Starting a new business is always a challenge, and never more so than when it comes to internet ventures. Did you know that 90% of online businesses fail within the first four months? That’s a frightening statistic, but the good news is that those that make it have the potential to be really successful. What’s more, you can significantly increase your chances of success by taking the right steps as you get your business going. With this in mind, how should you begin?
Identify An Opportunity
Every business venture starts with the identification of a unique opportunity. What can you provide that consumers want and that nobody else is providing? Do you have the skills to deliver it effectively? Can you raise the funding you’ll need? Can you handle the competition, even if new players get involved after seeing your idea put into action?
Once you know what it is that you want to do, you’ll need to investigate the level of customer interest, determine what customers are willing to pay for it, and develop your initial business strategy.
Build A Great Website
When you run an online business, your website is your front office. It’s the first point of contact for anybody who wants to find out about you. It may also be the place from which you make your sales. This means that it absolutely has to impress.
A website that makes a good impression on consumers doesn’t mean a website that’s overdesigned with lots of bells and whistles. In fact, unless they’re integral to what you’re selling, equipping it with the very latest features is unwise because it has to load quickly – slow loading times are the number one reason why customers lose interest and go away. It does, however, need a responsive design so that it can adapt to whatever device it’s being viewed on, and this needs to be kept up to date. In as far as the two are compatible, it should also meet accessibility standards. Finally, it needs a strong landing page designed to guide visitors into your sales funnel. This can mean strong, persuasive writing, or it can mean video. In either case, quality should be paramount.
Develop Your Marketing Strategy
Marketing the business you’ve built is not the same as putting up a few adverts and talking about it on social media. To be successful, you need a strategy. If you take a look at the Chern Lee official website, you can see how Iconic Industry, which is managed by Chern Lee, approaches this through data analytics. Drawing on big data available from a variety of sources, it helps businesses to identify their target customers and deliver exactly the sort of marketing that those customers are looking for.
A marketing strategy informed by data analytics can be much more refined than was possible in the days before we had the computing power to take on such large quantities of information. This means that it’s far less wasteful, with a much higher return on every dollar spent. It also makes it possible for you to analyze your results as your strategy develops so that you can continually improve on it.
Build Your Brand
Beyond the immediate process of marketing your products or services, you need to market something else – your business itself. The internet is ready-made for this kind of work, but it’s vital to know what you’re doing. Building up your brand is about much more than just choosing good signature colors, developing a good logo and using a catchy slogan. More than anything else, it’s about consistency. People will feel more comfortable doing business with you when they feel that they know what you stand for.
Developing your brand is about determining your organization’s personality and values and letting them show in everything from the way you design your ads to the way your staff interacts with customers one on one. It means that you need a consistent approach in your communications on social media, so focus on quality rather than quantity, and take on only what you can maintain. Over time, you’ll be able to do more, because if you nurture your brand from the start, then it will keep growing.
When your brand grows, so does your potential. You can achieve the recognition that lets you expand into new areas of the internet and fresh markets. This kind of diligence and hard work is essential. There are no shortcuts to success, but if you make the effort, then there’s no reason why your internet venture couldn’t be the next big thing.