The strategy for starting, growing, and scaling your online business is very much the same for all the businesses that operate online. You need a product or a service that you want to offer (sell) to your clients, who have a need or a problem this product/service fulfills or solves. Then you need to market your offer to that particular type of client and sell it to them.

How to start?

PART 1: CLIENTS

Find out what you want to do and who your clients are (aka your niche)

1. Business Ideas Brainstorming You need to identify who your clients are and what it is that you do or want to do as a business. If you are still trying to decide, list your expertise, strengths, passions, and hobbies. Once you have a list, start brainstorming. For each of those ideas, try to figure out how it could bring value to someone. How could someone use your passion for their own benefit? For instance, if you have a passion for baking, think about offering custom birthday cakes or teaching baking to new mums making it easy for them so when they spend time with their newborn at home they can make beautiful cake creations in the meantime. As a side note, here you have an example of a well-defined niche: new mums. They are great to advertise to as they may spend a bit more time online while breastfeeding. Once you are done brainstorming your ideas, circle the ones that feel the most right for you to pursue.

2. Market Research Go online and do market research. On social media find people who do the same or something similar to what you think you want to do. Look at what they talk about and what their community asks them for. Interact in a way that helps the people in the comments section- answer their questions if you know the answers, give advice, or simply share your knowledge and expertise. Go to Instagram/X/TikTok, FB groups, Discord communities, or YouTube. Try tools like AnswerThePublic or ChatGPT to gauge what people are searching for in the areas of your interests.

3. Define your niche Carefully describe who your target audience (niche) is. Remember that creating an Ideal Customer Avatar must be put into context. It doesn’t fit one model. Trying to fit into one is one of the biggest business deadly sins. Business owners try to follow some sort of old scheme describing gender, age, and location when what they should focus on are the customer’s needs, problems, and desires, in other words, the reasons why a particular group of people would need their products and services. Then you need to understand who exactly belongs to that group. When describing your niche start by answering the following questions:

• how are you helping or want to help people?

• what do they struggle with?

• what do they desire?

• who are the people facing these problems and needs?

• what are their daily routines?

• how is your product/service going to alter their lives?

• how does their day look like?

• how much money do they earn (can they afford your products/services?)

• how would they use your product/service?

Be specific. Your niche should be neither too broad nor too narrow. Being convinced that your business is for everyone and that everyone will buy your product is yet another nail to your coffin. Even bread is not for everyone so be very careful with this part of defining your business strategy as it can make or break your business.

Defining your niche, if done right, not only will help you create your offer but you will also use that knowledge for:

• creating your content for content marketing purposes,

• building a valuable email list that will be full of people ready to buy from you once your offer is ready,

• running paid ads with better results as you will be able to craft the right message and the algorithm will be able to pick up characteristics of your ideal client based on the data from your current email list,

• copywriting as with the description of your offer you will be able to touch your potential clients on a deeper level, connect with them, and convince them that your solution is what they need,

• email marketing that will allow you to keep the communication the right way.

Knowing your ideal client will help you create a well-oiled machine that is your business. It is the core of it.

PART 2: YOUR (FIRST) OFFER

Create an offer that people will want to purchase.

1. If your business is not making money, you, don’t have a business. You have an expensive hobby. To make money you need to start selling something. That’s when you have to put together your offer.

2. You need to decide what type of product you will be offering to your ideal clients. You researched your ideal client’s needs, desires, and problems. After interacting with some of them online and seeing what they ask for on different platforms, you can determine how you can help them and in what areas. Now it’s time to decide on the format of your offer. Will you be offering 1:1 consultations, or maybe an online course would be better? What about a membership program? Or maybe you are considering selling a physical product or building an app?

3. If you decide to build a digital product, before you start, create a detailed description of what you imagine it to be. Once you have done it, run over it and define the success path of your client. What outcome will they achieve from using your product? Is everything that you described needed for them to achieve it?

   Cut out the fluff. Everything that is unnecessary information or the elements that do not contribute to your client’s success (the desired result), goes out. Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) based on that lean description you’ve just created.

   I know it’s tempting to add everything that you know in there, all the additional information, and all the fancy features to make your product perfect and for everyone. Unfortunately, this approach can cost you your success. Believe me. It cost me my first business and all the savings I had.

