Can your business offer a subscription?
More and more, subscriptions are becoming a common way to pay for products and services. Generally tech enabled; streaming service subscriptions, subscription services for basic goods like razors and toothbrushes, free shipping subscription clubs, newsletter and podcast subscriptions, monthly clothing subscriptions, gaming and e-sports subscriptions, creator subscriptions, food of the month subscriptions, coffee of the month subscriptions, wine of the month subscriptions, Amazon Web Services, reoccurring donations, subscriptions, subscriptions, subscriptions. There’s a lot of subscriptions, and there’s a reason for it! Subscriptions are a fantastic way to keep customers engaged with your business and offer them the flexibility of being able to cancel their membership at any time.
It may be hard to remember, but the primary way of making money on Apple’s App Store, a $64 billion business, used to be selling access to an app as a one time purchase. It was only in 2011, when Apple started offering subscriptions for apps on the App Store, four years after the iPhone was announced. Back in the early days of the App Store, developers would usually sell their apps for 99 cents, or more if the app was a professional grade app or premium service. This was great at the time, as it was a new way for software developers to monetize their work, and a brand new way for consumers to find and buy apps for their cellphones. As smartphone adoption became the mainstream, app stores became common and subscriptions became standard, Apple’s App Store and others like it became platforms that enabled whole new industries that created billion and trillion dollar companies.
If you sell an expensive product or service, can you turn that price tag into smaller monthly payments? Photoshop used to be an extremely cost prohibitive software for people to use, or let alone buy to see if they like graphic design. Because of this, graphic design was much more expensive and difficult to find people with experience. As more people started using computers, and Adobe introduced a new monthly subscription plan, more people are now able to download creative software, and figure out if that’s a skill that they’d like to learn.
Software isn’t the only business that is going to a subscription model. Panera Bread, known for bread bowls, bagels and baked goods is now offering customers a coffee subscription plan. For the cost of a couple cups of coffee a month, subscribers can get unlimited coffee. This keeps those customers coming back for their coffee in the morning, where they now may now buy a breakfast sandwich. That customer may now go to Panera for lunch now too, because of the free coffee refill. Subscriptions can be any part of your business that keeps your customers engaged with your business.
Most website platforms that offer commerce tools also offer a subscription plan for businesses to create. You can get creative with what you offer, like a surprise of the month club, or use a subscription to collaborate with a local nonprofit, like a book of the month club for a local coffee shop. If you’re a yoga studio, can you offer a subscription to unlimited classes, or virtual classes? If your business has an expertise, then maybe you can create a paid newsletter for information and advice on your domain. What will your subscription be?
A festival can be anything
When you think of a festival, you may start begin visualizing thousands of people congregating outdoors in a major city to listen to the popular music of a given era, sponsored by Unilever’s latest macro-trend based offering. You may think of your town farmer’s market, soundtracked by a local band and catered by non-franchise food trucks. You may even recall Red Bull’s month long multi-venue music festival that sold several cans of Red Bull sometime during the 2010’s. Festivals can be completely virtual, like Fortnite collaborating with Marshmello, who according to Google is an “American DJ” and not a marshmallow (Confectionery), or the livestream of Condé Nast owned Pitchfork Music Festival. Is a popup event a festival? It is if you want it to be. Find some other businesses, brands or organizations, a location, and start collaborating on a festival of your very own.
Festivals are a fantastic way to build community and learn more about the businesses, brands and organizations in your community. No individual entity exists in a community alone, so collaborating on events is a great way to meet other business owners and community leaders, as well as offer your own community something fun and interesting to do. Your festival or event should be about community building, with the goal of having a positive impact. By providing your community a well planned event, with aspects of entertainment, information, commerce, and resources represented, your event can eventually become something regular (weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.) that people in your area look forward to and benefit from. If the event is a success, attendees will be more likely to remember your business, brand or organization.
You can create opportunity for entrepreneurs who are getting started on a new business or nonprofits who may not have the budget to do a lot of advertising. These are great aspects to planning events and booking vendors, because working together and collaborating is generally good for business. If you have a retail storefront, then working with a startup caterer for a mini popup food festival on one weekend day during your slow season may bring in more business for your storefront, while also providing a new business an opportunity to gain exposure to more new clientele. This is a win win, as the caterer isn’t a direct competitor to something like a boutique or retail store, and the storefront owner can get more foot traffic during a slow time.
