When starting out with online marketing there are a lot of things to consider. First and foremost, you should always be keeping your target audience top of mind. This is the only way to effectively proceed with knowing exactly what marketing strategy you should adopt. The better you understand your target audience. The easier it becomes to market and sell to them. 

Let’s look at a few marketing strategies that you should consider once you know who it is you are trying to target with your marketing messages.

Social media marketing strategies 

Whether we like it or not, social media is here to stay, and it is not going anywhere any time soon. Social media is also a great way to build an audience for your business and drive new visitors to your website. Effective social media marketing starts with understanding what social media platforms your target audience spend their time on. For example, if you are targeting a younger demographic, you would want to target platforms such as TikTok. If, however, you wanted to target a more mature and professional audience then a platform such as LinkedIn might be more appropriate.

Once you figure out what the best platform is for you, it is important for you to understand the nuances of those platforms. It is not enough to just start randomly posting. How people post content on Instagram for example, is different to how people post content on Twitter. Not only that, but these platforms also change often, and it is important that you keep up to date with the latest trends on these platforms so that your content can actually reach its intended audience.

The best way to ensure that your content on social media will resonate with your audience is by creating an account on the platforms you intend to create content on and follow some people that you find interesting. It is also a good idea to follow people who have amassed a following who speak about similar topics that you intend to speak on. You want to keep a close eye on how creators are producing content on those platforms and how they are using their profile. What types of things do they have in their bios? Are they creating videos? Are they using carousel posts? This is not to say you should copy what other people are doing. But you most definitely should model your content strategy based on what successful creators are already doing so you know what is working on specific platforms.

When it comes to using social media as an online marketing strategy, it is important for you to be creating content that specifically brings value to your target audience on a consistent basis. Valuable content is content that either inspires, educates, entertains, or informs your target audience. Your content also needs to be discoverable. There is no point in creating valuable content consistently on social media if your target audience are not finding it. Make use of keywords in your titles and captions, use hashtags where necessary and ensure to promote your content to reach new audiences.

Blog marketing strategies

Google is still the number 1 website on the planet and one of the best ways to get discovered in Google is by starting a blog. Again, here is where knowing your audience is important. You can use free resources such as answerthepublic.com and the Google Keyword planner tool to figure out what questions your target audience have, and you can answer them in the form of blog articles.

SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it is essentially when you create a website and web pages that attract the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, If you optimise these blog articles for SEO making sure you use your main keywords in your URL, Title tags, Meta tags and throughout the body of your blog articles, you will eventually start seeing traffic from the search engines back to your website.

You can capitalise on this traffic by referencing the products and services that you sell where applicable throughout your blog articles. You can also use the side bar of your blog to promote the things that you sell on your website.

It can take some time before your blog starts to get recognition in Google, Google can take a few months to index and start ranking your blog articles and this at times puts people off blog marketing. You also want to focus on producing high quality blog articles that truly answer the key questions that your target audience have as thoroughly as possible.

Low quality blog articles in SEO terms are referred to as ‘thin content’. This is when someone writes an article that has very little value just to try and rank in Google for that keyword and gain the search engine traffic. Google know very quickly if an article is useful or not and they use signals to help them to determine if your website should be ranked for the keywords you target or not. Some of these signals include how authoritative your website is, how often you blog, how many other websites link back to your website and give it a backlink and how relevant your blog articles are to the products and services you sell on your website. 

SEO is a marathon and not a sprint, although it can take a while before your blog articles start ranking in Google, when you do start to rank, you are likely to see passive organic traffic to your website every single month.

YouTube video marketing

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. This is one of the reasons why it is one of the most popular platforms for businesses and brands to market their products and services. YouTube is almost a cross between a social media platform and a search engine. This is because it has many elements of a social media platform in that your viewers have the option to subscribe to you, like your content and interact with you. You can also become recognised on the platform with a blue tick once you amass a certain amount of influence, like most other social media platforms.

However, as well as this, growing on YouTube often requires a strategic SEO strategy similar to growing a blog. You want to think about the keywords people use to search through YouTube and use these keywords as video ideas for your YouTube marketing.

When you do create a video based on a specific keyword, it is important that you ensure your keywords are in your video title, description and tags. This will help YouTube understand what your video is about, giving it a higher chance of ranking when your ideal customer is searching for a video on that topic.

As a rule of thumb, YouTube SEO is a lot simpler than Google SEO for your blog. There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to website SEO that are simply not a factor with YouTube SEO. Google look at things such as how quickly your website takes to load, how authoritative your website is and how many backlinks your website has as indicators to how likely your article is to rank in Google. With YouTube, you can have a brand new channel and if your keywords are in the right place and your content keeps people watching then you can start ranking literally within a few hours of posting a new video.

Similarly, with blog marketing, YouTube marketing can help to drive passive awareness to your business and brand as once a video is ranking in YouTube, you could see views, traffic and leads back to your business consistently for years to come. 

Paid marketing strategies

When it comes to online marketing strategies there are 2 main options. The first is organic free traffic options and the second is paid traffic options. Organic free methods of promoting a business online includes things such as SEO, social media marketing and YouTube video marketing. Free online marketing strategies have their benefits including the fact that you can grow your business without spending any upfront money. That being said, it can take a while to build the traffic needed for it to have a significant impact on your business. It can also be difficult to scale free marketing methods as you cannot simply pay for better results as you can in most cases with paid marketing methods.

When you are paying to market your brand or business online however, there is a lot to consider. Firstly, you need to figure out what is the best paid traffic source for your business. You can pay to advertise on websites such as Google, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn just to name a few. Like with free online marketing strategies, figure out where your target customers spend the majority of their time online and focus on advertising there.

For more marketing strategies, make sure you download 'The Formula' completely free. 

 

Most entrepreneurs and business owners understand that having a website is important. But not everyone knows why a website is important for their business or how to use a website to drive new customers to their business on a consistent basis. So, what should a good business website have in order for it to successfully drive new leads and sales for your business on a consistent basis?

A good business website should have a niche focus

When starting your website, it is important that you firmly understand who your target audience is and what things they care about. The worst mistake that you can make when starting your website is trying to appeal to a broad audience. Appealing to a broad audience is extremely difficult. The biggest brands of our time who attempt to appeal to a wide audience do so because they have budgets usually that consist of millions of pounds to market and advertise their website which many start-up entrepreneurs simply do not have access to. The companies who do have access to these types of funds still focus heavily on creating personalised experiences for their customers. Amazon is a great example. Amazon did not start out selling products in every category under the sun. They simply started selling books and expanded their business gradually as time went on.

