8 Things You Need To Know When Marketing Your Online Business
When you first start marketing your online business, you’re going to need to figure out your marketing budget. Some people who are new think they have zero budget, and while you may be able to get started with no budget other than your time, eventually you’re going to need to have a real marketing budget.
Marketing is really an investment and not just an expense. Your marketing, when planned correctly, should deliver you a return on investment that makes it worth doing. In this way, you can take your business to the next level.
FREE Checklist: How To Create An Effective Sales Funnel
How To Set A Budget When Marketing Your Online Business
1. What’s in Your Sales Funnel?
Before you spend more than time on marketing your online business, ensure that you have an effective sales funnel. For example, what happens when someone gets onto your email list? What happens when someone buys a product from you? There should be a plan in place to pull people through your funnel to your most expensive product. You may have several funnels, or you may have one funnel – it doesn’t matter; know what’s in it and how it works.
2. Which Platform Will You Use?
When you do place an advertisement, which platform are you going to use? That’s going to inform something about your budget. It may cost more to place an advertisement in a print magazine than it will cost you to place a Facebook advertisement, which may cost less than advertising on Google, and so forth.
3. What Are Your Goals?
It’s important to understand your goals in terms of how many people you want to reach, as well as how many sales you will likely make from that reach. If the industry conversion rate is 2%, start your figures with that number and run small tests targeting your ideal audience to find out if it’ll work. Then you can increase your budget (technically to infinity) if you have a positive return on investment (ROI).
4. What Will It Take to Reach That Goal?
Obviously, you’re going to start with numbers, using your own conversion numbers from such tactics like your email marketing, landing page figures or industry figures. Starting with that information can inform you about what it will take to reach your goals. Say the industry conversion to click an ad is 2%, and conversion of the people who click the ad is 4%. With this information, you can figure out how many you need to reach your goals.
5. How Long Do You Have?
Another factor to determine is how much time do you have. If you’re promoting a time-limited item like a live webinar or event, then you are going to be limited in how long you can run the ads. This means you may need a higher budget for a shorter time to reach enough people.
6. Do You Have The Skills?
When you look at all the factors associated with running ads or marketing in the way that you want to, do you have the skills? If you need to hire someone to help you, then that will add to your budget. Keep in mind for some types of marketing it may pay off in big ways to hire an expert to help you. For example, consider hiring a content strategist who knows how to ensure that you get the results you want.
7. Do You Have the Resources?
Marketing an online business does cost money and it costs time. Both are important. But, if you do it intelligently, the truth is that it’s an investment for your business that should afford a good return on investment – making it not really an expense at all.
8. What Are Other Ways to Do It?
If you really can’t afford any paid marketing, and you’re not on a time limit, there are some effective free internet marketing tools. These include content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. If your funds are limited and you do have time to experiment, then this might be the way you go.
Free Checklist: Sales Funnels For Marketing Your Online Business
You need to create an effective sales funnel if you want to succeed in marketing your online business. So many businesses don’t create a plan when it comes to marketing. Instead, they do what everyone else is doing or what they feel is easiest or cheapest, without knowing whether or not it actually works.
When you create an effective sales funnel it puts your business on autopilot and consistently turns prospects into paying customers if you structure it the right way. To learn more, download my free Sales Funnel Checklist which outlines the best way to market your business to produce the intended result, lots of traffic, lots of prospects and lots of sales.