Collaborating with nonprofits on events and festivals is another great addition, similar to collaborating with entrepreneurs. Nonprofits generally don’t have the budget to advertise a lot, especially if they are local specific. This is a problem, because nonprofits are generally good for a community, and more people should probably know about what they do and how to get involved. Baseline, if you’re having event the easiest thing you can do is to collect food, clothes, personal hygiene items, etc. from attendees to donate to your local food pantry. You can also think about your event’s activities and think of if a nonprofit could be a sponsor. Are you going to start inviting local musicians to play sets at your coffee shop? You could donate a percentage of drink sales from a specific menu item to a local music nonprofit and put their info materials on your counter. A collaboration doesn’t have to be too big of a deal or take much effort. If you can just get info about a local nonprofit in front of your customers for a day, that may start to make a difference over time.
Your festival can also be online and offline at once. According to Forbes, hybrid events are beneficial because “professionals can still go in person to network, interact physically with vendor booths and products and enjoy the atmosphere. On the other hand, people who cannot attend in-person or do not want to go in-person can still experience and access the event using their computer, phone or tablet. Furthermore, hybrid events allow companies to reap the benefits of both in-person events and virtual events.”
Your festival doesn’t have to follow what you think of when you think of big music festivals or state fairs. A festival can be anything as long as people show up. Free yourself to think of what you could plan within the parameters you have and get creative. Don’t get hung up on if you can’t get 5 food trucks to show up at your shop, what is something else that could be similar? You can’t find a musical act on short notice? You can find a good loudspeaker for just about what would be fair to pay a band for a day. Start where you can, and iterate as you plan more events. Learn from what works, and more importantly what doesn’t. A festival can be anything, what would yours be?
Collaborate with local nonprofits to build community
Collaborating with local nonprofits is an easy way to build community around your business, brand or organization, while also giving back and helping a local nonprofit support your area. Depending on what your organization does, you can collaborate with nonprofits in many different ways. If you operate a restaurant, you can run a fundraising campaign where you donate a percentage of sales on a given day to a nonprofit in your area. If you provide a service, like graphic design, you can donate your services to a local nonprofit. Event the smallest collaborations can make a big difference. If you run a boutique, you can keep a jar and info card next to your cash register for donations, if you have a storefront or community board, you can let nonprofits put leaflets up to advertise their campaigns and events.
Figure out a nonprofit that resonates with what your business does. If you have a tutoring business, then you could start a college scholarship for local students. If you’re a local grocery store, specialty food store, or coffee shop, you can donate extra food to a food bank, or a percentage of monthly sales. Basically every business, brand or organization has something that can be thematically tied to a nonprofit, or at the very least, is located somewhere, and collaborating with your local government or rotary club can be just as impactful.
Working with a nonprofit or local government group means that you’re doing a good thing that helps benefit your community. This is just a baseline good thing to do, that many people already do. When your community thrives, your business, brand or organization thrives as well, and by becoming an active contributor to benefit, you become even more of a stakeholder in your community.
Collaborating with nonprofits or local government groups at its most immediate, gives both you and the group that you’re collaborating with a campaign to promote, other than your business or their group. If you start a trash cleanup walking group in collaboration with your local park district and conservation nonprofit, then the three of your organizations now lead a regularly meeting group that promotes your organizations while also benefiting your locality’s green walking spaces.
When figuring out what to do and who to collaborate with, it’s important to keep in mind what your organization stands for, and to only pitch collaborations that really speak to what your business, brand or organization actually does. This way, you can avoid confusing collaborations, or seeming like you’re only interested in the collaboration to benefit yourself. The best collaborations are symbiotic, and benefit everyone involved. Make sure the organizations you choose to pitch align with your work, and that you can provide real value. Don’t be a nuisance, and if you get no’s for your pitches, learn from any given feedback and try the next organization.
