What are the secret keys to a successful business? What to do to be successful in business? How to make your small home business to prosper and to expand? Let’s explore 21 things you must do to start a business and make it a success.
Do you have to work hard in order to become successful and make more money in your business? If you study people who are extremely wealthy, you will discover that very successful and wealthy people don’t work that hard. There are of course some exceptions.
Wealth is not just money, but the ability to have free time to do what you choose, to spend it the way you choose and the amount of freedom you can enjoy.
Unfortunately a lot of wealthy people don’t own a business, they only own a job. In other words, if they stop working, the money stop coming in. A true business should not depend on you to show up every day at your place of business.
What I am going to each you is how to think and see your life and run your business in a new perspective. Then you can have time to enjoy not only your earnings, but to do what you want and enjoy your life to the fullest.
One of the great things about direct response marketing is that once you have a winning sales proposition, it is the proposition that makes you money, not necessarily the amount of time you spend. Your winning sales proposition will dictate how successful you can be. Your winning sales proposition whether online or offline determine the amount of money you can make.
One of the main reasons people fail in direct response marketing is they become passionate about certain item and then try to force it on people.
Let’s explain direct response marketing first. It is marketing a product or service that is measurable. For example, you can spend money promoting your website, and then you are able to accurately tell the number of traffic and sales your website is generating. If your promotion efforts pay off, you can multiply it to grow your business.
Here are 21 things to do to be successful in business:
1. Start slowly and get to know your target market. Find out whether people want what you have to offer before you spend lots of money. The best way to start is to find a hungry market and then offer the exact product your market cannot wait to receive. Your target market must have the money to spend for what you have to offer.
Before spending many hours refining your product and become very excited about the possibility to bring your product before eager buyers, you never know until the product hits the market to find out whether it will be a success. You are usually faced with a number of challenges as you prepare to bring a new product or service before the public.
2. You need to identify your potential customers and begin to build a profile of your typical customer. Read and try to find out as much as you can about the demographic characteristics of your target market. Search for the answers in your public library and online. Read the magazines your target market read and visit the sites they might be visiting.
3. Never fall in love with a product or service that has a very narrow market. The object of a business is to make a profit; otherwise you will be out of business. Your goal should be to fit a product to a market. In other words, sell what people want to buy. Try to identify your entire market.
4. Examine your competition. Find out who is marketing products similar to yours. Check out their websites. All you need is a computer and a fast Internet connection. Learn as much as you can about their sales strategies. Try to build an accurate profile of those firms.
5. What is your unique selling proposition that set your company apart from your competitors? People often buy because of some unique feature of a product. Once you understand the unique characteristics of your product, you’ll be better able to position your product in the minds of your potential customers.
Your unique selling proposition must be unique, distinctive and specific. Avoid general terms, such as having better service or more experience.
6. The price of your product will have direct impact on your business. You have to get at least four to one mark up or better from your cost to what you sell for in order to succeed. Never get involved with narrow margin businesses because they are destined to fail.
It is true that some businesses even lose money to get customers, but they make money on their backend products. If you have only one product costing you $10 and you plan to sell it for $20, you have to work too hard to make money.
7. Few people are eager to buy preventive offers. Try to sell a product that solves a problem because people are far more interested in solving the problems they already have than purchasing products that prevent a problem.
If you don’t have the time or money to create a product, try to get a license to offer something that has a proven track record of success. When you begin something from scratch, you increase the chance for failure. On the other hand, licensing is a way to jump start the money making process since you reduce the learning curve process and your chance of failure is reduced greatly.
8. Whether you plan to offer a product or a service, you will need to create powerful sales literature. Take your time to learn everything you can about copywriting.
For the time being, use AIDA formula as a basic guideline in creating your advertising copy:
A – Attention. You must first get a prospect’s attention. Any successful effort in selling begins with a powerful headline or opening statement. Spend time creating powerful headlines. Then test the headlines to discover which ones bring the most response.
I – Interest. Once you grab someone’s attention, you have to begin building interest by giving a prospect a multiple of benefits for your offer.
D – Desire. You have to build desire by making your offer irresistible by presenting compelling offer, strong guarantee, making your offer urgent, and leading your prospect to a decision.
A – Action. For every sales offer, you finally have to ask for an order, and make it easy for prospects to order.
