You want to start an online business but you don't know where to
begin. Do you have an idea that no one has ever seen? Perhaps
you've got a new idea on an old thing. Whatever it may be, you
need to have a plan of action. You need to have a business plan.
A business plan consist of a business summary, a list of goals
or objectives to be accomplished by the business, and a marketing
plan.
The business summary is a brief discription of the business in
question. It is also an integral part of the overall plan.
The marketing plan will address all the details of the business.
A few things are taken into consideration when developing the
marketing plan.
-Target market
-Competition
-Advertising
-Pricing
-Payment method
-Shipping
Determine your target market. The target market is comprised of
the type of people that you would want to be visiting your new
website.
Research your competition. Choose a product or service that is
either unique or useful to other people. Now that you have chosen
a product. Visit other websites that offer similiar products or
services. Check out the prices on the other sites and see what
marketing strategies they are using. See what you like or dislike
and if you can improve on any of them.
Choose your advertising strategy. There are many options to
advertising a business online and you should be prepared to spend
some money on them. I'm not going to go into the details of each
option here but rather give a brief list of the methods.
->Pay-per-click (PPC) programs. Just as the name says, you place
a link or banner to your site and only pay for those who click
the link or banner.
->Pay-per-lead programs. Similiar to PPC but you pay for leads
or subscribers.
->Ezine advertising. The practice of advertising in ezines has
become very popular. Ezines are the magazines of the Internet
which focus on a particular topic.
->Opt-in email or Safe list. This is a great way to advertise
but can be very expensive and is easily misused.
->Submit to search engines. Educate yourself on search engines
and how they work. Just as each search engine is different, they
also operate in different ways.
When pricing your product, you want to check the competition and
see what their similiar products are selling for. You don't want
to undersell your product too much because very low prices make
people think that a product is of low quality. On the other hand
overpricing can also scare potential customers away.
Think about what type of payment you will accept. If you decide
to use a merchant account or third party processing, you should
be prepared to accept credit cards. You can also decide if you
will accept checks or money orders.
Determine the shipping method. You should decide on how your
product will be shipped and have the details noted on your site.
Now that you have your business plan, you can start your journey
to online success knowing that you have thoroughly thought out
and planned for your online business.
