The Basics of Growing Your Online Business

Musfiqur Rahman

Writer

October 29, 2024

16 min read

Most of these business gurus will try to convince you that the more money you invest, the quicker the payback. They do talk about the strategies but if you fail to follow a consecutive path none of those strategies are going to yield the results you want. This article will try to cover the basics.

Find Your Niche

The most important thing about owning a business is to know what you're selling. It is more intricate than just finding an audience. It’s about finding the sweet spot where your passions, skills, and market demand meet. In one word, your brand.

You need to find something that:

• you're excited about

• resonates with people

• can be scaled

After you've found something you're already enthusiastic about, you need to ask yourself two very important questions. “What's the size of the market?” And “What can I bring to the table?” When choosing a product or approach, research the market carefully. Avoid overly saturated spaces, but don’t go too small either. Consulting with a professional digital strategy agency, like Redjumpers, can help refine your positioning and identify growth opportunities.

When choosing a product or a scheme, research the market for it. You shouldn't go for something too saturated because a bigger market calls for strong competition. So consider going through the backdoor. But you don't want it to be too small either, because then, you'll only have like 12 customers.

Target Your Audience

Okay, you have your product. Now you need to ponder “Who will buy this?” Do some extensive market research and look for the people who are willing to pay for your services.

Hop on social media and look up the trends that are relevant to your product. And while you're at it, look into what your rivals are doing— what kind of strategies are working for them, and see if you can come up with something better.

Finally, think about customer experience. Is the product good enough? Will the customers keep coming back? If you are unsure about the areas of improvement, do surveys among small groups of people.

Get some test subjects from Reddit or Facebook. Ask them if they'd like to see an additional feature or if the pricing is okay. Collect their feedback and brace yourself for a proper reality check.

Improve Your Site's Ranking

So, after you know your product has a certain appeal, build a website. This is the part where your business starts to grow.

A good website shouldn't just have an aesthetic appeal, it should also be engaging enough to keep people on your site. Nothing tops quality content when it comes to site rankings. It is undoubtedly the primary driver of your SEO marketing.

Also, search engines love fast websites. If your site’s always down, crawlers can’t get in, and your rankings drop. Good, secure WordPress hosting boosts speed with fast servers, CDNs, and caching. Slow load times mean more people leave, which hurts your SEO.

Keywords

Identify specific keyword phrases for each piece of content on your page. You can use a CRM software. Think about how your visitors might search for a specific page. And once you have an idea, target those keywords.

Different keyword phrases show what people are really looking for. For instance, "all-in-one CRM software" targets those seeking comprehensive solutions, while "affordable CRM software" appeals to budget-conscious users.

Content

According to the Attrock, when you're creating content, it's super important to share your own experiences and knowledge with your audience.

A big part of growing your business is sharing your expertise with your customers. That’s what makes your stuff unique and helps it stand out from all the other content out there, especially with all the AI-generated content being pumped out every day.

Beyond the page URL, title, and headings, your content has the biggest impact on search engine rankings. Optimizing your content is called "on-page SEO" or "page optimization." To do this, use your keyword phrase multiple times—once or twice in the intro and closing paragraphs, and a few more times throughout the rest of the content.

SEO Formatting

When you use a bunch of related phrases in your content, you create keyword clusters. Search engines see this as super relevant and thorough, which helps boost your SEO. For example, adding "affordable legal representation" and "experienced family lawyer" alongside your main keyword shows search engines you're covering all the legal service angles.

Another thing is that search engines favor natural language processing more than anything. Instead of stuffing your content with an insufferable amount of keywords, try keeping the whole thing concise.

Remember, your content should have users in mind, not the search engines. Never sacrifice good writing for search ranking and keep relevant content coming.

The Importance of Organic Traffic

Organic Traffic is the best way to stay relevant and scale your business. When someone searches for a keyword in a search engine, they’re more likely to click through to your site if it ranks on the first page.

The great thing about SEO is that it’s organic, meaning you don’t pay for each visitor who lands on your site. However, SEO still requires a monetary investment, as building traffic takes time and resources.

Metadata plays a huge role in this process. It helps search engines understand what your page is about.

Title Metadata

This is the most crucial Metadata on your page. The page titles you see displayed at the top of a browser window are a product of title Metadata.

Content management websites (CMS) have automation tools to fish out and curate a meta title for each webpage. You need thoroughly thought-out page titles rich with keyword phrases for SEO marketing.

Description Metadata

Description metadata is like your website's little teaser trailer—it’s the short blurb that pops up in search results. It basically gives people a sneak peek at what’s inside.

Think of it as your site’s window display, it's supposed to make people want to click. A good meta description usually has two punchy sentences, to sum up what your page is all about. Search engines might not always show it, but it’s still super important to give them the option!

