12,784 Words Online Marketing Guide: How To Find More Customers and Grow Your Business

This is the first chapterGo to Chapter 2 – Marketing Fundamentals

What is online marketing and how can it help you find more customers?

Does the guy in the picture remind you of the times when you are trying to find more customers for your business? Drowning in the sea of information. You are shouting but no one hears you.

Everyone wants to grow their business – but few business owners and entrepreneurs manage to get it done. 96% of all businesses shut down in their first ten years – a statistic that reflects the difficulty of finding new customers and growing a business.

So let’s be honest for a moment. Do you have a plan for attracting paying customers to your business?

If your answer isn’t a definite “yes” – you’ve got a problem. You don’t know how you’re going to get bigger, grow your business, attract new customers and connect with your audience online.

And if you don’t have a plan, how likely are you to end up in the 4% of business owners that make it past the first decade?

Not very, right?

That’s why it’s crucial to have a clear strategy for getting new clients profitably. Without an effective growth plan, your business may never give you returns and freedom you want to see. And isn’t that why you started your business? To be able not to have a job, do what you love, follow your passion, help others AND live the life the way YOU want?

The positive news is that there is a way to get your product in front of people who want to buy it immediately. There is a way to boost your sales and your revenue significantly. There is a way to grow your business consistently using online marketing, year in and year out.

And no – I’m not selling you a bag of magic beans that’ll sell your product while you sleep. This isn’t Jack and the Beanstalk.

What I am about to show you is a proven system to grow your business and find new clients.

I remember how much time, money and effort it took me to learn how to find more customers and navigate the trenches of online marketing. It wasn’t an easy task, but I would like to make it easier for you.

I know the importance of making quality information accessible in an easy to digest format, while not charging thousands of dollars for it. It is my way to give back to the economy, and to those who just need that little push and a right advice at the right time to get their business to the next level.

Now, back to getting the results you want to get by marketing online.

Unless you’re offering something unique, other businesses are already successfully selling what you’re trying to sell. If you’ve got a product, someone out there wants to buy it – and the internet is the best way to reach millions of interested consumers.

I’m not going to give you any dodgy manipulation techniques, black-book persuasion secrets or “wolf of wall street” style sales scripts. What you will get from this guide, is an understanding and complete knowledge how to plan, execute and profit from advertising online. How to establish your online presence and how to continuously generate customers and revenue for your business. How to use the internet to get your product in front of prospective customers reliably and predictably.

That way, you can make immediate sales and ROI on your ad spend – no digital wizardry necessary. But don’t get me wrong here. Marketing is not an overnight shortcut to success. It is a long-term play with one major goal – to connect with your ideal customers and tell your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling.

How did most businesses approach marketing not that long ago? They sent out some flyers, got an ad in Yellow Pages, may be used some bigger budgets to get a huge billboard up and some air time on local radio and T.V. Did it work? No one knows. Everyone just did it because it seemed like a proper way to market and, hey, everyone was doing it. There was no way to track the results.

With social media and internet, everything has changed again. Campaigns can be measured and tracked, the cost of customer acquisition and ROI can be seen just days into the campaign, you get instant access and ways to show your product to the customers that are more likely to buy from you.

And it is not only about you. Customers now suddenly have a voice, and it’s a powerful one. It is your job now to find your customers online and connect with them, talk and, most importantly, listen. Hang out where they do, talk to them in the language they speak, share their interests and most importantly deliver interactive, valuable content wherever they go and whatever the platform you choose to interact with your customers.

I am not saying that offline marketing is dead. It is still alive, but it is not as effective as it once was. People are so used to TV and radio ads, billboards, flyers in the mail and full page ads in magazines – they are no longer paying attention to them. Online marketing is, in my opinion, a much better way to connect with your customers and sell your products/services.

Online marketing is better than traditional marketing.

Let’s say a company like B.M.W. decides to run a Super Bowl ad.

It costs $5 million to run the ad. It costs millions more to produce the video for it. And at the end of the day, when the company’s executives are sitting in their top-floor boardroom…

They don’t even know whether the ad “worked” or not, because you know what happens when you run a traditional ad?

Very little.

Even the best Super Bowl ad in the world won’t make a lot of people run to the nearest B.M.W office. A State Farm video won’t have people rushing to change their insurance company, and it doesn’t matter how great it is.

T.V. ads, like all traditional advertising, are a long-term game; one that requires deep pockets to play and a long amount of time to deliver results.

While huge corporations can afford to reach into the deep pockets to pay for the primetime TV air time, most entrepreneurs and small business owners like you and I certainly can’t.

