how to start an online business for free (Chapter-8)
Chapter 8 – Building Relationships Within Your Niche
Now that you’ve chosen a profitable niche, it’s time you start to think about building the relationships within that niche. This will require you to locate the main sites, blogs, discussion boards, and forums that are associated with your niche. Take some time to look through each of these resources to see what topics are being discussed that pertain to your chosen niche. Write the five most prevalent issues that you discover are being considered. This will give you a good start for content ideas for your newsletter, blog, and possibly a free special report that you can provide your potential customers for providing you with their email address.
Posting regular content on your social media networks will help to keep your followers updated on your business and make it much easier for them to pass along the information to anyone they know that might be interested in your products or services. Make it a point to always ask for re-tweets and shares and train your target audience to take the actions that you want them to take when you want them to take them.
One of the main reasons why you wanted to start an online business was to make money. However, if this is your only motivation, the chances are high that it will show. Unlike a brick and mortar store, people online don’t have to be polite. They can click off your site, and you will never see them again, and you will never even know. If you can register them for an e-course or your newsletter, you’ll have a better chance of communicating with them regularly and building a relationship with them, further building your brand. Recent studies show that it takes at least 17 exposures to a brand or business before people will start to recognize the brand and understand what it does and what it represents. Unfortunately, an online business usually doesn’t get a second chance to make an excellent first impression.
Email Marketing
Your email marketing campaigns are a valuable resource that will provide you with a lifeline of communication with those who have shown an interest in your niche. You can use your email marketing campaigns to provide your target audience with different reasons to opt-in, such as newsletters and special reports. If your target audience purchases an item, you can put them on a new list specifically for new customers.
Once you get them on a list, it can be a bit of a challenge to keep them there. This is why providing an e-course that contains several lessons spaced out and delivered through an autoresponder is a good idea if you want to keep the lines of communication with your target audience open.
If you have people that unsubscribe, don’t take it personally, but to see if they give a reason. Some people will take the time to tell you why the unsubscribed. Others will leave and never let you know if you have offended them in some way. You just never know what the tipping point will be for customers.
Your Social Media Networks
Your social media networks can also help you build relationships within your niche. Your followers on Facebook can like, comment, and share your information. This means that all of the people in their network can also see what you post. This is a powerful marketing and relationship-building opportunity that can bring you free traffic and sales.
Your Newsletter
Your newsletter is your chance to send your customers new and exciting content on a regular basis that is directly related to your niche. You can review common issues in FAQs, provide quizzes, announce new products and services, and so much more. You can use all the information you’ve gathered from the forums and discussion boards that you’ve visited to provide them with the answers to the problems that you know they are experiencing.
In this way, you are building relationships and positioning yourself in your niche as an expert without resorting to aggressive sales tactics. You are providing them with offers that a customer in your niche will be interested in acquiring. You can choose to email the offers separately, on a particular day, or placed within your newsletter. It is all about providing your customers with the answers to their questions and building a relationship with them to show you how you can meet their needs. It is all about staying on topic and giving them a range of options that are related to your niche.
Conclusion
The best way for you to be successful with your online business is to choose a profitable niche. There will always be cracks in the consumer populace whose demands for specific products and series aren’t being dealt with, which gives you the opportunity to supply those unmet demands.
A small business like yours can benefit from the needs that are left unaddressed. The issue is how you can find the right niche market that will help your small business become successful. Having a unique or exceptional product will ensure you have less competition.
Researching a niche to determine if it is viable and profitable requires you to have patience, put in the effort, the right set of tools, and the ability to ask the right questions and understand the answers that you receive. To be successful, you have to do the research. If you choose not to research your potential niche markets thoroughly, you will do nothing more than waste your time, energy and money. Finding the right niche for your business isn’t a complicated process, but it will take you some time, but it will be well worth it when you start seeing your business grow and your profits increase.