If done successfully, working with local nonprofits or government organizations helps generate positive affinity towards your business, brand or organization. A long running collaboration between your business, brand or organization can potentially even become a real changemaker in your local community, bringing positive change. You don’t have to start with a big collaboration with a state-level nonprofit. You can really just start with a tip jar at the counter of your boutique store that is donated to your county homeless shelter. Small changes make all the difference, and if it helps your company and the organization you’re working with, why not try something?
Are you advertising on Facebook yet?
Facebook’s advertising platform is probably the best way to reach customers right now. If haven’t yet tried using Facebook to advertise, then you should consider incorporating it into your marketing strategy, as you can reach exactly who you need to as a cost effective price. You can “boost” posts within Facebook’s app, within a few simple steps. Just tell Facebook where you want your ad to show up, and to whom. Facebook lets advertisers access their knowledge of Facebook users and shows ads to the people who are most likely to engage with an ad. Since Facebook makes money when ads are successful, they are highly motivated to help you achieve your business goals.
Facebook lets you “boost” posts that you’re already making. You don’t have to create an individual ad, or think up a catchy slogan or memorable concept. You can just promote the posts that you already make, visible on your profile, putting them in the newsfeeds of others who don’t follow you. As Facebook owns Instagram, you can advertise on both platforms seamlessly. You can boost your posts within the app simply by clicking the blue “Boost Post” button beneath a post. This will bring up a menu where you tell Facebook your objective for the ad, who to target, and how much you want to spend.
Objectives for Facebook and Instagram ads are simply telling Facebook what you want to get out of your ad spend. Do you just want more engagement on the posts on your business profile? Do you want to gain more awareness from people who don’t follow you? Do you only want to reach people who already follow, and are already engaged with your business? Do you just want video plays, or are you trying to optimize for a click-through to your webstore, ending in a sale? Keeping your objective in mind while advertising will help you achieve your goals, while minimizing wasted ad spend.
When you start to advertise more on Facebook and Instagram, Facebook’s algorithm will begin to learn who responds to your ads the most, and start to show your ads to them more organically. You can also save a custom audience of people who respond to your ads, or even those who make a purchase after clicking an ad, to target future ads later. Making a custom audience like this helps you target your most engaged customers, in a cost effective way. You can also create a “look-a-like” audience of this group or people, where Facebook creates a new audience of new customers who are similar to those who already engage with your brand.
Another great thing about Facebook advertising, is that you get access to Facebook’s Ad Manager, which is an extremely in depth, robust, tool to advertising on Facebook, Instagram and beyond. With Ad Manager, you are able to reach much more targeted audiences of people, and track metrics of advertisements to inform future ads. You can measure who sees your ads by demographics, who engages, and who purchases. You can see how many people saw an ad, how they engaged with the ad, and how many times people saw the ad. Facebook Ad Manager will tell you exactly down to the fraction of a cent how much it costs to achieve a business objective, like a sale. With Ad Manager, you can clearly see how someone finds your company, how long they engage with your content, and if they make a sale.
By knowing if your ads are working and if people are engaging with the content, and not clicking or scrolling away, you can iterate and build better ads. This knowledge also helps you post more relevant and better content, as you’ll see exactly what your audience likes and responds to. Knowing this can help you make business decisions too, and help with planning. Maybe people engage less with a seasonal sale that you would have hoped, or people really respond to limited “drops” of products. If you blog as a part of your marketing and brand strategy, keeping tabs on which articles perform best will help you write more.
By advertising on Facebook, you also have access to advertising on several prestige publications and websites that can help you gain more reach, with no additional effort. Facebook has a service called Audience Network that acts as a display advertising network for publications to use on their websites. Publications like Buzzfeed, Vice and the Huffington post all use Audience Network, meaning your ads can run on the articles published by those outlets. The media brands have a deal with Facebook where they get paid to generate traffic, and Facebook extends that access to its advertisers (you!).
Advertising on Facebook is a powerful tool that help any business reach new clientele, as well as speak directly to those who are already customers. Advertising on Facebook doesn’t have to be a tech-intensive difficult process. You don’t have to know how to code, or even have a lot of budget to spend on ads. You can start advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and their Audience Network today with as little as $1. You can spend as much as you’d like as you become more familiar with the tools. You can also stop your spend at any time. Testing Facebook advertising is a win win if you have a specific goal in mind, or just want to get your business out there a bit more.
