep it simple, stupid.
To continue with the topic, I’m going to give you a simple business plan.
Today I’m going to give….
The Four Super Secret Steps to Building a Successful Online Business.
This works for any business. It doesn’t matter if you are a strictly online business or if you’re a traditional service-based business — it just works.
The steps are simple:
- Get traffic.
- Build relationships.
- Sell those people stuff
- Sell them more stuff.
That’s it. If my MBA just taught these four steps, I would have been raking it in years ago.
Unfortunately, I had to find these steps out myself.
Fortunately for you, I’m telling you about them today.
Let’s go over each step.
Getting traffic.
Attention is one of the most valuable things in the world. With attention — and some influence — you can make people do anything.
Whether it’s watching the online videos you make, or purchasing from you, you need the attention of your customers.
Getting traffic involves getting eyeballs to look at you and your brand. After you get these eyeballs on you, then you can move them further down into your marketing funnel.
But nothing starts until you get traffic and attention.
I’ll cover how to get traffic in a later article, but here’s the number one rule of getting traffic and eyeballs to your business -
Don’t be boring.
Build relationships
At the end of the day, most businesses are “people businesses.”
Before you can get someone to pull out their wallet and give you their hard-earned cash, they need to know their credit card info isn’t going to be swiped and sold on the dark web.
But chances are, there’s somebody else selling something similar to what you’re selling.
So how do people decide who to buy from?
People buy from people they know, like, trust.
If your customers don’t know, like, and trust you, they’ll find somebody else to buy from.
You can see this with Facebook right now. Everybody knows Facebook, but they don’t like or trust the company.
So, what are the users doing?
They’re going to other platforms who they know, like, and trust.
Again, building relationships online is another huge topic that’s too big for this one post, but I’ll give one piece of advice.
People can’t know, like, or trust you, if you stay in the shadows and don’t interact with people online.
Sell them stuff.
Let’s face it, at the end of the day, businesses are here to do one thing: make money.
And in order to do that, businesses have to make offers and sell stuff.
It could be services, widgets, or whatever, but there needs to be an exchange of some sort. Otherwise, you just have a hobby, not a business.
What’s the easiest way to sell stuff online?
Make offers.
Sell them more stuff
I learned this from the great Dan Kennedy. He always said, “A buyer, is a buyer, is a buyer.”
And that’s good news for you.
In your business, you should be targeting customers that you KNOW will buy from you.
How do you know who will buy from you?
Look at the people who have already given you money!
These are people who already know, like, and trust you. Why wouldn’t you pick the low hanging fruit?
How do you keep selling to people who already bought from you?
Well, hopefully, you have more than one product or service so you can offer upsells and cross-sells.
If you don’t have additional products, you can find other offers and become an affiliate with them.
Let’s say you sell an online course that teaches people how to play guitar riffs. What other things will these same people buy?
More guitar courses…
Songwriting books…
Guitar strings…
Songbooks…
New guitars…
Recording software…
And those are just a few that come to mind.
Go find other people that are selling this stuff and partner with them.
The point is…
Sell from people who you know will buy.
That’s it. The Four Super Secret Steps to Building a Successful Online Business.
Now go out and start getting traffic.