9. Basic knowledge of marketing can be extremely helpful. When you begin, try to make your profit in the first sale. You soon learn how much you can afford to spend to get a new customer. However, when you just starting your business, try to play it safe by making money on the first sale.
Always start small and try to discover:
10. The nature of direct response marketing is centered on testing one item versus another. It makes no difference whether you’re selling directly through your blog or website or through email marketing or print advertising. You initially have a piece of advertising which is your control.
In order to succeed and before you plan to expand, you have to try to beat your control. This is referred as an A/B test. You test one item at a time to discover exactly what changes made the difference in response. The wining result becomes your new control, and you continue the testing process until you find the best winning combination giving you the highest profit potential.
Try to test the most important components, including headlines, price, guarantee, and bonuses. Test only one variable at a time. You can use PPC advertising for quick results.
You also have to determine the most cost effective marketing approaches. What advertising medium and technique will produce the greatest number of orders at the minimum cost?
11. What combination of advertising and promotion must you undertake to give your product wider exposure? You have to formulate your marketing mix, including SEO, email marketing, social media, PPC advertising, remarketing, print and radio advertising.
12. Try to practice your negotiation skills. Remember that if you are too eager to do a deal, you probably won’t get the most favorable terms for yourself. Your negotiation skill can be very helpful when you’re ready to place full-page ads in most publications.
13. Paying too much for advertising can set you back from reaching your optimum profits. You must know what the cost is to reach a thousand people if you place ads.
The nature of direct response is built on the profitability of an advertising campaign. If the campaign is profitable, you can predict growth and able to expand your campaign. If it is not profitable, you can abandon it.
14. Exploit source of free publicity. Don’t focus entirely on conventional advertising techniques and ignore free publicity opportunities. Consider all the costs involved in bringing your product or service before the public.
Remember that advertising costs add up. Project the expenses for each of your marketing campaigns, and consider the benefits of each.
15. Set clear goals and objectives before you begin marketing your product. Goals are general and broad. For example, set a goal to reach certain number of traffic for your website and to convert at least 5%.
Objectives are more specific. For example, your objective is to acquire 1,000 new customers in the next six months, and to sell your backend product costing $45 to 25% of your new customers who purchased your front end product for $30 each.
Goal and objectives are extremely important part of your marketing plan. It helps you to set marketing calendar, to get organized, set a target and try to achieve it within a period of time.
16. Follow a marketing calendar and set all the major deadlines for everything you must do over the next six months and over the next twelve months.
Set the deadline for such items as press releases, advertisements, and major marketing efforts. Without marketing calendar, you will be running your business aimlessly in an unorganized manner.
Be sure to keep records of all expenses and profits for any of your campaign. Keeping accurate records, not only shows you a clear picture of your marketing efforts, but you also will need it for your taxes.
17. Your customers are the only reason you are in business. Treat each customer with respect. Always try not only to give your customers what they pay for, but give much more than what they pay to have your product or service. Build customer loyalty through good customer service and excellent products or superior service.
18. As a smart business owner, you must manage your time wisely. Have a clear objective each day and determine how much time to dedicate to accomplish each task and what will it return for your time.
19. You must be in good health both mentally and physically in order to run your business successfully. Eat healthy food and exercise on a regular basis to stay fit and in good health.
20. All successful business owners know when to take action and they refuse to give up; they learn from their mistakes and keep moving forward. On the other hand, most people who fail in life because they feel negative and easily quit.
It is hard to hit a target if you can’t see it. You cannot walk through life aimlessly and hope to be successful. You must set goals and objectives, and then take action to accomplish it.
Don’t be afraid to take risks in life. Fear will hold you back and keep you from living your life to its full potential.
21. If you are serious about your business to succeed, you must spend time to educate yourself about marketing and copywriting. Whatever you cannot do, recruit others to help you.
Successful people know that if something good was easy to do, the entire world would probably be doing it. If you really want to reap the benefits of success, be prepared to stick to your plan, when other people might give up. All it takes, one step at a time. If you want advice, talk to someone who is successful. That person will never discourage you from trying to reach your goals.
All successful people believe that they will become successful. In order to become successful, you must not only believe in yourself, but you must also be able to visualize yourself becoming the success you desire.
By Paul Ziglar – 2019 – Update 2020
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For additional articles written by Paul Ziglar, see alliedpublishing.com/make-money-with-computer. Paul Ziglar is the author of How to Make Money With Your Personal Computer From Home.