Event marketing tells brand story through customer experience
Event marketing is simply figuring out an experience that can tell the story of your brand, company or organization. If you have a retail location, event marketing can be an event held at your storefront. If your are a brand, then event marketing can entail throwing a party for a product launch. If you’re a nonprofit, then event marketing could be throwing a fundraising gala or concert. The common thread between all of these examples of event marketing, is that they all give your customers an opportunity to engage with your company while building community, entertaining, and potentially expanding your audience.
Event marketing can be to promote specific products, or to generate sales, or to just create more awareness about your brand. If you are a gourmet boutique, then hosting a wine tasting every month where you pair wines and foods you sell to customers is a simple way to incorporate event marketing into your brand strategy. If you own a coffee shop, then simply inviting local musicians to play acoustic sets during off hours could be a great way to build community and increase sales.
Event marketing can also be done online, now that consumers are more familiar with attending livestreamed events. If you are a startup clothing brand, or similarly lifestyle oriented brand, then you can schedule livestreamed concerts or live performances to be distributed through your social media channels. This helps your brand gain awareness, and can help you tell the story of your lifestyle company. People who engage with your livestreamed content can be re-targeted later with future products, information or events.
According to PR Newswire, “in this year's report, consumers identified ‘inspiration and meaning’ as the most sought-after quality in brands, a 200 percent increase from 2012 for this particular set of attributes. 76 percent of all consumers would rather spend their money on experiences than on material items.”
Because consumers are now looking to spend their money more on experiences than physical goods, event marketing helps your business reach potential customers, for when they do decide to make a purchase decision. Events don’t have to be cost intensive, and don’t need to be too high concept either. Figure out a small scale event that is relevant to your business, better if it can be repeated if successful. Start small, and scale from there. Your customers will be happy to engage with your business in a new way, and you might find some new business along the way.
Are you posting your art on social media?
If you aren’t posting your art on social media, you should consider starting. Not only does posting your work on social media give you a digital space to showcase your work, but it also gives you the ability to create a following for your art as well as give people you meet at art fairs/galleries a place to find you and follow along. Social media is somewhere where a majority of people spend at least a little bit of time online. Since it is free to post, you can essentially use a platform like Instagram as your own personal digital gallery.
If you haven’t yet started posting your artwork on social media, consider starting an Instagram profile to start building your online presence. You Instagram profile is a grid of photos three images wide, that can scroll as far as photographs you post. Posting to Instagram is as simple as choosing an image from your smartphone’s camera roll, then clicking “share.” You can write a cation for your work, add a location tag, or tag another account. If you want to, you can edit the image you choose to upload, and add hashtags to help others find your artwork.
When you start your Instagram account, you can start by posting your past work in however order you like. You can group images by series, or create carousel posts to showcase multiple sides of a work within one post. Create text posts to give information and context about your artwork to anyone viewing your page, or post behind the scenes photos of your process to show people how you make your art and find inspiration.
An Instagram account can be a great low barrier to entry way to start building an online presence for your work. You don’t need to start building a website for your work, and can build at your own pace. Instead of trying to create an entire art career online over night, start slow and build over time. Showcase your artwork on an Instagram profile, use the tools to find a following, then start to decide if you want to build a website or online store.
If you are already posting your artwork on social media, but aren’t advertising, consider boosting your current posting with a bit of ad spend. You can promote the posts of your art that you’re already making for as little as $1 and gain more audience for your work. Are you showing at an upcoming art event and want to make sure your followers know when and where you’ll be? Post and promote a notice of your upcoming event to make sure it’ll be a success.
Advertising on social media can be done simply. On Instagram, you don’t even have to leave the app. Underneath any post that can be promoted, there will be a blue button that says, “Boost Post.” Click this button, and you can tell Instagram who to show your post to, by location, interest, behavior, and other demographics of your choosing.
