How to Grow Your Online Business for Big Results!

Any business owner that wants to “stay” in business, especially in this slow economy, must become known as the “authority” in his or her field.

Whether you have a brick and mortar business along with a website or you just have an online business, you’ve got to constantly be marketing your business to outsmart the competition, achieve name recognition in your industry, and make profits!

As someone who has owned an online business for 10 years now and who is also a website designer, I am starting to see a common thread among business owners whose online business is lacking — they simply don’t know, what they don’t know.

What I mean by that is they don’t know their website is outdated; they don’t know their website is not showing up in the search engines, they don’t know their website doesn’t have keywords or page titles; they don’t know what a blog is and the list goes on!

The main reason small business owners fail is that they don’t have “in-house marketing departments” to take care of promoting and growing their business on a regular and consistent basis; so often it just gets neglected.

If you are a small business owner who wants to learn How to Grow Your Online Business and get big results, then I’ve got 5 tips for you:

• Tip #1 – Make sure your website is current, updated, user-friendly and most importantly, “search engine optimized.”  If you don’t know what search-engine optimized means, then you’re already in trouble.  You absolutely must spend money on having your website optimized and the best way to do that is to have a “wordpress” website that is set up with keywords that will get you found on Google.  If you implement this one tip, then you will grow your business exponentially!  If you would like to put up your own wordpress website for free, then click here to learn how.
• Tip #2 – Blog on your website about your Industry with strategic keywords.  Blogging is just like writing “mini-articles”, but the key is not to just write “random” blog posts, but to do a google keyword search first and find out what topics and keywords people are searching for.  To understand this in more detail, you can watch my short video about this.  Once you see what people are searching for about your industry, then you can write a blog post that will drive traffic to your site.  If you’re not a writer and don’t want to do this, you can always outsource.  This is one of the services I offer my clients.  You can find out more information about my blogging packages by clicking here.
• Tip #3 – Promoting your Online Business through Social Media.  Although I consistently find that most business owners don’t do this because they are uneducated about social media and/or overwhelmed, I suggest at the very least you either start learning how to promote your online business on Facebook and Twitter, or outsource this task.  Facebook and Twitter can make or break your business.  I know many restaurants who are very successful solely because of their Facebook page.  Some of them don’t even have a website and rely solely on a facebook fan page, like this restaurant:  http://www.facebook.com/Sonioscafe  I suggest you have a custom Facebook Fan page for your business!
• Tip #4 – Make it easy for people to purchase your products and/or services from your website.  I see many people who have a website and then don’t “ask for the business” on their website.  The first rule of sales is “ask for the sale!”  If you can, I suggest creating packages for your services and having a button they can instantly pay you with.  You can use paypal which is a low cost way to do this or you can get a shopping cart program which would be more expensive.  If you want to make money online, then you need to have visitors be able to pay you from your website.  I set up a website for a hot tub service repair client and he collects payments for his services directly on his site before he goes to the client’s house.  You can check out his website at:  http://www.hottubservicemd.com/
• Tip #5 – Sign up for free Affiliate programs related to your industry and recommend these products and/or services on your site either through blogging or sending an email to your list or a small banner ad.  People usually value personal recommendations and will click on the link.  The great thing is you can start making passive income from your site just for referring visitors to other products and/or services.  For example, if you were an interior designer and I did your website, I would have you sign up for the affiliate program at www.blinds.com which pays you a specific percentage when you refer people to them through your unique affiliate link.  Then when someone comes to your site and reads your blog post and clicks on your affiliate link, they go to blinds.com and purchase some window coverings, you just made commission!  An easy one to sign up for his Amazon’s Affiliate program.  Once you sign up, then you can start promoting “related” products to your list or on your website and start making passive income!

These are my top  5 tips on how to grow your online business!  If you  need help with any of the above, please email me at:  michelle@becomea6figurewoman.com and I’ll be happy to see what I can do to help!