Keyword Metadata

Keyword metadata doesn’t really impact search engine rankings anymore, but it’s still a good idea to include it.

You already know your key phrases, so why not? For example, if your keyword is "increase sales," throw it into your keyword metadata along with a few other phrases. Just keep it chill—stick to around 3-7 phrases, with each one being 1-4 words long. Easy!

Is Your Site Mobile Friendly?

Let's face it, most internet users are browsing from their phones. And it is no good for your business if your website isn't mobile-friendly.

If you want to put money into anything, making your website mobile-friendly should be your number one priority. Yes, even before ads. A website being mobile friendly involves how well it adapts to mobile settings. Like how long it takes to load images, how effective the dashboard is, are the menu buttons within the touch range, etc.

You can test your mobile-friendliness with open-source tools like Google’s Lighthouse. Work with strong web developers to achieve seamless mobile responsiveness.

Use Google Ads and PPC Advertising

PPC for small businesses drives traffic to websites by online advertising on platforms like Google, Bing, or Facebook. With PPC, owners only pay when users click on their ads. When someone searches for a product, their IP address gets scanned. Based on their IP address, local results will show up first.

The rate for each click depends on your targeted keywords and your visitor's location. Your goal should be to get people to start wondering about a few more relevant things when they stumble upon your website. This way, they will stay on your page for longer periods.

Pay-per-click ads don't have to cost you a fortune. Because there are Google and Facebook ads. With Google and Facebook, you can customize everything— pricing, demographics, keywords, you name it.

Don't Hesitate to Use FOMO

FOMO is short for ‘fear of missing out.’ In pop psychology, FOMO is used to describe the anxiety of being left out of something exciting.

Businesses weaponize, oops optimize, strong human emotions all the time to boost their sales. So don't worry because it is fairly ethical.

CTA Marketing

Did you know that 25% of your visitors will leave your website if it takes more than 4 seconds to load? Also, two-thirds of your initial visitors might never find your website through ads again. As a small business, can you really afford to lose potential clients?

CTA Marketing uses direct and concise language to get people riled up. They contain persuasive verbs like “try,” “get,” or “join” to create appeal. And phrases like “Sign up now” or “Buy now” are used to create urgency.

Imagine you own a spa, and you put out a student offer or discount for 3 days. You are constantly giving the customers a Call to Action (CTA) by saying things like “Be one of the first 13 people to get this offer by registering!” or “Don't miss out on this opportunity to pamper yourself!”

Influencer Marketing

In the age of social media, influencers are like prophets. You know how you are more inclined to buy something when someone you admire suggests it to you? These micro-celebrities have tons of loyal followers.

Influencer marketing is when you get influencers to do the promotion. Also, you don't even always have to pay them! If they are a smaller influencer, you can just send a PR package or, in simpler words, send free stuff.

Another thing, don't go for someone too popular. In most cases, they either decline or ask for a price too high. Look for someone with under 15k followers if you want them to do it for free.

Use Tools to See How Your Business Is Doing

Businesses mostly use their intuition and guesses to see how they are doing. Their growth strategy also depends on intuition. But the thing is, intuition can't hit the mark 100% of the time, can it?

Don't waste your time guessing when you can just run all the data through a bot. The bot will tell you about your audience, what drives the sales, and point out the areas of improvement.

Google Analytics is a tool that lets you get all the insight you need. Even though all this information is neatly organized and beautifully presented, new users may find it a bit overwhelming.

If you do find it overwhelming, you can add plugins. MonsterInsights would be a great choice. This will allow you to easily access the most important reports inside the WordPress dashboard.

Make it Easy to Contact You

After investing in guest blogging and affiliate marketing, you'll have tons of people flocking to your website. You need to keep them engaged by interacting with them.

For small businesses, personalizing interactions can make a big difference because, at the risk of sounding too obvious, customers appreciate the human touch. You can follow a few steps:

• Create a dedicated email for customer questions

• Offer a phone number with clear hours you're available

• Add live chat to your website for real-time help

• Create a simple, easy-to-use contact form on your site with fields for name and email

• Include links to your social media

• Keep an FAQ section

• Clearly state that you provide a 24/7 response time

Conclusion

Look, here's a thing, starting and running a business doesn't have to financially cripple you. You may study 50 different business strategies but throwing them all in the mix at once is a little impractical. So, learn to prioritize.

After the business is booming, you can slowly start increasing prices. Because now you have testimonials and reviews from so many people, therefore your market value naturally gets higher.

Since you are an entrepreneur, you need to constantly work on your mindset. In this case, the best tip would be to always be welcoming to new experiences and don't hold back. It's all up to you so take control!