The way that Amazon appeal to such a broad audience is not just because they have literally millions of products. They are able to personalise the experience that each of their customers have on their website. If you log into your Amazon account, you are likely to be recommended products based on your past searches on Amazon, products that you have spent time looking at and products that you have purchased in the past. The recommendations that you see on Amazon when you log in are specifically tailored to you in a way that smaller business websites are likely only able to achieve when they focus on niche marketing. 

Your niche will help you to determine what colours you use on your website, what language you use on your website as well as how you intend to go about marketing your website. Simply put, the better you know your target audience, the easier it is to reach them, and you can create a tailor made website that appeals to your target audience and attracts them to your website. 

A good business website should have a sales funnel process

A lot of business owners create a website and list their products and services on their website and just expect people to buy. I am never surprised when a business owner has this approach and sees little to no sales even if they spend money doing online marketing or hiring an SEO firm. This is because they do not have a well thought-out sales process that will aid people through a seamless buyer journey. This sales process in marketing is known as a funnel and these funnels help to transform your website into an actual online business that generates revenue consistently.

A sales funnel is usually illustrated as seen above with different layers. The top layer is the awareness phase and this is how you make people aware that your business exists. This happens away from your website and includes marketing methods such as SEO, PR, Social media marketing, YouTube marketing and any other method you might choose to promote your business either offline or online. If people have no way of discovering your website, there is no chance of them magically arriving at your website and this is the part that most website owners and business people understand. They know that they need to drive traffic to their website and this is a great start.

Driving traffic however, is only one component. Statistically, the vast majority of people who visit your website will never return again. This means you can spend a great deal of money, time and effort driving traffic to your website for people to visit you one time and never come back. Businesses who only focus on the traffic aspect of their website usually go out of business extremely quickly.

Let’s look at Amazon as an example again. Amazon rely heavily on repeat business. If a new law was passed and it prevented people from buying from Amazon more than 1 time. How long would it be before Amazon went out of business? The answer is likely, not very long. Amazon would not survive if they only focused on new customers and did not try to get people back to their website to make additional purchases or at the very least to recommend Amazon to new people. 

Your past website visitors and customers are likely going to be your best and most loyal customers if you learn how to nurture them in the right way. A great way to train your website visitors to visit your website again is to have Google analytics installed on your website. This is a free code that you can get when you create a Google analytics account for your website.

This code allows you to track the activity that happens on your website so that you can moderate things such as your most popular website pages as well as the average time someone spends on your website.

With Google analytics you can also do what is known as pixel retargeting. You may have seen this where you visit a website and then you go somewhere else on the internet and notice an advert for the same product you were just looking at. This is because you have been pixel retargeted and this can be an effective way to ensure your past website visitors see your offer again and visit your website in the future. With privacy laws changing, it is important that you make people aware that they are being pixel retargeted. You can do this by having a privacy notification on your website that let’s people know you have pixel tracking code on your website.

This is also now a requirement if you plan on using Google analytics so do not skip this step. It is also best practice to have a privacy policy on your website. This can literally be a page on your website that outlines how you intend on using your website visitor’s data. Your privacy page usually goes in the footer section of your website navigation.

Pixel retargeting is just one way of getting people back to your website and although it can be effective, it can be expensive because in order to pixel retarget your website visitors, you often need to pay. For example, if you know that your target audience spend a lot of their time on Instagram, you may want to retarget people who visit your website using Instagram ads. This will obviously cost you money to get back in front of these people.

A cheap and more effective way to get people back to your website is by using email marketing. This is where you entice your website visitors to leave their name and email address when they visit your website so that you can keep in touch with them and send them emails that bring them back to your website at a later date. You can use email marketing software such as Aweber to manage your email marketing and they have a free starter plan for new businesses.

You can also connect your email marketing software to your payment gateway. Let’s say for example your chosen payment method for your website is stripe. You can connect stripe to Aweber or whatever email marketing software you decide to use. This ensures that every one of your customers gets put onto your mailing list. This is important because your past customers are usually your best and most loyal customers.

You may notice that whenever you make a purchase from Amazon that you get a follow-up email that promotes other products related to the product you have just purchased. This is Amazon's way of getting you back to their website to make additional purchases which is one of the many ways Amazon gets you to buy more.

Your website should have an SEO strategy

SEO is the art of getting your website found in Google and having a good SEO strategy can mean that your website is a lot more likely to show up in Google when your ideal customers type in queries that are relevant to the products, services or information that you have on your website. Google is still the number one website in the world and there are a few simple things that you can do to ensure that the important pages on your website show up in Google.

1)  Having a focus keyword

Google does not rank entire websites all at once. What they do instead is they rank individual web pages one by one. What this means is that every time you publish a new page on your website, it is a new opportunity for you to be found in Google for a new keyword. A keyword is simply the word or phrase that your potential customer will use to search Google to hopefully find your website. It is important however for you to know what keywords your ideal customer is using in Google so that you can optimise your web pages for those keywords. Platforms such as Answerthepublic.com and The Google Keyword Planner Tool allow you to see what popular search terms your potential customers are using.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to make one webpage that ranks in Google for multiple keywords. It is a lot more effective to create dedicated pages on your website for each keyword you would like your website to rank for.

2) Starting a blog

When you do your keyword research, you may notice that some keywords are questions that your target audience frequently ask Google. For example, you might sell a product on your website that helps to prevent hair loss. You might use Answerthepublic.com and realise that your ideal customer is searching for terms such as ‘are hair loss tablets safe’ and ‘can hair loss be a sign of something serious’.

 These are keywords that require blog articles, and you can use the blog section of your website to target these keywords so that when your target audience is searching for them, your website is likely to show up highly as it provides clear answers to these questions. You obviously want to ensure that you are providing high quality answers to these questions and not creating content that is not valuable. Google can see right through content that is inaccurate or not useful and creating bad content just for the purposes of ranking in Google can actually negatively impact the chances of your website showing up in Google.

3) Keyword placement

When you are creating a page on your website, you want to ensure that you have your main keyword in mind. Whether it is a product or service page that you want people to find in Google when they are directly looking to buy, or whether it is a keyword that is more content focused it is important to have the keyword for your pages in the URL of your website, The meta title and meta description, in your H1 tag and throughout the body of your content.

4) The URL

Each page on your website will have a slightly different URL and this is something that you can change. Google will read your URL to get a better understanding of what your page is about and as such, your URL is a great place to put your keyword. Let’s say you create a page on your website and your target keyword for that page is ‘are hair loss tablets safe’. Your URL should be yourwebsite.com/are-hair-loss-tablets-safe

Notice the use of a hyphen after each word, this is important as it let’s Google know that this is a sentence.