Having an online presence gives fans of your artwork a place to stay up to date with what you’re working on. If you’re someone who sells art at local art fairs or exhibits at a gallery in your area, having a web presence will give the people who see your art at a physical location a way to follow your artwork, and potentially make a purchase if your have an online store set up. Platforms like Instagram also have built in ways for your artwork to be found by people who you may not reach otherwise. If you haven’t yet started posting your art on social media, you can build a gallery for yourself today.
Try Instagram Reels for more organic reach
Instagram is a great medium to tell the story of your business, inform customers of new information or to reach new customers. Since it is free to post on Instagram, you can post as much as you need to, showcasing new products, bring customers behind the scenes, and promote limited campaigns. As time goes by, Instagram organically distributes your content on the Explore feed, putting your content in front of people who might not already know about your business or organization. Instagram was once a image sharing social network solely, and as Instagram develops new ways to post, Instagram rewards posts made with new features with more organic reach. This reach brings in more traffic to your business’ profile, potentially bringing in new business.
via Facebook
It pays to keep up with the new features that Instagram introduces, as Instagram is generally releasing the new mediums to keep up with their competition. In August 2020, Instagram released Reels, their response to the short video based social network TikTok’s rise in popularity. Reels let users upload short vertical videos that can be made on platform with a simple to use video editor. Instagram users can play the latest popular music, or anything else from an in depth music library, over their videos, and utilize a few other editing tools that create a surprising range of video styles.
“More than 50 percent of people use Instagram’s Explore page in a month, Stein said, and now there’ll be a dedicated hub for Reels.” -The Verge
Instagram has created several surfaces within the Instagram app for Reels to be played, organically distributing Reels content to Instagram users who’s interests align with subject matter. Use a few hashtags when uploading, and you’ll help Instagram show your content to people who will most likely want to engage with it. Instagram has made Reels the default content medium to show at the top of all hashtags, and have allocated a similarly high traffic section for Reels within Explore. Because of these Reels dedicated locations within the Instagram app, as well as an organic promotion in Newsfeed, Reels are getting a massive amount of organic engagement.
Utilizing Reels increases your chances for your content to reach more people on Instagram, and if you use hashtags relevant to your business, you’ll likely reach the right people. If you are a local business, tag nearby towns or the hashtag that a local media outlet uses, and you’ll have a good shot at reaching a lot of people in your area, as these hashtags are generally less populated that more general ones like #smallbusiness or #boutique.
Instagram is currently promoting Reels in direct response to TikTok’s rise in popularity. As Reels is essentially the same video format as a TikTok, Instagram (who is owned by Facebook) hopes to slow user attrition to another app. Instagram still has more users, and even more daily users, than TikTok, so it will pay to make the most of Instagram’s reaction to TikTok’s success. Your content, and thus your business, will reach a wider audience. In addition, Reels is an information rich way to post content, so you’ll benefit just from higher fidelity communication with your customers.
“We are getting better at using ranking signals that help us predict whether people will find a reel entertaining and whether we should recommend it.” -Instagram spokesperson Devi Narasimhan
Video is a great way to communicate with your followers and potential new customers on Instagram. A picture tells a thousand words, and video tells 30 pictures a second. Baseline, utilizing Reels helps you tell the story of your business, inform your audience about what you do, and promote events, campaigns or sales. The added bonus is the Instagram is organically boosting these posts to stave off competition from another company. Utilizing Reels will be a win win of showcasing better content, while reaching new audience.
Email newsletters are a simple way to reach your customers
Newsletters are a great way to reach your customers directly. By emailing them directly, you can give business updates or promote specific campaigns, while linking back to your website or product and event pages. Newsletters bring your business to customers’ attention by meeting them where they are already. Most people have email, and a lot of those people get email on a phone that they might have with them often. A newsletter, sent regularly, can become a direct dispatch to your most engaged customers, where you can build brand identity and keep customers up to date.
As Nextdoor explains, “as a small business owner, you know every interaction you have with potential customers is one that counts. Sending regular newsletter campaigns is an effective way to cultivate long-term relationships that are essential to your business’ growth.” These emails give a higher resolution impression of your business than a single image posted to a social media website. With newsletters, you can go into detail about your business, and what makes it unique. Do you offer a selection that can’t be found anywhere else in your area? Showcase that within your newsletter and give in depth descriptions of what you sell.
