I received this question from one of our Information Marketer’s Zone members a few weeks ago and thought it would be valuable to share with you.
The question was:
“What Is Working In Your Online Business?”
Instead of giving just a few tactical answers, I decided to summarize the most important factors that make a difference with LARGE online businesses versus those that do not succeed or stay very small.
WHAT DOES WORK
- Â Thinking medium to long-term (keeps you from making bad decisions on fly-by-night opportunities/marketing methods and products)
- Building a platform by helping people in your market get what they want (through content, advice, coaching, offering better products, helping people use their products, etc…)
- Knowing your market better than your competition, what they want and why they want it…then crafting your marketing on message
- Leverage your strengths to communicate with your market…is it your personality with video, your writing ability, your networking, product development, etc…Â Take the best two or three strengths you have and leverage those in terms of how you setup and market your business
- Being passionate about serving your market…more than ever that makes the difference today
WHAT DOES NOT WORK
Obviously these are the mistakes we see people making daily, you want to avoid these even though they may be enticing at times.
- Picking business models and markets based on what has worked for others but where you don’t have a passion
- Choosing business models or markets purely on your impression of the income potential…jumping around from opportunity to opportunity and market to market
- Thinking short-term at the expense of your long-term credibility, trust and reputation
- Jumping into a market based only on tactics without really knowing or understanding the mental state of the key part of your market
- Thinking of monetization methods as business models, they are simply ways to make money and should be factored into a larger, more strategic business model rather than become the sole business model on their own (Ex advertising, PPC, etc…)
- Confusing marketing methods for business models. Using PPC, SEO, Social, etc… are all methods to reach your target audience – not business models
Have you made any of the mistakes in the “Don’t Do” column?
I can tell you that the top online businesses all fall into the top category – without exception. They build strong, growing profit centers and they continue to grow month-after-month, year-after-year.
Have a question about which direction you should go – post it to the blog.