5) Meta title and description

Your meta title and description is what Google will show to potential website visitors when your webpage appears in Google.

It gives them a preview of what to expect if they click through to your website. In whatever website platform you are using to create your website, you should see an 'SEO settings' option. This option allows you to change your meta title and description so that you can ensure they both contain your target keywords.

6) HI Tag 

When you are creating your content for your website, you should see a stylistic option in your website builder that either says Heading 1 or H1.

This is not just a font feature; this is designed to tell Google what keyword that page is focused on. You want to ensure that you use that option as a heading feature for your website and that your heading contains the keyword that you would like Google to rank that page for. 

7) Content

Lastly, it is good practise to use your keyword or at least a slight variation of it throughout the page that you create. If the page is a product page, then try to use it as organically as possible in the product description, if it is a blog article then use it where you can when writing your article. For example, the main keyword for this blog article I am writing now is,

‘what should a good business website have’

I am actually using this as an example because it is another way of me using my keyword organically in this post!

The reason why I say you should use your keyword organically is because Google can see if you are trying to ‘game the system' and using your keyword 100 times on a page where it does not feel natural will make Google mark your website as spam and you will struggle to rank your website in Google with this approach.

A good business website should have a traffic generation strategy

SEO is a great way to drive passive traffic to your website from Google and the other major search engines such as Yahoo and Bing for free. Although SEO is a great source of traffic to your website, it can take a while for your website to start ranking in Google. Even if you optimise your pages for SEO, it can sometimes take many months before Google index your website. Although there are ways that you can speed this process up. You may want to consider other options to drive new visitors to your website including things such as:

-           Social media marketing

-           YouTube video marketing

-           Paid Ads

-           Influencer marketing

 Regardless of what method you use to promote your website, it is important to remember to have a retargeting strategy. Have an option on your website that allows people to sign up to your newsletter. Retarget your visitors where you can and create retargeting ads online and focus on retaining your past website visitors and watch your business website flourish.

For more marketing tips, make sure you download ‘The Formula’ which is a free eBook that outlines some of the essentials to marketing your businesses website online to consistently attract new leads and customers.

Webinars can be a huge goldmine for your business if you use them correctly for a number of reasons. Signing up to a webinar is a much smaller ask for a lot of your potential customers than making a purchase from your website. This becomes even more true if someone is coming across your business or brand for the first time.

They are a lot more likely to want to join a free webinar, especially if they are going to get some useful information, than they are to part with their money and buy something from a website that they are not too familiar with yet.

Secondly, webinars are a fantastic way for small businesses to grow their email lists. Not everyone who signs up for your webinar is going to turn up. For those who do turn up to your webinar, not every attendee will buy whatever it is that you are selling on your webinar. This is okay because promoting your webinars allows you to simultaneously grow your email list, which can lead to sales later on down the line through your email marketing.

You don’t just want to create webinars on any topic. It is important that you keep your target customers top of mind when curating webinar topic ideas. If, for example, you sell a skincare product, a webinar that outlines some of the most common causes of acne and how to prevent these would likely be a topic of interest for people who may also be interested in buying your skincare products. If you were to create a free webinar on this topic and attracted your ideal customers to it, you could have an engaged audience that you can teach something to while simultaneously promoting your products. This would do 3 things all at once.

• Build trust with them and make them feel more confident about buying from your brand as you have taught them something useful
• Articulate the value of your product and entice them to buy
• Turn them into customers who buy from you often because they are on your email list and receive notifications about the offers that you have on your website

Webinar for marketing step 1 – Creating your webinar landing page

A webinar landing page is the page that your business will use to promote the webinar. Most webinar software will allow you to create a webinar landing page. I personally use WebinarJam because I find it a lot easier to use and more cost-effective than some of the other solutions on the market. Above is an example of what some of the WebinarJam landing pages look like.

You may also decide that you want to promote your webinar using your website or a landing page software like LeadPages. Most landing page software like WebinarJam allow you to copy the embed code once you create your webinar, which you can paste onto your landing page.

This ensures that people who sign up have their information sent straight into your webinar software, and they receive all the necessary information automatically to attend the webinar.

Regardless of whether you decide to use the landing page templates that your webinar software provides or if you decide to create your own landing page, it is important that you outline the benefits that your ideal customer will get from registering for your webinar. You might want to include bullet points that mention the topics you plan to cover to entice people to register. You also want to ensure that your branding on these webinar pages matches your company branding elsewhere on the internet so that you remain consistent. You would be surprised at how staying consistent with your brand colours, your logo, and any slogans your company uses often can impact the success of your webinars long-term.

Webinar for marketing step 2 – Promoting your landing page

So let’s assume you have taken the necessary steps so far which involve:

1. Ensuring that your webinar topic is one that will genuinely interest your ideal customer
2. Created an effective landing page that communicates the value that participants are likely to receive from the webinar
3. Used your company branding on the webinar registration page

It is then time to start promoting your landing page. You can promote your landing page using paid marketing methods such as Google ads or social media ads, just to name two. If you have an email list or a social media following, it might also be a good idea to promote the link to your webinar registration page to your audience there too.

Remember, if you do decide to use paid ads to promote your webinar, everyone who signs up as a result of seeing your ad will also be automatically put onto your email list when you connect your webinar software to your email marketing software. This means that even if you spend money to get them registered and they do not buy, you can promote a new offer to them next month via email marketing, which they may respond to. Sometimes the best marketing is one that incorporates a huge amount of patience.

Some companies decide to run their webinars live, and others decide to host pre-recorded webinars. Although pre-recorded webinars can mean that webinars can be running without you having to be present and result in passive sales. If you are running a live webinar, this is a huge marketing bonus for you as during your promotions you can emphasise the point that there is a limited time to register for the webinar as it will be time-sensitive.

Webinar for marketing step 3 Connecting your webinar software to email marketing

Most webinar software makes it easy for you to seamlessly connect your webinar to your email marketing software.

This is a crucial aspect of your webinar because it means that whilst you promote your webinar, you can also grow your email list, which is a lucrative practice for most businesses.

If you are not currently doing email marketing for your business, you can sign up for a free Aweber account where you can start and grow your email list without spending any upfront money. You will need to upgrade to a premium account to make use of some of the more advanced features.

