How to start an online business can be learned and understood by anyone who wants to become a business person, including you. Although there is no guarantee that you will be successful in doing business online, by studying it and understanding it, you will likely be successful.
In this article, we will show you how to start an online business for beginners. Starting from finding a product that you can sell to how to market it. Read more about 10 Easy Ways to Start an Online Business for Beginners below:
Starting a business is not easy, just like doing business online. But it should be underlined, difficult is not impossible. You can do business online in the following ten ways:
1. Analyzing Market Needs
Determining the products that you will sell is certainly a very vital thing in doing business. By analyzing what the market needs, of course, you will have the potential to compete and win the business competition.
But if you provide products that are far from market needs, of course, this will most likely fail you.
Based on the results of CBS Insight research, 42% of companies went bankrupt because they failed to analyze market needs. The products they sell are not following the wishes of the market and do not solve consumer problems.
So when you are ready to start an online business, you should think "Is Your Product Needed by the Market? And Can Your Product Solve Consumer Problems?".
To help you, we provide some questions that you must answer for the product you are going to sell.
What Problems Are Consumers Facing?
To answer this question, you have to find out what problems your customers are facing and identify them.
In this case, you don't have to worry about running out of trouble. Because there are thousands of problems faced by consumers. You just need to go down to the field to observe and find some of the problems that many of your consumers face.
Is There A Business Opportunity In That Matter?
Klein's goal is to do business, so make sure from the consumer problems you get, there are also business opportunities that you can take.
Because not all problems have business opportunities, now is the time for you to select the tens or hundreds of problems that you can get.
Cross out the ones that don't have a business opportunity and select a problem that has a business opportunity, and think of a product that can solve that problem.
2. Do Market Research
After you get a problem from your consumer who has a business opportunity, it is time to do Market Research.
Why Market Research Is The Most Important Part Of Marketing? Because by researching the market you will be able to determine the right product and get data on how many competitors you have for that product.
So that the foundation of your business is strong, then look for objective data. So you can make decisions from objective data, not based on your opinion or your assumptions.
You can research the market in several ways, including:
Trending Research on Search Engines
Researching Trends in Search Engines is the easiest way to market your business. You can get data on what products are most sought after to solve your consumer problems.
In addition, you will also get data related to the product from that problem, the location that most searched for that product, as well as how much the product was searched for.
To do this research, you can use a variety of tools, ranging from free ones like Google Trends to paid ones like Ubersuggest and Ahrefs, as well as other tools.
Trending Research on Social Media
Besides you researching trends on search engines like Google, you can also research on Social Media. Because Social Media is a medium used by many people to share their problems, including the service or quality of a product.
You will find many posts from your prospective customers related to the problems they are facing, as well as product reviews from your competitors.
Join Online Forums or Offline Forums
Surely you often hear forums or groups that discuss a certain product, right? Like Female Daily which discusses skincare products. You can join there and retrieve data according to what you need.
Make a Short Survey
Another step that you can use is to create a short survey. With this method, you can also ask for criticism and suggestions from your potential customers directly.
But what needs to be underlined is don't make surveys that are too long and complicated, long surveys will make your prospective customers bored and lazy to answer your questions later.
3. Analyzing Competitors
In starting an online business, you must be able to beat your competitors, right? But what if you don't know what methods your competitors are using? Of course, this will be difficult.
To understand the methods your competitors use, the advantages and disadvantages of competitors, and how many competitors your online business has.
To make it easier for you to identify Online Business Competitors, here are the steps you can use.
Create a Competitor Group
To make it easier to analyze online business competitors, we can divide them into three groups. That is:
- Primary Competitors: Those who sell products that are the same as your product and with the same target or not much different from your target market.
- Secondary Competitors: Those who sell products that are the same as our products but the target market is different from our target market.
- Tertiary Competitors: Those who do not compete with us, but produce the same products as us.
By grouping into several groups, it becomes easier for you to prioritize which competitors are your toughest competitors.
Visit a competitor's website or landing page
After you divide your competitors into several groups, it's time for you to focus on the competitors who are your toughest rivals.
You can start by visiting the site or landing page of your main competitor. Pay attention to their website in detail. The advantages that you will get by visiting your competitors' websites are:
- Product photos and details of the products they offer including prices and more.
- A form of a call to action (CTA) is commonly known as the ordering feature on their website.
- View from their website.
- The SEO techniques they use.
- And others.
Go to Competitor's Social Media
Apart from visiting their website, you can also visit their social media. By visiting their social media you can get some important data for your online business. As:
- How many followers do they have?
- Reviews of their goods.
- Testimonials from their customers.
- And others.
4. Find Ideas For Online Business Models
You have got a lot of data, then you can determine ideas and models for the online business that you will live.
Look for ideas that your customers like the most. Remember you can sell the same product as competitors but you have to have a creative idea of how you introduce your product and sell it to consumers.
Because by using creative ideas, Kalain has special characteristics that can distinguish your product from your competitors.
5. Determine the Target Market of Online Business Products
The data that you got above will be competitive even at this stage. Because to determine the target market, we must know the data from the results of market research and the number of competitors in our online business.
We can start with a more specific target market than our competitors, and try to master that more specific target market. So that we can develop gradually.
You can use a marketing strategy with the target market grouping method. You can divide it into two parts. That is
- Demographics include age, location, status, occupation, background, income, and more.
- Psychographically which includes hobbies, interests, religion, culture, and others.
You can group them according to the data you get above. And decide which one is your priority.
6. Types of Products That Can Be Sold Online
After researching the market, analyzing competitors, and determining the target market, now we are determining the products that we can sell online, following our main goal, namely online business.
However, to determine that product, you have to research all the data you can. To help you, here are the types of products that can be sold online:
- Physical Products: Gadgets, Medical Devices, Furniture, Foodstuffs, and others.
- Digital Products: Accounts, Ebooks, Software, and more.
- Service Products: Ticket Ordering, Delivery of Goods, Digital Marketing, and others.
The important point is to make sure you have Unique Selling Points (UPS) so that you can be well known by your consumers later.
7. Create a Website or Landing Page
Surely you will think, there are already many marketplaces, why should you create a website? Because the website is not just for selling. The website is also useful as a brand for your business.
From Verisign's data, 56% of consumers do not trust online businesses that do not have a website. So in our opinion, a website is still very important for an online business.
With a website, you can also optimize it on the Google search engine, and to sell on Instagram, you also still need a website as a place for you to sell online.
8. Use the Right Marketing Strategy
Now is the time to market our online business. However, to market, it should not be careless, because if we market it carelessly, it is not impossible that what we are doing will be in vain.
Some of the steps that you can use to market your online business are:
Using Google My Business
The first thing you should do is register your business on Google my Business. Because by registering your business on Google My Business, potential customers can get your business data easily.
Such as business name data, address on Google Maps, telephone number, operating hours, company website, and others. Even customers can give their reviews on Google My Business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
So that your online business is easy to find, you have to optimize it on search engines like Google and others.
You have to compete with millions of websites to get the first rank on Google. Then you have to be a little serious in this optimization stage.
Social Media Optimization
Besides you have to optimize on search engines, you also have to optimize it on social media. This is interrelated with search engine optimization, so you cannot separate this stage from the SEO stage.
9. Continue to Keep Existing Customers
Besides you have to find new customers, of course, you can't let go of existing customers. Because by retaining existing customers, your online business can keep going.
Provide various offers that can make existing customers stay and continue to subscribe to you.
10. Provide Attractive Extra Services
You can provide extra services that are not provided by your competitors. For example free shipping, discounts on certain purchases, and others that can attract new customers to buy your products.
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