Are you looking for ways to grow your business without spending too much time or money? You should check out these 12 lies about growing your business online.
Growing your business online is not as straightforward or glamorous as the media portrays.
Unlike what you see in the media, building your business online takes effort and is as tedious as growing it offline. Certain traits and skills are common to business owners who grow online.
You may not be proficient in all traits and skills required for growing your business online, but you can get by as long as you can delegate tasks to someone on your team or outsource these tasks.
Here are some characteristics you require as a business owner seeking to grow your business online.
Lies About Communication
The media makes you believe you can grow your business online even if you’re inarticulate. This is a damn lie!
To grow your business online, you must be a good communicator. It would help if you were a good storyteller and conversationalist. These are vital skills for customer service and customer satisfaction.
Use simple language on your website, blog post, Google My Business, and social media channels to communicate with your target market. Simple language outsells complicated language and industry jargon.
2. Lies About Risk Taking
Don’t believe the hype that there is little or no risk in starting or growing an online business.
Growing your business online involves risk. After careful thought and planning, it would be best to take calculated risks (reducing the danger) when using search engine optimization, search marketing or social media networks as a marketing strategy. It doesn’t mean you should procrastinate or over-analyse things.
3. Lies About Being a Dreamer
The media often makes it seem as if all you need to start or grow a business online is to dream about it, write your business plan or business goal and then poof… by some stroke of magic, your dreams come true! This is another damn lie.
It’s not enough to dream! Roll up your sleeves and get busy making your dreams come true. Only when you persevere in work rather than in daydreaming will you be able to grow your business.
4. Lies About Overnight Success
Another lie about growing a business online is that it’s fast! Growing a business online takes time. Don’t be fooled by all the “grow your business online” scams that promise overnight success without a clear-cut business strategy. As the saying goes, it usually is if it looks too good to be true.
5. Lies About Being Overly Optimistic
Being overly optimistic can blind you to the costs and consequences of a situation. You can overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs. And you can make poor decisions because you fail to assess the number and magnitude of the risks accurately.
Growing your business online demands that you be cautiously optimistic. It will help if you learn to see opportunities where others only see the problem.
6. Lies About Setting Goals
Please don’t believe the hype that growing your business online is a set-it-and-forget-it affair. To succeed in growing your business online, you need to set SMART goals and have solid KPIs in place with which to measure your performance.
Have you set goals for your website, app, or social media channels? Doing so will help you remain focused and find joy in your accomplishments.
7. Lies About Customer Centricity
Stop believing the lies about customer-centricity. Becoming a customer-centric company is not easy. It is unachievable for most businesses, regardless of what you read in the customer testimonials on their website and other online channels.
It would be best to focus on understanding and satisfying your existing and potential customers’ wants, needs, and buying trends.
8. Lies About Having Passion for the Business
Many entrepreneurs confuse passion with overly optimistic expectations. Don’t let this ruin your startup’s potential. Entrepreneurs benefit from some optimism but can derail their startup’s success if it’s too much. Passion is overrated, especially when you have a shoestring budget. Yes, it would be best to do something you enjoy, but you must ensure your passion has a profit centre. Advocates of passion will have you believe that your dedication and discipline to your work are correlated with the passion you find therein. This is a lie! However, having a love for your business helps you put in the long hours required for a business online.
9. Lies About Being Flexible
The media would have you believe companies are trying to break the 9-5 working model with an online business model. What they are replacing it with is much worse. Flexibility is a boon to the modern workplace — but it shouldn’t have to come at the cost of intrinsic motivation. To enjoy the benefits of flexible work without sacrificing your ability to stay motivated, try to find ways to shift your mindset proactively.
Things change rapidly, primarily online. So it would help if you were quick to adapt to change. Adjusting can mean the difference between your business’s success or failure.
10. Lies About Being Skilled at Marketing
The media would have you believe that growing your business online is easy and you don’t need to be skilled at marketing. This is a damn lie.
You must invest in expanding your marketing knowledge and online community. Doing so can serve you well throughout your entrepreneurial career. Benjamin Franklin put it best when he said, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
11. Lies That Social Media Marketing Is Free
The Internet has become a powerful tool for businesses to reach their target audience. In today’s competitive environment, staying ahead of the curve is essential. This means having a solid presence on search engines and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Social media marketing is a great way to promote your brand and increase sales. However, it requires a lot of effort and resources to get started. Here are three simple steps to growing your online business.
By itself, social media is not enough to drive business growth. Social media’s real magic as a digital skill lies in its ability to inform your customer base. It takes a lot of time to acquire fans and followers, find good stuff to post, guest post, and maintain a solid social presence. And who’s paying whom to do the work? If you want good solid leads that convert, create good solid stuff at your home site.
Social media is not “free”! These days, social media marketing has become pay-to-play. The hours and hours you must spend to see any real success pull you away from more impactful things you could be doing to grow your business.
Your time is worth something! And not only that, but it’s also your most limited resource. It’s the only thing you can never replace or get more of! Don’t waste it on “free” social media marketing when other strategies can get you similar or better results at a much lower time.
12. Lies About Email Marketing
The hard truth is that most companies don’t have or they don’t know how to gather email addresses or use an email list or email marketing software. There’s no Google Analytics or other analytics system to measure your marketing efforts and collect data and other vital metrics about your email marketing campaign, such as your conversion rate. There’s no segmentation. Besides, having users on your mailing list who don’t want to be there means you’re lying to yourself. In such a situation, regardless of the type of content you send out, there is no guarantee that you will have happy customers. Not to talk of loyal customers.
Outsource your digital and social media marketing to a professional where this is not workable.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, knowing what works and what doesn’t when growing your business online is essential.
Don’t believe the hype that portrays growing your business online and having a solid online presence through inbound marketing as easy. It’s a damn lie. You must devote the time and resources required to build your business online.
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