A lot of the best webinar softwares allow for you to tag people who register for your webinar. This simply means that when someone registers for your webinar and their details are passed through to your email marketing software, you can automatically notify your email marketing software that the person came from that specific webinar. This can be highly lucrative for your business because it allows you to segment the prospects on your email list.

Let’s say, for example, that you sell multiple products on your website and you are creating a webinar to promote a particular category of products that you sell. If 1,000 people sign up for the webinar, it is important for you to know what webinar they signed up for so that you can send them targeted emails that specifically relate to what webinar they signed up for.

Webinar for marketing step 3 – Delivering your webinar

Once you have done all of the hard work creating your webinar and promoting your webinar, it will then be time for you to deliver your webinar. I recommend having what you are going to say on the day prepared, ready, and rehearsed so that you are more likely to deliver a fantastic presentation. Remember, this presentation is also a representation of your business and brand, so you want it to reflect your business well.

It is also best practice to ensure that you are in a quiet environment with a strong internet connection to ensure the webinar runs smoothly. You don’t have to be on camera during your webinar; you can just have slides up in most cases, but if you do, ensure that the picture quality is relatively good. It shouldn’t be difficult to see you as this can be distracting and come across as unprofessional. It might also be worth investing in a cheap microphone so that your webinar attendees can hear you clearly.

Throughout your webinar, you want to ensure that you offer immense value to your attendees. Teach them something that they may not have known before and promote your products where appropriate throughout your webinar and towards the end of the webinar. It is usually a good idea to have a special promotional discount for your webinar attendees to incentivise them to buy. I recommend having this as a time-sensitive offer to encourage them to buy sooner rather than later.

For more marketing tips to help you promote your business online, make sure you download 'The Formula' a free eBook that is designed to help you understand how the world of digital marketing works. 

Hands down, Aweber is the most important tool in my business. I utilise it in various ways to enhance my sales, nurture my customers, and capture new leads for my business. Aweber operates 24/7 after I've configured a few settings. Let's explore some ways Aweber can benefit your business and what Aweber is actually used for.

 

Aweber is Used For Landing Page Creation

Aweber offers functionality that enables you to create landing pages for your business. Landing pages are crucial because they provide a space for individuals to sign up for your email list. Other landing page software can be exceedingly expensive, costing upwards of $100 a month in some cases. With Aweber, you don’t require additional landing page software or even a website; you can create landing pages for promotion using either paid ads or social media. Once you create your landing page in Aweber, you can add that link to the description of your YouTube videos, to your links on social media and even as a destination URL to your paid ads to help your grow your email list subscribers.

Additionally, Aweber seamlessly integrates with any website platform, webinar software or landing page software.

If you opt to use alternative landing page software, you can connect it to your Aweber account. This ensures that when potential customers encounter your landing page and enter their information, their details are transmitted to Aweber, allowing you to build your email list. Similarly, if you plan on running webinars and you promote that webinar to your audience or via paid marketing methods, you can connect your Aweber account to your webinar software so that everyone who signs up to your webinar, will also be automatically added to any of the Aweber lists that you create.

The same integration applies to your website. Once you've created a list or a landing page in Aweber, you can copy the generated code and embed it as a code block on your website.

This enables your website visitors to seamlessly sign up for your mailing list.

Aweber is primarily used for email marketing.

Aweber is renowned as an email marketing software. Its primary function is to assist you in building an affordable email list to grow your small business. Email marketing remains one of the most effective forms of marketing for businesses, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. With Aweber, you can effortlessly attract new leads and manage your email marketing campaigns effectively.

One of the reasons I've relied on Aweber for many years is its user-friendly platform. You simply need to create your first list, connect it to a landing page or an opt-in form using Aweber or another landing page software, or your website using code integration. From there, you can promote your landing page using either free or paid traffic methods to attract your ideal customers to sign up for your newsletter. It's that straightforward.

Sending emails is equally straightforward. All you need to do is craft a catchy headline, write an email that resonates with your subscribers, and optionally include attachments. Aweber's drag-and-drop feature allows you to customise your emails with your company branding, button links, and much more.

After creating your email, you can choose whether to send it as a broadcast, schedule it for the future, or add it to an automation series.

A broadcast is essentially your way of sending an email to your subscribers right away. When scheduling an email, you can specify the day and time in the future for delivery. You can decide to send your emails to your entire list of subscribers, a specific list or to a segment of your list.

Aweber's automation feature is incredibly powerful, allowing you to automatically send emails to subscribers based on specific actions they take. A common automation feature is a welcome email sent to new subscribers.

Aweber can also be used to track sales. When you set up sales tracking in Aweber, you can identify which emails resulted in sales for your business. This valuable insight allows you to test different email styles and identify those that convert the most, enabling you to create similar emails to further grow your business.

Additionally, Aweber serves as an automation tool. It offers powerful automation features that extend beyond sending a welcome email to new subscribers. You can set up automations triggered by specific subscriber actions, such as clicking a link, making a purchase from your website, or opening or not opening an email. For example, if you're promoting a product and a percentage of subscribers click and purchase, you might send them through an automation series promoting upsells. Conversely, for those who don't open emails containing product promotions, you might send them through an automation featuring different email subject lines to encourage them to open and make a purchase decision.

Aweber is also used for segmentation

As a leading email marketing software, Aweber enables advanced segmentation. Segmentation involves organising your email subscribers into categories to send targeted messages, significantly improving sales. You can segment subscribers based on their sign-up preferences or actions they take after signing up. Utilising Aweber's 'tag' feature, you can create tags for subscribers who register for events or purchase specific products from your website. This allows you to send tailored emails to different subscriber segments, optimising your sales potential.

Moreover, Aweber is used to help enhance the profitability of paid ads. When running paid ads, many visitors may bounce off your website, never to return. However, by directing paid traffic to a landing page where visitors can sign up for your email list, you can capture their email addresses which is a smaller commitment than making a purchase from you right away. Even if they don't make a purchase right away after seeing your paid ad, offering a lead magnet—a valuable resource in exchange for their email—can make paid marketing campaigns even more profitable as you now have them as part of your email list and can send them regular reminders about the products and services that you have on your website.

While Aweber is primarily used for email marketing, its capabilities extend far beyond that. It facilitates landing page creation, email automation, sales tracking, and much more. Aweber's customer support chat feature has been a lifeline for me in the past, providing prompt assistance whenever I encountered difficulties with their platform.

For additional marketing tips to enhance your online product and service promotions, be sure to download 'The Formula' for free.

The steps to learning digital marketing include:

Step 1 – Customer research

Step 2 – Learn the 4 ps

Step 3 – Customer retention

Step 4 – Always keep up to date with new strategies

Let’s dive into these steps into more detail and how you can use them to become better at digital marketing.