• A billboard in a large American city will run you $5,000-$10,000/month (on average).
• Running T.V. ads during a prime-time show will cost you $2,000-$30,000/month, depending on your city.
• Magazine ads in nationally syndicated magazines can cost as much as $100,000/month for 1 page!

These prices do work for national corporations, but they aren’t right for small and medium-sized businesses.

The internet is different – and here’s the first advantage it has over traditional marketing methods.

1. You Can Target Your Ideal Customers With Extreme Precision

Online, you can choose the people who see your ads. Modern technology makes it possible to reach your likeliest customers by selecting their location, interests, demographics, and interests.

That way, you don’t have to waste your budget on people who are not likely to buy from you. You can exclude tire kickers, disinterested audiences and individuals you don’t want as customers with targeted marketing.

Which means…

2. You Pay a LOT Less Money

With digital marketing, you only pay for the people who see or react to your ad. That means you never waste money on reaching those who you don’t think will be interested – which means massive savings when compared to traditional advertising. And since you’re doing everything online…

3. You Get Instant Analytics (and Sales)

Being online means you instantly see what’s working – and what isn’t. You can see which efforts are driving people to your site and which aren’t, and allocate resources where and when you want.

Being online also means you can make instant sales from your website, which is something we’ll tell you all about in a minute.

But here’s the really great part. When you sell your product online, you can recoup your ad costs instantly. And as long as you’re spending less on ads than you’re getting back in profits, you can continue reinvesting sales into marketing for an infinite ad budget.

Cool, right?

With online advertising, you’re never going to be in the position of not knowing whether an ad’s working or not. You’ll never have to worry that maybe your latest marketing effort is a flop.

You get instant feedback – AND sales – which puts you in the driver’s seat of your business.

Now, at this point, you may have a lot of questions – like…

• How – and where – do I run ads online?
• How do I target customers who’ll buy my product?
• How do I make sales online – or get people to come to my store?
• Is my budget big enough to get started?

And probably many others. That’s okay – and there’s absolutely no reason to be intimidated.

To show you just how online marketing works, let’s look at the following case study.

Robert’s Photography Studio

Robert, whose friends and customers call him Bob, runs a wedding photography studio. He’s a first-class professional whose clients happily pay him $2000 for an average day of shooting.

It may seem like a ton of money – but Bob also needs to choose the best photographs, touch up and edit them as well as find new clients… All of which takes time.

Bob figured that if he could get leads consistently – even if they were relatively expensive – he could focus on doing work instead of looking for clients all the time. So when a friend told him about getting leads online, Bob was very excited.

He made a simple 3-page website himself. On the front page, he puts a big red button that allowed people to book him for a specific day. He then promoted the new website and drove traffic (visitors) to the website by running ads on Facebook.

After a week of running the ads at $50/day, Bob had spent $350. He got 10 leads through his website – of which 5 ended up becoming customers, bringing $10,000 into his business.

That’s a massive 2857% ROI – but if you’re a first-class professional at what you do, as Bob is at photography, these results aren’t unrealistic!

And if your business is young, you’ll still find that the internet is the easiest way to bring in new clients consistently.

As a matter of fact, this guide will show you, step by step, how you can grow your business in a smart, measurable way…

But first, let’s make sure you’re in the right place by checking if you belong to 1 of the 3 categories of people who have the most to gain from reading the guide.

Who will benefit the most from this guide?

Different businesses need different approaches to marketing. Our guide is best suited for these categories of people:

1. Entrepreneurs. Whether you already have a product to sell or are looking to get into online marketing as an affiliate or entrepreneur, we’ll teach you the basics of digital marketing – and guide you to more detailed information specific to your goals.

2. Small and mid-sized business owners. You’re looking to get in on the massive returns on investment that online marketing offers – and we’ll explain how you can incorporate it into your organization profitably, even if you don’t necessarily have staff dedicated to marketing.

3. Beginner digital marketers. You’re looking for a fast-paced, innovative industry to work in full-time or as a freelancer. This guide will give you a solid foundation in digital marketing, whether you want to start building your skillset or round out what you know.

If you belong to any of these categories, you’ll find this guide useful and full of practical advice. Specifically, here’s what you’ll know by the time you finish reading.

What will you learn after reading this guide?

By the end of this guide, you’ll…

• Be familiar with all the different kinds of digital marketing, from ads and sponsored blog posts to email marketing and sales funnels.
• Understand the difference between inbound and outbound traffic; the meaning of words like CPC, Conversion, Upsell, Remarketing and all the other lingo you need to market online successfully.
• Launch your first online campaign without wasting time, energy and money on things that don’t work.

