CBB 6: 3 Essential Ingredients for Online Business Success

If you’re looking for the hack that will propel your business into the stratosphere you’re in the right place. But rather than share the silver bullet with you (which I can’t by the way because it doesn’t exist) I’m going to instead share the three essential ingredients your business needs for online success.

If you’re ready to grow your conscious business so you can make a bigger impact, get the coaching you need at Conscious Business Builders at consciousbusinessbuilders.com

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I recently attended an online marketing conference where one speaker spent a full hour detailing the latest and greatest hacks to grow your business online. Attendees were interested, because let’s face it who doesn’t want the quick fix and the shortcut that will get us to success faster, but he lost me at hack number three. 

I found the presentation difficult to watch as slide after slide the young, sleazy salesman-like presenter shared hacks that might work today but will no doubt be redundant next month. 

Why am I so hack-averse you ask? 

Because I see online marketing hacks like diet pills. Sure they may bring in some short term sales and relief, like a pill might help you lose a couple of kilos….but they don’t set your business up for long term success. In fact, the wrong hack can cause harm to your business, much like a diet pill might have serious side effects like speed up your heart rate. 

Instead, much like how long term weight management is a function of ongoing commitment to healthy eating, exercise and good sleep, there’s three fundamentals you need to get right for an online business that’s set up for long term success. 

1. Upload good quality content 

The first fundamental is good quality content.

Content that solves a problem and helps your followers through whatever issues they’re having. This kind of content will never go out of style.

When you create content, you want it to be worth your time and energy. In my own business, a lot of my time, and heart, and soul goes into creating content for my followers. I really opt for quality over quantity and I optimize and amplify it. I really encourage you to do the same.

For example, rather than me popping a podcast out there every single day, I’m putting the time into create more quality episodes. And these will get more and more quality over time as I re-shape my business. But i’m trying to offer quality content that makes that big difference that will keep you coming back.  

Now I want to talk about optimising your content. I simply mean using keywords that will rank in search engines. This is really for topics for – if you got a podcast. It could be your headings in your Youtube videos, or your blog posts, but also within the blog posts themselves. Have a keyword-rich title. Use keywords in your articles that will rank in search engines. And there’s heaps of programs out there you can use to help you find those keywords. Google Trends is a good one that I use. If you’re using WordPress, use an SEO plugin like Yoast to help you to optimise your posts. It’s one thing just to create the content, but you want to help people find it. And you help people find it by investing your time into setting up good search engine optimisation for your content. 

You also want to amplify your content by sharing it across your social media platforms to get maximum reach. Consider running some paid ads to your content especially if you’ve taken the time to include content upgrades inside your free content. By content upgrades, I’m really talking about an opportunity that you’re giving people to give them a deeper level of content in exchange for an email address, where you can continue to stay connected.  For example you might be talking about how to organize your kitchen, you might have a content upgrade as a planning template that people can download by entering their email, and by doing that, you can continue to nurture your relationship with that subscriber. You can also get really snazzy and have some advanced marketing techniques where you might be capturing the people that read your content. For example,  you can use Facebook Pixel to set up a custom audience where people are viewing that particular webpage, and then you might re-market to them with an offer or an opportunity to opt in with the another upgrade. That’s an advanced marketing right there. If that’s blowing just your mind, I just want you to keep it simple. Create good quality content, optimise it with SEO, and share it. Amplify it through your social media or run some paid ads through it.
 

2. Show up in your business 

So many conscious business builders just created a business that they can hide behind. They don’t really show up. They have everything automated and optimised, and they can just hide behind it and try to let everything run for themselves. Now I’m a fan of automation so a lot of my email sequences and funnels are automated, but this does not replace me showing up in my business. I want to encourage you to show up! Show up in your Facebook groups, show up consistently on your podcast, consistently on your blogs. Showing up in person builds the trust and the human factor. People are crying out for the human factor right now. They want to know that there is a person at the end of that business ,a real person at the end of that email. Not a bot. Nothing replaces a bot like a real human at the end of the line.  

Now I just want to share an example with you that highlights how just showing up can make a big difference in your business. One of my recent coaching clients came to me solely because I showed up. She joined my Conscious Biz Creators Facebook community and when I approved her access I welcomed her and asked where she was at in her business and what issues she was having. I answered those questions, gave her some advice and really didn’t think anymore of it.

Except for a couple of weeks later, she’d book to have a coaching strategy call with me and I gave her some more help. And then she ended up signing up to my premium six month coaching package – all because I showed up on the Facebook group, gave her some help that she really needed at that time that added value to her. Me showing up to that community that day didn’t take much of my time. Indeed it was fun! And I enjoyed helping her for a bit. And I enjoy helping to grow her conscious business in the smartest and fastest hack-free way possible. 

3. Make an offer regularly 

The third essential ingredient that you need to build a successful online business is to make an offer, regularly! Your business will remain an expensive hobby forever if you don’t get in to habit of making offers for people to work with you. But rather than see these offers as annoying your followers, you’re simply giving them an opportunity to work with you deeper, to get the results that they really looking for.

But how do you make an offer? 

There’s many ways! One of the more popular ways online is to lead the followers who opted into your upgraded content to become subscribers down a sales funnel. Subscribers are nurtured with good quality content on the same topic through the funnel, and then given the opportunity to work with you closer. You can either outline the offer on a webinar, a social media live video, on a live sales call, or even just in an email. It doesn’t have  to be difficult, it doesn’t have to be scary. And you actually don’t even need to lead people down a six week funnel/rabbit warren before you make the offer either.

Give people the opportunity to side step all that and work with you from the beginning too. People might have come to you because of the reputation that you’ve got in the marketplace that heard of this amazing offer that you have. But some people are impatient! Some people don’t want to wait six to eight weeks before that offer is put on the table. They want to bypass the free content and go straight to the person who’s going to help them and give them maximum results. Think about the person that really wants the best that you have to offer. How can you give that to them early on in the process?   

Final Thoughts 

Rather than fall for the latest online business hack, I urge you to concentrate on the three essential ingredients for online success and don’t look back. Sure it’s a longer term game but you’ll have a stronger, more resilient and successful business as a result.  

If you’re ready to grow your conscious business so you can make a bigger impact, click HERE to get started with your Conscious Coaching Taster, which includes 1:1 coaching with Laura.

For more strategies and support to help you grow your impact-driven business online, join my FREE Conscious Biz Creators Facebook Community.