Learning digital marketing can open up so many opportunities. It can help you to connect with the people online who are most likely to purchase your product or invest in your service. Let's look at how you can learn digital marketing step by step to start attracting the right kinds of people to your business.

Step 1 to learning digital marketing – Customer research

Digital marketing and psychology go hand in hand. Digital marketing is all about understand your target customer to the best of your ability. The better you know your target customer, the easier it becomes to market to them online. Whenever creating a new digital marketing campaign the very first step is always to figure out who will gain the most value from the product or service that is being offered and learning as much about that customer avatar as possible. There are a few questions that you can ask yourself that can help you to understand your target customer better when creating your digital marketing campaigns

• What are their pain points?
• What things are they interested in?
• What questions are they likely to search the internet asking?
• How much are they likely to pay for my product or service?

Once you can understand this about your target customer, you will know how to write your marketing materials that address their pain points, you will know what content might interest them and you can create that in the form of blog articles, YouTube videos and social media posts. You can also answer their questions using SEO and attract them to your website. You will also have a good understanding of how to price your products and services.

Step 2 to learning digital marketing – The 4 Ps

The 4 Ps is a marketing term used to describe what is known as the marketing mix. It helps marketers to ensure they have not missed anything from their marketing strategy. The 4 Ps are Product, Price, Place and promotion.

Product – Your product is a huge part of your marketing. If you have a great product, it will market itself in a lot of ways. This is not to say that you do not need to market it at all but people who have a good experience with your product they are likely to leave positive reviews, recommend your product to others and potentially buy from you again. All of these things are positive ways to grow your business. On the contrary, if your product or service is not good, or customers have a negative experience with your customer service, they may leave negative feedback and this can impact future custom.

Price is important too, if you price your product too cheap, you could be missing out on extra revenue, it can also impact the profitability of your business and your ability to market your business effectively. Cheaper products can also be associated with lower quality in a lot of cases. If your product is too expensive however, you could price yourself out of the market especially if your customers are offering cheaper alternatives.

Place when it comes to digital marketing, speaks to where you decide to promote your products. You want to promote your brand where you know your target customers spend their time online. Here is another example of where knowing your target customers comes in handy. Are you customers using YouTube, Instagram or LinkedIn or are they prominent somewhere else online? You should be creating either a content marketing strategy or a paid ads strategy for the platforms where you know your ideal audience spend a lot of their time.

Promotion in your digital marketing is all about choosing the right strategy. There are so many ways to promote a brand online from free methods such as SEO, social media marketing, video marketing and paid methods like Google PPC and social media ads.

Step 3 to learning digital marketing is customer retention

A sale happens once, but if your marketing is done right, you can have a customer for life. On average I visit my local supermarket at least once per week and so do thousands of other locals. We help to keep that business running because we are regular customers. Most businesses rely heavily not on customers who buy one time from their business and never come back but on customers who buy from them frequently.

It can take a lot of money and time to get someone to buy from you online, you don’t want all of that marketing to only lead to one transaction. If for example you hire a plumber and that plumber does a great job, you are likely to hire them again if you ever have work that needs to be done or you know someone who needs work done for them. You now have a relationship with that plumber and that relationship will prove lucrative for that business owner if he has hundreds of these business relationships.

Amazon is a fantastic example of customer loyalty and retention. Their service Is so good that people buy from them frequently, Amazon is one of the largest eCommerce brands in the world but yet their entire business would crumble in a very short period of time if customers stopped repeat buying on Amazon. The art of learning customer retention is a key skill to learn when doing digital marketing.

 Step 4 to learning digital marketing – Keep up to date

The digital marketing landscape is rapidly changing. Nothing stays the same for too long and with new technology, new platforms and algorithm changes there is always something new to learn in the real of digital marketing. It is important that you follow popular digital marketing YouTube channels, blogs, and industry leaders to stay up to date with the latest trends that are happening in the marketing world so that you don’t risk falling behind and marketing in an outed fashion.

For more tips on how to become a better marketer, make sure you download ‘The Formula’ completely free.

 

If you're seeking small business newsletter ideas, I have some insights for you. Firstly, you understand the importance of having a newsletter for your small business. Newsletters offer a direct line of communication between you and your potential customers. A newsletter has the potential to secure a customer for life, rather than just for today. Let's explore how a newsletter can help boost sales for your small business.

Firstly, most first-time visitors to your website are unlikely to become customers immediately. This could be because they're not yet familiar enough with your brand to trust it for a purchase or because they need time to warm up to the idea. The big question is, how do you bring them back when they're in a "ready to buy" mindset? One of the best and easiest ways is by having a newsletter for your small business.

Ideas for Getting People to Sign Up for Your Small Business Newsletter:

Getting people to sign up for your small business newsletter might seem tricky initially. Most people receive hundreds, if not more, emails every single week, and they might be hesitant to sign up for yet another newsletter. How do you persuade them to make that decision, and how do they know your newsletter will be different from the others they've joined?

Simply put, you need a strong value proposition. Consider who the target customer is for your product or service and what will genuinely bring them value. Could it be a free piece of information or advice packaged into an eBook, a mini-course, or a whitepaper that you can give away for free? Instead of asking people to "sign up for updates," offer them something valuable in return for their name and email address, letting them know they can receive more great tips, information, and offers from you if they stay subscribed to your newsletter emails.

You can also offer your website visitors a special discount when they sign up to incentivise them to join your newsletter. My local supermarket does this now too. When I shop, they show me two prices: one for the normal everyday shopper and another discounted price for members. Guess what I have to do to become a member? I have to sign up on their website and enter my name and email address. You can adopt a similar approach for your newsletter as well.

Ideas for Promoting Your Small Business Newsletter:

Once you have your value proposition, how do you go about promoting your newsletter? Here are a few ideas that might help you out.

Pop-ups:

You might think that pop-ups are too annoying to add to your website, but they can dramatically improve the number of people who decide to join your email list, especially if the value proposition targets your ideal customers specifically.

If you use platforms such as OptinMonster, you can add timers to your pop-ups so they do not appear too frequently, but you can set them to go off once someone has spent a certain amount of time on your website. OptinMonster also allows you to create what is known as an "Exit Intent" pop-up. This essentially predicts when someone is about to leave your website and only shows them a pop-up then to make it less intrusive.

