Online Business Building Resources

If you have been marketing online for a while, five of these essential elements will be very familiar to you.  However, the sixth element that I will discuss has the ability to make or break you when it comes to business success, and it’s importance is often overlooked. This article will be presented in two parts for ease of reading. Part I will cover the first five components, and Part II will delve into the sixth essential.

Part I

I spent years chasing my family and friends, and I have spent thousands of dollars on leads.   If you base your business on buying cold leads or chasing your family and friends, you may be on track to burn yourself out.  Marketing your internet and network marketing business online offers you an alternative. I’ll start by listing the first five basic components or tools of an online business:

1. A list – Your first goal is to create a list of prospects interested in what you are marketing. Notice I said “marketing”. It is crucial that you learn how to market online. You should choose one method of marketing and stick to it until you start generating enough leads to build your business and then add to your list.
   
2. A website – Specifically, you need your own website—one that helps to brand YOU…a webpage that is customizable and that tells your story, with your picture and your video if you wish. Your personal website separates you from everyone else in your business.  Remember, you need to drive traffic to your website.
3. A sales funnel – This is a method of promoting useful tools and resources that will help your prospects solve their business-building issues. Providing solutions to your prospects helps you to build lasting relationships, so they see you as a resource and a leader. We all know that this industry is about building relationships. A sales funnel can help you do so. It will allow you to get paid as you generate leads. This is a funded proposal strategy (creating multiple streams of income), and all master marketers use this type of strategy. By learning what the top money earners do, you will save money and time.
4. A system – You need a system that will help you market yuor business effectively and train your new people quickly. Such a system should be something that you can plug your new distributors into, so you can leverage your time and energy. Additionally, the system should utilize an autoresponder to allow you to deliver information to your list at certain intervals.
5. A primary opportunity – You need the system to introduce your prospects to your primary opportunity in a non-threatening manner, after they have been in your sales funnel long enough to appreciate the solutions you provide.

Part II

We already covered the first 5 essential elements for online marketing success—a list, a customizable website, a sales funnel, a marketing/training system, and a primary opportunity. Now, let’s review the sixth element.

The sixth essential, the one that is often overlooked and underestimated, is what I call “self work”. It is a commitment to self growth and commitment to your business growth.

To be successful in online hombased business, we need to work on ourselves as hard as we work on our business. Some people may say we need to work even harder on ourselves because that effort will have a direct impact on our business success.

What does “self work” mean?

1. Self work means maintaining the right mindset. It means working on your belief system. Do you have limiting beliefs? Is your poverty mentality limiting your business success? Free your mind of any limiting thoughts about your ability to do this business and about whether your business will really work. “Stinkin Thinkin” will hurt your business.

   “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar
   

2. Self work means constantly looking for ways to add value. You should become a seeker of new ways to market. This will require investing time in learning online marketing. Additionally, you will want to improve your professional skills, like leadership, mindset, marketing, public speaking and presentation, closing, telephone recruiting, etc. Then, you can share what you learn with your team via webinars, teleconferences and seminars. The more you learn the more valuable you become to your team. Always ask yourself, “What more can I give to others?”

   “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” — Albert Einstein.

3. Self work means being prepared to work hard to build your online business. The “newbie” is typically seduced by the idea that they can make big money with little effort. You have to be willing to focus time and money to achieving your dream of online marketing success.

In short, getting the results you are after comes from having a system that gives you a step-by-step blueprint and the tools to promote YOU, Inc.  You need to build your own prospect list and become a solutions provider by providing value first.  This will allow you to get paid by your prospects and remove the financial stress associated with building an online homebased business.  Plus, you will use attraction marketing to attract people to your online business.  So, for online marketing success, you need a system that:

• Includes a customizable website (that does not require you knowing HTML) that builds your brand.
• Helps you build your list by offering value and generating multiple streams of income.
• Introduces people to your primary opportunity and trains them on using the system and on marketing online, too.

Once you find such a system, commit to using it.

Want tips on online business building for your home based business? Subscribe to my e-course, “Web 2.0 Strategies using Social Media Marketing for Online Home Based Business?”