If you’re the owner of a small online business, there are probably times when you find it very difficult to invest in your business’s growth – especially if that business is your sole source of income or isn’t earning a lot of money yet. You know that the only way to grow is by putting your earnings back into your business, but that’s easier said than done if the business doesn’t really have any earnings yet.
You know that investing in your business’s growth is important, but you don’t want to throw your money away. You want to invest your money in a way that has a high probability of generating a substantial return, and that’s where this article is going to help. The opportunities for growth are almost endless in e-commerce, but the Internet is also littered with the remains of small businesses that never quite managed to achieve success.
According to Entrepreneur, 90 percent of online businesses fail in their first four months. Let’s make sure that your business succeeds. These are the best investments that you can make in your online business.
Create High-Quality Content for Your Website
Warren Buffett once famously said that the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself – and if you’re the owner of an online business, the equivalent of investing in yourself is adding great content to your website. When you publish a valuable piece of informational content, it’s yours forever and can’t be removed or altered because of a publisher’s whim or a policy change on a social media website.
As long as a piece of content exists on your site, it brings value to your business in two ways. The first benefit is that content on your site has a chance to rank for various search terms on Google, thus bringing visitors to your site. Some of those people will buy products, and those who don’t will at least become aware of your brand thanks to the useful information you’ve provided.
The second benefit of on-site content is that is that other websites will link to it if it’s worthwhile. The more inbound links your site has, the more likely it will be to rank well for competitive search terms.
You have a unique perspective as a business owner in your industry, and it’s likely that you’re an expert in your field. You can provide a wealth of information that can help people have better experiences with the types of products that you sell. If you’re not sure what sorts of articles to write for your website, that’s a great place to begin.
Add the Hottest New Products to Your Store
If you’re an online retailer, it’s hard to go wrong by investing in new products to add to your store. Every product that you add represents an opportunity to capture traffic for a new set of keywords and to attract new customers who might not have purchased from you otherwise. At any given moment, there are hot new products in any industry that are generating enormous amounts of search volume. If you’re in the vaping industry, for instance, the XROS 3 Mini is one of those products.
It always pays to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry. That way, you’ll know what the hot products are and will always add the right things to your store. If you’re not sure what the hot products in your industry are, you should spend plenty of time on forums and websites like Reddit. That’ll help you understand what consumers are buying. You may also find it worthwhile to subscribe to a tool that allows you to see the search volumes for various keywords. If you know that many people are searching online for a given product each month, then you can be certain that carrying the product will have a high likelihood of generating revenue for your business.
Use Influencers to Reach Engaged Consumers
Some pundits have claimed over the past few years that influencer marketing is dead. That’s not the case, but it definitely has changed. There are thousands upon thousands of young hipsters on social media platforms today posting pictures of themselves and hoping to earn money by shilling products – and while that form of marketing may have worked in the past, consumers are largely blind to it now. Unless you’re a fashion designer, you aren’t going to sell products by paying someone to show them off on Instagram.
The fact that traditional influencer marketing is largely dead, though, doesn’t mean that it isn’t worthwhile to pay for exposure to an engaged audience. People who post pictures of themselves online aren’t the only types of influencers. A person who posts text or video product reviews, for instance, can potentially have a highly engaged audience of readers or viewers who do spend money on the products they see. It can be very worthwhile to send product samples to someone who publishes review content. The person, the audience, the platform and the type of content all have to be good fits for what you’re offering.
If you want to try working with online influencers, you need to remember two things.
- You should never have to pay much to reach an influencer’s audience. Content producers will want to be compensated for their time, and a free product generally isn’t sufficient compensation on its own – people have bills to pay. Some influencers, however, will want to charge far more than you could ever hope to earn from the placement. If the price is too high, move on. Remember that even a small audience is worth reaching if the engagement level is high.
- Before working with any influencer, you want to be absolutely certain that people actually engage with that person’s content. You want to see plenty of views, comments and shares each time that person posts an article, picture or video. Remember that it has become very common for would-be influencers to use AI-powered fake social media accounts to simulate engagement. If the influencer doesn’t have human followers, the placement will have no value at all.