OptinMonster offers a range of different types of effective forms and pop-ups that you can add to your website to improve the number of people who sign up, but two key ones include what is known as a "floating bar." This is a bar that sits either at the top or bottom of your website and follows users through their journey on your website, giving them the option to sign up for whatever offer you have available. Lastly, if you plan to blog on your website, it's a great idea to have a form where people can sign up for your small business newsletter in the sidebar of your blog posts.

You can also promote your small business newsletter on social media. Many people question the return on time and money investment on social media, and the real answer to that lies in your ability to turn your followers into newsletter subscribers for your business. If you are only building a following on social media and you are not referring people to your website to join your newsletter, then it becomes extremely difficult to build your business, even with a large follower count.

Content marketing on social media is simple. You want to keep your target audience in mind and figure out what content will bring them value and consistently post that content on your chosen social media platform. You want to choose to make content on the platforms where your target customer spends a lot of their time online. Each social media platform has different demographics; for example, TikTok tends to have a younger demographic, and platforms like Facebook have a more mature audience in general. Once you start putting your content out, you want to let your audience on social media know about your newsletter. If you have attached your newsletter to some sort of free giveaway, let your audience on social media know where they can find that resource.

You can also promote your newsletter through paid ads online. Sometimes promoting a free giveaway can work really well when promoting your business via paid marketing. This is because there is a big difference between making a sale and having a customer. A sale is a one-time occurrence, whereas a customer comes back and does business with you again and again.

If you promote your freebie and your potential customers join your mailing list, you can send them emails in the future about new offers you have on your website, and they can be customers for as long as they remain on your newsletter. As such, growing your newsletter by doing paid promotions of your freebie is a fantastic way for you to actually grow your business too.

Tips for Emailing Your Audience:

Once you start getting people on your list, you want to ensure that you email them often. If someone signs up for your newsletter today but they don’t hear from you in 5 months, they may forget who you are and think your email was spam. All of the hard work you are doing to grow your newsletter, you do not want to make the mistake of having it go to waste because you are not emailing your subscribers often enough. I would say at the very least try to aim for 1 email every other week so that people become used to seeing your emails.

You also want to have something interesting to say in your emails. Here is where your content marketing can come in handy again. If you are updating your website often with new blog articles or if you have a YouTube channel with new videos or a social media account where you share information that would bring value to your potential customers, you can send these links to your newsletter subscribers. Every email you send is a new opportunity to get in front of your customers again and remain top of mind. You also can promote your products and services by offering special offers or reminders about your products and services each time you send an email.

If you want to learn more about how you can grow your sales by implementing easy-to-follow small business newsletter tips, make sure you download "The Formula" for free for my best marketing tips.

 If you have ever wondered how to use Instagram to grow your business, it does not have to be as difficult as it seems. There are however a few things to consider before you delve into Facebook ads to ensure that you are actually paying for results. By results I mean new customers to your business and not just clicks and traffic that does not lead to sales. One thing to note about running Instagram ads to your website is that it will obviously require an investment. A lot of business owners assume that instant traffic means instant money and that is not necessarily the case. You may have to do a little bit of testing before you get your ad profitable and this is perfectly normal.

Use the Meta ads manager

When you set up you Instagram business page, you may see prompts to ‘boost a post’ when you post your content organically on Instagram. Going down this route is one of the quickest ways to burn your income without making any sales. I have been in digital marketing now for over 10 years and in that time I actually have seen people boost posts and see sales to their websites, but as a rule of thumb, this is an acceptation rather than a rule. The Meta ads manager is an ad platform that Facebook created to help businesses running highly targeted and effective ads for their business and drive real results. The ‘boost post’ feature is for those who don’t take the time to learn how Instagram ads work and as a result choose the method that looks the easiest but it is far from the most profitable.

Within the Meta ads manager, you can also select to have your advertisement appear on Facebook and you get a lot more data back that you can use to actually grow your online sales. These are things that are just not possible when boosting a post and even if you do get a few sales from boosting one of your posts, it is almost impossible to know where that sale came from. In the Meta ads manager, you effective track where your sales came from and invest more where you are seeing results so that you can replicate them and scale your campaigns for increased revenue and profits for your business.

The right campaign objective for Instagram ads

When you get set up with the Meta Ads manager, it will ask you to set your campaign objective. This may seem like an insignificant step, but it is far from that! The wrong campaign objective will have you pulling your hair out as you drive visitors to your website who never actually buy your product or invest in your service. You want to make sure you choose the objective that will help you to grow your business and that is 9 times out of 10 usually a conversion so I recommend going for either a ‘lead’ objective or a the ‘sales’ objective.

 Lead objective

Lead objectives are great to get a mini commitment from your potential customer. This is really good if you sell high ticket priced items or if people are unfamiliar with your brand yet as your business might be relatively new or you might be targeting an audience who do not know about you yet and as such, might be less likely to buy your product the first time they see it. You can warm them up to the idea of doing business with you by getting them as a lead. A lead can be an email address, you can use tools such as Aweber, to collect emails when running Facebook ads. A lead can also be a webinar registrant if you plan on hosting webinars as a way to educate your target audience and sell them on your business and brand. A lead can also be someone’s phone number for you to follow up with them and this can be good at times if you offer a free consultation and then you can sell them on the phone after the consultation or do text message marketing.

Sales objective

The sales objective in the meta ads manager is for when you want to drive people directly to your products. This is easier to do if the people you are promoting to via your Instagram adds actually already know who you are, you can target your followers and past website visitors and we will get into how you can do that in Meta ads. Just another awesome feature to running your ads in the Meta ads manager that is not available when you boost a post. This is not to say your ads wont convert into sales if you create an ad directly promoting your product to people who do not know about you yet. It just means that your conversion rates are likely to be lower and you may need to test more variations of your ad to see success with that method.

Your campaign objective is important because Meta ads use AI to help you to reach your campaign objective. If for example you make the common mistake of choosing ‘traffic’ as your campaign objective. Meta wil assume that you want them to send you as much traffic your website as possible, regardless if that traffic is converting for leads and sales for your business or not. Now obviously this is not helpful if you want to use Instagram ads to grow your business as traffic alone will not make people buy. One the flip side, when you choose either a sale objective or a lead objective. Meta ads will use AI to send more and more people to your website who are most likely to actually either become a lead or buy your product and they will direct your advert less to people who are likely just tyre kickers which will save you so much money as well as allowing your ads to run more profitably.

Installing the Meta Pixel

The Meta Pixel is a piece of code that you can instal on your website that allows Instagram to see what actions people take when they click on your Instagram ads. If you have the Meta Pixel installed on your website then Instagram will know who is buying when they go to your website and who is becoming a business lead for you after they click your ad. Again, Instagram will use AI to do this and send you more people like this, but you have to have the Facebook pixel installed for this to work for you effectively. I have a simple video tutorial on YouTube that can show you how to do this in a few simple steps.

