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As I continue this online business journey of mine, I have compiled 3 Tools to Get Your Online Business Off the Ground.
This post is a high level overview of the tools and the process. If you’re interested in more details, send me an email or leave a comment.
Once you have a website, you need a lead magnet , you need to distribute that lead magnet, and you need to build an email list of interested potential customers. I know…that’s a loaded list, but I’m not going to unpack that in detail here. Check out these resources if you’re not sure what any of those items are:
Website: I recommend WordPress.org – check here if you don’t know what that is…and here too.
Lead Magnet: Read more about lead magnets here.
Distribution: Google Drive
Email List: MailChimp
How you can build a high quality lead magnet:
Google Docs / Sheets / Slides
(referred to as “Google Docs” from here on out…)
Google Docs is an extremely powerful word processor (much like Microsoft Word), which allows you to create, edit, and collaborate (IN REAL TIME!) on documents. I recommend to use Google Docs to create your lead magnet. There are a lot of built-in templates you can use to get started. Just open the template and edit the contents, keeping the design and color scheme.
Once you are satisfied with your document, you can save it as a PDF from within Google Docs, which will be the format you will distribute as your lead magnet. Just save it somewhere in your Google Drive for later distribution.
By the way…one of the best parts about Google Docs is that it is FREE.
How to grow a list of interested potential customers:
MailChimp
In regular brick & mortar forms of business, marketing is done via snail mail, flyers, billboards, etc… The equivalent to that in online business is email. The inbox of your followers/customers is sacred, and it is one of the most valuable assets to any online business.
MailChimp is one of the tools that facilitates email marketing for your business. The mail thing I like about MailChimp is that you can start for FREE, and the free version actually gives you a lot of features.
Here’s a great resource that will give you some more details on using MailChimp. I’m still learning it myself, but if you’d like to ask me anything about it, please leave a comment or email me.
Google is well-acquainted with MailChimp 🙂
How to provide value to your audience:
Survey Monkey
Business of any kind is predicated on one thing: value exchange. Money is simply a tool with which you are able to receive a product or service that is of value to you. As an online entrepreneur, you have to ensure what you are selling is of value. The best way to do that is to learn more about who you’re selling to, and a tool that makes that simple is Survey Monkey.
… I just realized there’s a lot of monkeying around going on there 🐒 (MailChimp…Survey Monkey…anyway…)
Here’s the best place to find resources on getting started with Survey Monkey:
You can also Google Survey Monkey tutorials and find lots of good info.
Strategy
To recap this high-level overview, I’ll mention the overall strategy of your online business:
Value Exchange
This holds true for a physical brick & mortar business as well as the digital webz ones. When a customer walks in to your store (or visits your site), you must have something to sell, otherwise you’re not going to exchange currency with that person. Dollars with no exchange is called a donation. That’s called a charity.
- Build a WordPress site (or get someone else to do it for you).
- Create a product using Google Docs / Sheets / Slides.
- Use Survey Monkey to hone your product to what your customers ACTUALLY want.
- Use MailChimp to stay in touch with customers and to market new products to them.
Moral of the story: Provide Value. Don’t just hope people will buy your stuff. Make something YOU would buy.
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