Online business is one of the best business ideas to make money and be on the path to financial freedom. It is a business that is setup, operated, or managed over the internet. It makes you become your boss. The best part is that it is an easy-to-start business, and anyone can do it.
Online Business is an opportunity to sell something you believe can change the living condition of the people or provide the solution to the needs of the people. That means, for it to be successful, it should fix the trouble, accomplish a demand or deal with something the marketplace wants.
The most important part of starting an online business is to have a plan to market your product or services. While paying for ads may help you get your name out there, it won’t necessarily generate sales.
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Social media helps with exposure to clients and can be a personal approach to marketing, depending on your niche. When using social media marketing, find out your target audience, if not, it will be for nothing.
Another good option for marketing is email marketing. It works best if you have an online course you are selling. Work on growing your list before you launch your business to ensure sales right from the start.
Finally, utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to reach more people. People use google every day to answer questions, or find answers to solutions they need. Make sure your business has a chance to show up in their search results.
Steps on How to Start an Online Business in Nigeria
1. Choose your business brand
The first step is to choose your business brand. Having idea of the kind of business to start will help you decide your line of business, or business niche.
What are those things you feel people would gain from your business? What problems can your business solve? What is the difference between your business and your competitors? Who is your target audience or prospective customer?
You also need to consider the possibility of implementing your idea and avoid choosing an online business simply because others have been successful with it. What is the overall cost of starting an online business? Research your choice of industry. You need to do this to help you identify your business competitors. The knowledge will help you ascertain if your choice of industry is saturated. If that is the case, you can adjust or change your business choice to compete with your competitors.
Another task in choosing your business brand is to create your products/services. It may include using social media platforms to identify what kind of products or services people are searching. It will give you an idea of the needs of the people and create your products or services that will provide for their needs or solve their problems.
While using social media, find your audience. It involves getting to your prospective customers with your products. You must have great customers behind you.
That means success for your business. You should write good content, and have better pricing, and proper payment structures that work for your customers to provide them with things they need.
2. Set up your business website
Millions of e-commerce businesses are created daily. It requires the use of a website that may be third-party or personalized. Building a website is now easy and may be set up in less than 30 minutes. Listed below are the simple steps to create a website.
(a) Choose a Unique Domain Name and Register It
This is one of the most important decisions to make in setting up your site. It is the address for your site. It is just like the address of your physical shop. It has to be something people will remember about your website.
Sometimes, the business name you have chosen may not be available for you to use, that is, it has been taken. You have to find another one close to the concept of your brand or business.
Consider the following elements when brainstorming for domain names:
- A domain name that is easy to say and spell
- Short domain name
- Go for .com, .org, or .net. as these are popular
- You may use your name
- Avoid the use of numbers and hyphens in choosing a domain name
(b) Host Your Domain Name
The next thing after you have successfully registered your domain name is to host your site. Find the best hosting provider for your kind of website. The web hosting provider provides the web space where your website files are stored and other services needed for your website to be visible on the internet. Compare pricing, storage, bandwidth, etc with other providers.
(c) Other Steps to Take
- Install a WordPress and select a theme
- Customize your website to suit your choice of business
- Install the necessary plugins
- Create significant pages that will help you engage your audience and menu.
3. Create Business Content to Engage Your Audience
Carefully write content that highlights to customers the likely benefits to obtain from your business. You have to be consistent in creating content for your business online. Writing content that relates to your business will help engage your customers and your brand would place you as an authority in your niche. Consistent writing makes the audience perceive you as an authority in your business.
To create content that can help you determine what people are searching on Search Engines or get directly to your customers, a Keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner would help you. It will help you find keywords that people search on Search Engines each month and the Volume.
4. Create Sales Funnel
At this step, your website is set and ready, you have to design a system to convert your traffic into leads and your leads into sales. There are many ways to create your sales funnel to optimize sales.
- Email list: You can get email address of your customers as they comment on your post. These Email lists may be used in the future to reach out to the customers on other products, updates, or News Letters
- Lead Magnet: Sometimes, offer can be given away to the audience in exchange for their email addresses. A system of old methods of trading, trade by barter. This is a good business idea to make money online.
- Landing Page: Create a separate page, landing page, dedicated to giving away offers to your lead magnet in exchange for their emails.
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