Setting campaign objectives

Once you have the Meta pixel installed on your website, you also need to let Instagram know what a conversion is on your website. What page do people land on once they have successfully bought the product you are promoting, left the email address on your website or registered for your webinar? You need to copy that URL and let Instagram know what that success page is so that they can see who converts into leads and customers for you and optimise their AI to ensure they send similar people to your ad who are likely to take the same action and drive you consistent sales to your business.

Embrace the learning phase 

Meta ads use AI to determine who is most likely to buy as we have discussed. We have also spoken about the fact that you will need the Meta pixel and conversion objectives set up to help Instagram do this for your ads. There is one more thing you need though and that is patience. Whenever you post a new Instagram ad for your business, you ads will go through what is known as a ‘learning phase’. Meta ads needs a little bit of time to figure out who will click you ad and buy, who will click you ad and leave their name as a lead and who will click your ad, waste your money and take no action. After you ad has been running for at least 7-10 days, it should have enough data to start driving you better results. Don’t panic if you add is not generating you results within the first day or 2 of it being up. Give it at least a week before you make any significant changes.

Running effective Instagram ads to help you to grow your business is all about data. Instagram will analyse your ad and optimise for better results but you also want to test and try different ads too and see which one might convert better for you. Don’t run one ad, don’t see your desired results and give up on Instagram ads. Run your ads knowing that it is a process. When you see success, leads and sales, analyse the data that Meta ads give you back and see how you can replicate that success. Similarly, when you don’t see success, still look at your data, try to figure out where you have gone wrong, make tweaks to your ad campaign and test again. 

For more in-depth tips and strategies to grow you online sales, make sure you download ‘The Formula’ for free where I outline some of the best ways to grow sales to your business using digital marketing.

In today's digital age, the internet presents boundless opportunities for business owners to amplify their brand presence and drive sales. With a plethora of options available, it's crucial to explore various marketing strategies to maximise their potential. Here, we delve into a comprehensive list of marketing strategies for small businesses, shedding light on how to harness each avenue effectively.

1.  Google Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads

Google PPC ads offer a targeted approach to advertising, charging businesses for each click to their website. The quality score plays a pivotal role, ensuring that well-performing ads rank higher in Google search results. While PPC ads can be costlier than other forms of advertising, their high conversion rates make them a worthwhile investment, especially for businesses targeting consumers actively seeking their products or services.

2.  Google Product Listing Ads

A blend of SEO and paid advertising, Google Product Listing Ads showcase products based on relevant keywords found on the business's website. Optimising product pages for pertinent keywords enhances visibility in search results, enabling businesses to capitalise on this lucrative opportunity to drive sales. Simply upload your product feed and allow Google to start driving traffic to your product pages.

3.  Google SEO

Google SEO entails optimising website content to enhance organic traffic, thereby fostering long-term growth. By creating engaging blog articles that resonate with their target audience, businesses can establish credibility with major search engines like Google, bolstering rankings and engendering trust among website visitors.

4.  Google Business Profile and Online Directories for Local Businesses

For local businesses, establishing a strong presence on Google Business Profile and other online directories is essential for enhancing visibility within their community. Google Business Profile offers a prominent platform for businesses to showcase vital information such as phone numbers, business addresses, and opening times directly on Google's search results pages. This feature provides businesses with additional real estate on Google, making it easier for customers to access essential details without visiting the company's website.

Moreover, leveraging online business directories like Yell can further amplify a local business's online presence. These directories carry significant SEO authority, increasing the likelihood of businesses being discovered by potential customers not only within the directory itself but also on search engines like Google. By listing their business on platforms like Yell, local businesses can benefit from increased visibility and reach within their target market.

Overall, utilising Google Business Profile and online directories offers local businesses a powerful means of connecting with their community and attracting new customers. By optimising their profiles with accurate information and engaging content, businesses can maximise their online visibility and drive foot traffic to their physical locations.

5.  YouTube Video Marketing

YouTube video marketing remains an underutilised avenue for small businesses, offering a unique platform to engage with audiences through targeted advertising. Leveraging Google AdWords, businesses can bid on keywords and specific YouTube channels, ensuring precise targeting for their ads. With YouTube's vast user base and evergreen content potential, businesses can cultivate a passive stream of subscribers, views, and sales over time.

6.  LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads cater to a career-oriented demographic, making them ideal for B2B marketing initiatives. While LinkedIn Ads may be costlier than other social media platforms, their ability to deliver targeted inbox message ads directly to potential customers ensures maximum impact, particularly for businesses seeking to connect with professionals in their industry.

7.  Pinterest Ads

Pinterest's visual platform provides a fertile ground for advertising products and driving sales organically. With millions of users discovering new content daily, Pinterest Ads seamlessly integrate into users' browsing experience, offering businesses an effective avenue to showcase their products and drive traffic to their website.

Organic posting on Pinterest offers an effective way to generate backlinks to websites and attract additional traffic to products and blog articles. By creating captivating images and optimising titles and descriptions with relevant keywords, businesses can enhance their visibility on the platform and attract the attention of their target audience. Leveraging Pinterest's visual nature, businesses can effectively showcase their products and content, driving engagement and expanding their reach.

8.  Meta Marketing (Facebook and Instagram Ads)

With a vast user base across Facebook and Instagram, Meta Ads Manager provides direct access to potential customers. Content marketing on these platforms is paramount, offering businesses the opportunity to build a loyal following by delivering value to their target audience. Combining organic and paid strategies ensures optimal reach and engagement with the right audience.

9.  Maximising Email Marketing

In the realm of digital marketing, email remains a cornerstone strategy for businesses to connect with their audience, nurture leads, and drive conversions. To embark on your email marketing journey, I recommend starting with a user-friendly platform like Aweber.

Aweber offers a comprehensive suite of tools and features designed to streamline the email marketing process, making it accessible even for beginners. With its intuitive interface and customizable templates, Aweber empowers businesses to create engaging email campaigns that resonate with their audience.

One of the standout features of Aweber is its free version, which allows businesses to kickstart their email marketing efforts without any upfront cost. This free plan provides essential functionality to begin growing your email database and building relationships with subscribers.

Furthermore, Aweber's robust set of automation capabilities enables businesses to deliver targeted messages based on subscriber actions, preferences, and behaviours. From automated welcome sequences to drip campaigns and segmented email lists, Aweber empowers businesses to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.

