Every online business owner considers the possibility of scaling their business. It is always an attractive idea: being able to live comfortably off that online business. But what's the important thing you'd need - traffic to your online course.
Yes, it is possible to scale every online business.
Scaling a business simply means increasing the revenue the business generates without a proportionate increase in the cost of running the business.
When you think of scaling your online business, think of making much more money without putting in significantly more time or effort. This chapter is dedicated to scaling your online business.
You can scale any online business only if you apply proven principles. These proven principles and methods are considered in the different sections of this chapter.
How to grow steady traffic to your online course
As an online business owner, traffic is one of the things you should be very concerned about. This is because the higher the traffic to any of your platforms, the higher the earning potentials.
To sell any product, people need to visit your website. The traffic to your website is an indication of the visitor count of the website. The visitor count of your website is an indication of its visibility.
The more people that know about your website and visit it, the higher the chances of selling your products and services. We now move on to the proven strategies for improving traffic to your website.
Use Email marketing to get more online course sales:
Email marketing is a goldmine, and you should make as much as possible off this goldmine.
You want to maximize email marketing because it is cost-effective that has delivered over time.
With email marketing, you are sure of a better ROI on marketing activities. You can generate traffic for your website by creating email marketing content that leads to your website.
Encouraging your subscribers to share the content with their network is a great path to generating traffic through email marketing.
Email marketing is at the top of this list because it is a well-established path to improved website traffic.
With the available analytical tools, you would be able to maximize email marketing as these tools provide insight into the type of content that generates traffic.
Use Search engine optimization(SEO) to get more organic traffic:
Search engine optimization refers to optimizing a website for the search engines, and, in extension, the viewers. Keywords play an important role in how the Internet is used for a range of activities.
When a website has appropriate keywords, the search engines rank it better and connect more users to it. Search engine optimization is a sure path to better traffic on any website. More persons will find the website, and the conversion rate of the website will be influenced positively.
Instead of just creating content religiously, you can begin by researching keywords and placing them strategically. You should also follow the guidelines of the popular search engines to ensure that your website is properly optimized.
How to use Social media to sell your online course:
As an online business owner, you can do a lot with social media. One of the outcomes of strategic social media use is more traffic to your website. The importance of an active social media presence cannot be overemphasized.
Create accounts on social media platforms most appropriate for engaging your target audience and create content consistently. Increase the visibility of your social media pages by employing measures that range from giveaways to including appropriate hashtags in your posts. Then link your social media pages to your website to generate traffic to your website from social media.
Social media has massive potential for exposure. Create content that will encourage large followership and create a path that leads from social media to your website.
Since your website is the platform where you most likely carry out sales activities, major efforts should be put into ensuring that a steady stream of visitors is maintained.
How to use marketing channels (Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Ads and Search Engine Optimization) in scaling up your business.
Scaling up is the dream of the average online business. Thankfully, there are established channels and tools you can apply in scaling your business. This section focuses on how you can use content marketing, social media marketing, paid ads, and search engine optimization in scaling your business.
Let's start off by agreeing that the ability to scale an online business is highly dependent on the visibility/traffic on the website. We now consider how content marketing, paid ads, and paid ads will help your business grow.
As defined in a previous chapter, scaling a business means improving the revenue of a business without a proportionate increase in the cost of running the business. This can be achieved through routes such as increasing the cost of products and services, branding products, and services for a specific market, and improving the quality of clientele.
Paid ads and social media marketing:
Opportunities to scale your brand with paid ads. Paid ads are available on almost every platform, from social media platforms to platforms for business communications. Thus, for every audience you wish to access, there are paid ads opportunities. Maximize paid ads to put your business in front of a specific audience.
You should start out by evaluating the potential in the different platforms. Identify platforms where you will be able to connect maximally with your target audience. Choose these platforms and run ads with your best content.
Ensure that the message is very clear in your ad, and the ad is properly linked to your website. Your target audience will determine the approach you will apply to the ads.