This guide will allow you to grow as a business for as long as you want to. It will open the floodgates and help you reach customers that would’ve never known about your product or service otherwise. Most importantly, it’ll help you do so profitably and consistently.

Just imagine how much more you’ll be able to do with your business once you start harnessing the power of the internet. This won’t just improve your bottom line by leaps and bounds – it’ll give you the kind of personal income and financial freedom you deserve.

And, once you get great at online marketing, you’ll be able to automate your operations to the point you can make money while sipping mai tais on a tropical beach – if that’s your kind of thing.

That’s what promoting your business online can do for you; but before we get started, let’s discuss the three questions you need to answer to start implementing this guide with the right foundation. It’s important you do so right now – so take a few minutes to read the section below and think about it.

Three Things You Need To Ask Yourself Right Now About Your Business

The following three questions don’t have anything to do directly with marketing techniques – but if you want your marketing to be effective, you need to answer them first.

Where is your business – and where do you want to take it?

It’s important to understand your goals before you start investing in marketing. That’s because your marketing strategy will have to bring you closer to those goals; otherwise, you might be just wasting your time and money.

Goals can include making direct sales, appointment bookings, quote requests, getting your product, service in front of thousands/millions of new eyes and/or get feedback from previous customers. Be realistic and specific about where your business is and where you want to take it when choosing your marketing objectives.

Are you ready to invest in your business?

If you’re selling online, you might see an immediate return on your ad spend – but this isn’t always the case. Most customers need to see a product multiple times before they commit to buying it. More so, they want to interact with the brand first before reaching into their pockets.

This makes digital marketing an investment. You need to be ready to invest for at least 3-6 weeks into a campaign before you see tangible results. Understand this and don’t get frustrated if your first month running a marketing campaign online doesn’t pay off instantly.

Instead, focus on interacting with those new contacts you have gained from your campaign, build personal relationships, and you never know who those people might be. Five $100 purchases and 54 emails can seem like a small return on your ad spend. But you now have access to 54 people you can talk to and discover their world, what bothers them and how you can help. Besides, that little $100 purchase might have come from a purchasing manager of a large corporation deciding to test your product.

How big do you want to get?

The internet offers a nearly infinite supply of customers. As long as you’re willing to find ways to serve them, there’s no limit to how big your business can become.

However, if all you want is to get a clear understanding of how online marketing works by practicing or just to increase your exposure online or get another customer or two – whether because you’re happy with how things are or have other life priorities – that’s okay too. All that matters is being realistic about your goals and what exactly do you want to get out of connecting with your audience online.

Whether you want to 10x your growth or just find a few extra customers, you’re in the right place – and here’s why.

What Makes This Guide Different?

There are loads of marketing guides out there. Unfortunately, there are too many misleading, incomplete or outdated ones – and, as the old adage goes, the bad apples spoil the barrel. And let’s not even start with what they teach in business school and marketing classes in college.

Instead of helping you, a bad introduction to online marketing can make you self-conscious of everything you’re not doing, make you thin spread your efforts and time over dozen of tools and techniques, overload you with information, or simply serve a little more than a promotional booklet for whatever the author sells at the end.

Online marketing moves quickly – and if you don’t learn the basics and start implementing them right away, you risk getting left behind. In that sense, a bad guide to online marketing is worse than no introduction at all because it can intimidate and scare you into doing nothing. What is different about this guide? Besides the fact that it is constantly updated, it teaches you the fundamentals as well as advanced marketing strategies that you will be able to execute on any existing marketing platform or on one that is just getting traction. This guide teaches you to think outside of a box, and that is the key to successful marketing.

Have you ever said, “I wished I had started/invested/done it back then”? Would your business be different if you started connecting with your audience 3 years ago? What about 5 years ago? Heck, even a year ago? I bet it would. I bet you would have developed a lot of new relationships and found many new customers and opportunities. Now let’s fast-forward a year from now. Unless you finish reading this guide to the end, implement strategies, or hire a professional to do it for you, a year from now you will wish you had started today.

With this guide, I wanted to create something different: a simple, no-nonsense manual that helps business owners market online regardless of how tech-savvy they are. Too many entrepreneurs aren’t using the internet to market their business when they should be – and I want to change that. Remember, a great product is just half the battle; the other half is marketing it correctly.

Now, without further ado, let’s get started with the first chapter – Planning Your Online Marketing Campaign and Building The Foundation.

This is the first chapterGo to Chapter 2 – Marketing Fundamentals