By harnessing the power of Aweber, businesses can unlock the full potential of email marketing, driving engagement, nurturing leads, and ultimately driving conversions. Whether you're a small start-up or an established enterprise, Aweber offers the tools and resources you need to succeed in the world of email marketing.

10.  Influencer Marketing

Businesses should not only seek influencers with a large audience to promote their products and services, as this may lead to high costs and limited sales. Instead, they should identify niche-related influencers who have the attention of their target audience. Platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter are ideal for finding influencers who can effectively promote products within specific niches, thereby maximising the impact of influencer marketing campaigns.

Mastering a blend of paid and free marketing strategies is essential for small businesses to thrive in today's competitive landscape. Understanding your target audience and leveraging the right platforms ensures maximum reach and engagement, enabling businesses to diversify their marketing efforts and drive sustained growth. By embracing these marketing strategies, small businesses can unlock their full potential and achieve success in the digital realm.

11. Harnessing the Power of Webinars

Webinars have emerged as a dynamic tool for businesses to engage with their target audience, offer valuable insights, and promote their products or services organically. These virtual events provide a platform to gather ideal customers in one place, offering upfront value through educational content tailored to their interests.

By hosting webinars, businesses can position themselves as industry leaders by sharing expertise and insights on topics relevant to their audience. Whether it's providing in-depth training, sharing industry trends, or offering problem-solving solutions, webinars enable businesses to establish credibility and build trust with potential customers.

Platforms like WebinarJam simplify the process of hosting and managing webinars, offering features such as live chat, interactive polls, and Q&A sessions to enhance audience engagement. Additionally, businesses can leverage these platforms to send replay links to registrants, allowing them to access the content at their convenience and extend the reach of the webinar beyond the live event.

One of the key advantages of webinars is the opportunity to seamlessly integrate promotional efforts within the content. Instead of overtly advertising products or services, businesses can subtly showcase their offerings within the context of the webinar's topic. This approach allows for a more organic and non-intrusive promotion, fostering a positive experience for attendees.

Furthermore, businesses can utilise webinars as a revenue-generating strategy by offering paid access to premium content or exclusive training sessions. Integrating webinar registration with email marketing platforms enables businesses to capture leads and nurture relationships with potential customers through targeted follow-up campaigns.

Webinars offer businesses a powerful platform to connect with their audience, deliver valuable content, and promote their offerings authentically. By leveraging webinar platforms and strategic marketing tactics, businesses can maximise the impact of their virtual events and drive meaningful engagement with their target market.

To discover how to transform your website into a magnet for your ideal customers. Make sure you download ‘The Formula’ for free.

To sell products online successfully, you need a plan. Many individuals rush into creating websites or eBay listings, or worse, go to a wholesale supplier and buy their product in bulk before doing any research or tests to ensure their product actually has potential before taking any risks. Selling products online successfully is all about taking calculated risks and seeing the benefits in the long run. Here are some essential things you should keep in mind with regards to how to sell products online successfully. 

Have a nose for what products are already selling successfully online

Keeping your ear close to the ground in terms of what is currently selling online is crucial to anyone looking to really make a success of selling products online. Whether you plan on selling from your own website or selling on a third-party platform or app like eBay, Etsy, or Depop. It is important that you understand how to ‘smell what sells’. You can go through the big eCommerce platforms like Amazon and see what some of their best-selling categories are, eBay will usually also tell you what is selling if you do a quick eBay search for the products you would like to sell, you can quickly see what some of the hot selling products in that niche are. As well as this, you can use research tools such as the Google keyword planner to find out how many searches per month certain products get in Google. If there is a high volume of searches for a particular product, it is a good indicator that it is a viable niche for you to try and break into.

Assess the competition

Just because there is high demand for a product does not necessarily mean you will do well selling it. You also want to assess the competition and see if there are any gaps. If you find a profitable and in-demand niche that you would like to try and compete in. You want to assess how big the competition is. Go to Google and see who is bidding for ad space there, search Amazon and eBay and see how many listings are there for your product or something similar to your product. Before you can sell your products online successfully, you should have a good understanding of the demand for the product and what the competition is like.

Creating a successful marketing strategy for your products

I always recommend a mixture of selling your products from your website and selling on third-party platforms. Why would you not want to benefit from selling everywhere? For eCommerce part of a successful marketing strategy would be to try and list your products everywhere that you believe your customers might be in volume. This includes platforms like eBay, Amazon, and Etsy as well as your own website.

It is important to note that most third-party platforms have rules that you have to follow when it comes to selling on their website. They also usually charge fees to sell on their site and this can impact your profit margins when selling online. This being said, you will have to invest more time and money when marketing your own website.

Your marketing strategy will also include how you get new customers to know about your products. The products that you list on the main 3rd party platforms benefit from internal traffic. This means there are already potential customers using those platforms to find products every single day. This means, in some cases, if you are selling a product that is in demand and the competition is not too high and you do a good job researching what keywords your potential customers are using and include those in your listings, you can get away with leaving most of the marketing to the 3rd party platform.

If, however, you want to benefit from selling products on your own website, you can benefit from doing more of your own marketing. Selling on third-party platforms can limit your ability to market and stifle your growth. It is a lot more difficult to do paid ads, for example, as you would be paying to send traffic to someone else's website that also sells other products for competing brands! This is also true if you go for free advertising methods such as YouTube video marketing or social media marketing. You don’t want to do all of the hard marketing work to send visitors to someone else's website, you want to pay money and spend time marketing the products on your own website so that you can benefit fully from your promotional efforts.

 Focus on repeat buyers

The most successful eCommerce brands in the world rely heavily on repeat business. Especially if you plan on selling products on your own website, it is important that you not only think about how to get people to buy, but that you also prioritize thinking about how you will get them to buy again! It can cost a lot of money and it can take a lot of time to get someone to your website who actually takes action and makes a purchase. You want to ensure that they have the best experience possible with your website including how easy it is for them to buy your product and also how long the product takes to get to them. You also want to ensure the product you are selling is of high quality so they are more likely to want to do business with you again.

If your products develop a good name for being high quality, you are a lot more likely to get repeat business and positive reviews all of which leads to increased future sales.

The key to selling products online successfully is simple, know what products are in demand, know what the competition is like for those products before you even start the selling process. List your products in as many places as possible to benefit from more exposure and capitalize on even more sales. Create your own website and drive your marketing efforts there and grow your sales.

If you are looking to take your marketing to the next level and drive more sales to your products online. Make sure you download 'The formula' for free.