Overall, the ads should engage, inform, and convert a sizeable proportion of your target audience. A major benefit of social media marketing is that it offers access to a specific audience.
If you consider the major social media platforms, for example, you will note that each is adapted to a somewhat specific audience. Maximize these platforms to stretch the reach of your business.
Content marketing and search engine optimization:
Content marketing is another essential tool that can be applied in numerous ways to improve the reach of a business. You can apply content marketing in scaling your business by guest posting.
Guest posting opportunities aimed at scaling a business should be targeted at a specific audience that represents the future of the business. Well-established platforms are most suitable for guest posting when the goal is scaling the business. This also applies to other opportunities, such as speaking at conferences and being a guest on podcasts.
All opportunities such be aimed at establishing your brand as one of the strongest players in the game to the trust of your target audience. With these opportunities, always remember to incorporate keywords and nuggets relatable to your target audience.
How to use A/B Testing to improve conversion rates:
Engagement of customers and leads of online businesses is routinely done online. This means that all efforts should be put towards ensuring that engagement is done in the most suitable way.
A/B testing, otherwise known as split testing, is an effective approach for identifying the most suitable version of a product, service, or tool. As the name suggests, A/B testing involves testing both versions of a product to determine the best option.
It can be applied for a variety of products and tools, ranging from landing pages to forms. In running an online business, it is important to get engagement right as it would determine the conversion and scalability of your business. A/B testing guides you in applying the most suitable tools.
However, the insight gotten from this testing is dependent on the quality of the test. If you do not get the testing right, the insights gotten will be of little value. You should consider the following when carrying out A/B testing.
Identify your audience:
Start out by identifying your audience. The participants should be representative of your target audience. You want actionable insights from the test. A representative audience will give you that actionable insight since their suggestions will convey salient points in improving service delivery.
Have a hypothesis:
Split testing should be guided by a hypothesis. You should have an idea about the core needs of your audience and use them. You can develop this hypothesis by applying methods such as usability testing. The hypothesis you develop guides the split testing in that you wouldn't be testing random products and ideas. Instead, you will be testing the most suitable products and ideas.
Develop a reproducible process:
Split testing should be scheduled into the routine activities of online businesses. You should carry out split testing for as many ideas and products as possible to ensure that they are properly tailored to your target audience. Thus, you should develop a reproducible process for split testing. Developing such a process would save time when working in subsequent tests and encourage proper documentation.
Having covered these essential processes, let's draw this chapter to a close. A major takeaway from this chapter is the fact that it is possible to scale an online business following established processes.
Why content marketing and continuous blogging are essential in online course business?
As an online business owner that sells online courses or any other product, you need to maintain a steady relationship with your audience. You can do this through content marketing and continuous blogging.
Online courses, businesses need an audience that trusts their skills and expertise. To inspire this trust in your audience, you need content marketing and blogging.
With continuous blogging, you can establish your authority in specific areas. Your blogging strategy could be focused on helping your audience understand the basics of ideas and terminologies in the field. You could also strategize your blogs to inspire interest in your area of specialization.
As an online business owner, you should also focus on content marketing to interact better with your target audience. Content marketing and continuous blogging are important for breaking into new markets and reaching new audiences.
Let's say you want to introduce a new product to your audience; you can begin a blog series on the product. That way, you will establish yourself as an authority even before the product is launched.
Customers will then trust your understanding of the subject area and pledge your loyalty to your brand. It is also important to mention the relationship between web traffic and continuous blogging.
Search engines such as Google tend to rank websites with fresh content better than websites without a content marketing plan. Continuous blogging is thus a sure path to improved ranking on search engines.
You should plan your content marketing and blogging activities with consistency and quality in mind. It is important to put up content regularly. The content you put up should be of great quality, based on proper research and with your audience in mind.
In this chapter, we touched on your audience a lot. This is because the audience is the bane of every online business.