4. The MVP is the first basic version of your product that provides some value or result, meaning “it does something for someone”. It fits that well-defined, smaller niche you described before. Believe me, it’s enough at this stage. You can decide later to add additional elements to maybe reach a broader audience but I wouldn’t recommend doing it at the MVP stage. You can now start testing the interest among your community with one of the MVP testing methods to see if what you created is actually what they wanted. By creating the basic version you minimise the risk of product-market-unfit:

   • Because you created an MVP instead of the whole product you imagined and described in the first step, you saved yourself time in creating the first version, and you were able to put it up to the market to gather valuable feedback and make adjustments.

   • You saved yourself money spent on creating the robust product you wanted to create in the first place.

   • You can now make changes quickly, be flexible, and iterate to achieve the most desired product that people will pay for.

5. Now it’s time to decide on the final version. It has to be well-balanced. When you gather feedback from your customers or users you need to make sure that you only take into consideration the feedback that actually gives others value. People will want you to adjust your product to match their subjective needs however, you need to look for things that also enhance your product and help you scale it.

PART 3: YOUR STRONG BRAND

In today’s world more than ever, people will need to trust you before they buy from you. This is especially true if you run a service business or online-courses-based business. The KNOW-LIKE-TRUST factor in online sales is undeniable.

That’s why you need to establish your brand both professionally and visually. That means you need to present yourself to the world as an expert, someone who knows what they’re doing, someone who can help their clients get where they want to be, fulfill their needs and desires, or solve their problems. It doesn’t mean you have to have a PhD. It means that you are able to take the people where they want to be.

Because you now have your offer, you can start with building a landing page so that you can keep selling while building your proper website. Start with deciding on the colors that will represent the vibes of your website. Think of the fonts and elements. The most important thing is being consistent across your website, social media, and other channels. It helps with looking professional.

When you have decided on your visual vision, build a website on WordPress or Squarespace. For e-commerce check Shopify or WooCommerce.

Your website not only gives you an online presence but also gives you a platform for blogging. Blogging about the subject matter of your business and creating valuable content about your offer and products can establish your credibility and drive traffic to your online shop. Get interested in what SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is and make sure to optimize the content you create. Consider cooperating with other bloggers to build backlinks to increase authority in your domain.

It’s no secret that these days people want to do business with people. There are more emotions involved and, as mentioned before, trust is the biggest currency. That is why showing up online is one of the best strategies right now. Video content has almost taken over when it comes to building authority on social media as it gives very direct contact between the creator and their audience. Creating tutorial videos and running webinars, especially those for which you collect email addresses, can further broaden your audience and build your valuable email list.

Make sure to show up as regularly as you can, so that the algorithms can pick up your content, learn about it, and push it in front of the right audience. In practice, you train the algorithm so when creating the content, you need to think about what you want the algorithm to remember and whether the message is consistent for the algorithm to see patterns it can operate on. You need to feed the algorithm with cohesive content, not something that is all over the place. If you start writing content on unrelated topics, the algorithm will learn based on them and will not be able to target the audience you want to market to. The audience that is strictly interested in a specific subject matter. That is also why having a good content strategy focused on the needs and wants of your niche is essential for your marketing success.

PART 4: GROWING YOUR BUSINESS

Now that you have some of the elements of your brand created it’s time to build your email list. It still proves to be one of the most effective marketing and sales tools because it allows you to connect directly with the audience interested enough in your brand, content, and freebies to give you their email addresses.

Learn about the most effective list-building strategies and remember - it should all be focused on your ideal customers, not you. The more good-quality content you make, the more viewers will be drawn to your website. When your content answers their questions, and needs and solves their problems they will be more willing to sign up for your newsletter, stay on your blog longer, and interact with you.

Knowing your audience means you can further grow your dream audience by serving them better and better. Keep creating better and better content and when you feel you can “throw the punch”, pitch your products. You need to balance different types of content and the ask for sales.

Growing your business also means publishing on a broader range of platforms. You can also consider adding paid advertising. At this point, you should have your tech systems built. This network of tools and automation will help you scale your business on different levels.

You start getting momentum and your business thrives. You gather data and optimize your processes reducing costs and increasing profit.

Key Takeaways

• Define your niche carefully: focus on customer needs, problems, and desires rather than broad demographics.

• Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test market fit and gather feedback before full development.

• Establish a strong brand identity with consistent visuals and professional presentation across all platforms.

• Develop a content strategy focused on your niche to build authority and train algorithms effectively.

• Build and nurture an email list as a key marketing and sales tool.

• Balance valuable content creation with strategic product pitching.

• Expand to multiple platforms and consider paid advertising as you grow.

• Continuously optimize processes and use data to reduce costs and increase profits.