Nextdoor continues, “aside from fostering quality, intentional communication, newsletters can also be well worth the time and marketing dollars spent on creating them. In fact, research conducted by Litmus showed that for each dollar spent on email marketing, brands saw an average of 42 dollars in return.” This means that for every dollar invested into email newsletters, a company can see up to a 42x return, or more, on their investment.
Email marketing is so cost effective because you can reach an unlimited amount of people per email sent. You are only limited by the amount of people on your mailing list. An email with several links back to product pages, or one with advertising embedded in it (with display ads, affiliate links, or paid content) can have a high conversion rate, as it is sent to people who have likely already bought something from your business.
Most website building platforms have built in tools to collect emails and send newsletters. Squarespace has tools to help you build a newsletter right on your website’s dashboard. Mailchimp is a pretty common tool that can plug into most website builders.
Your newsletter doesn’t have to be weekly, or even monthly. You can send a quarterly, or even year end, update, as long as you keep your newsletter consistent. If you feel that you can add more emails, then add more. If you notice that less people are opening your emails, then send less. Email marketing is a great way to communicate directly to your customer, in a way that can be much more in depth than through other channels.
Is your business on social media yet?
Social media is the easiest way to reach your existing customers, while finding business at the same time. According to Forbes, “driven in no small part by the pandemic, Americans spent more than an average 1,300 hours on social media,” last year. Continuing, “Facebook led the way, where Americans spent an average 58 minutes a day on the app – or 325 hours a year.” Social media is how people communicate, pass time, and get information. If your business isn’t yet on social media, or if you aren’t posting regularly, then you are missing out on the ability to communicate directly to your clientele, and passing up an opportunity to promote your business efficiently.
1) Communicate directly to your customers
Social media gives you the ability to communicate directly to your customers. You can describe your business as you wish, and showcase your work the way that you want. Since posting doesn’t cost you anything, you can speak directly to your clientele whenever you want. Promote sales, use Stories to show how your business works. Go live to give a walkthrough in your retail store, or write a long post on Facebook thanking your customers for their business on a holiday. Social media gives you the flexibility to keep in communication with your audience, which helps keep your business in mind during purchase decisions.
2) Promote specific campaigns
Do you run sales seasonally, or do you need to promote an in-store event with a live musical performance? Do you have a book launch coming up, or throwing a customer appreciation night? You can use social media to promote time specific campaigns, like events or sales and keep customers up to date with special offerings from your business. Use Facebook Events to inform and remind customers of an event or date, and use Instagram to promote and inform potential attendees of the event as well. Social media helps you reach your customers to promote whatever you’re planning.
3) Reach a local audience
Social media is global, but you can also use it to reach a local audience. Use hashtags of your town, surrounding area, local publications, local businesses, your state, county, etc. and you’ll start to reach a local community of businesses, organizations and potential customers. Comment on content within these hashtags that you like or are in a similar industry as yours, or even begin to collaborate with other local businesses. Once you start to get more engaged with your local social media, you will begin to algorithmically surface in the feeds of other media users local to your business.
4) Automate ads
You can also automate your marketing with social media advertising. Find a targeted local audience of potential customers, or promote an online store to a much wider audience. Social media ads help you reach new and existing customers directly in their newsfeeds. You can target your ads by interest, location, or behavior, and the available tools are very effective and cost efficient.
5) Gain credibility in your field
The more you post about your field, if customers and other people on social media respond positively to the content, you’ll gain credibility in your field, as your posting will show that you know what you’re doing and are good at what you do. If you’re an artist and you post daily about your work and process, you’ll showcase that you’re an experienced artist. If you have a specialty retail store and post credible information about your wares, people who visit your profile will pick up on that.
Social media is the best way to reach your customers and find new business, as it’s free to post, and most people are on at least one social media platform. If your business isn’t on social media yet, you really should be, as it will likely only become more a part of how people engage with commerce. You don’t need to get on every platform immediately, and create new profiles on every new platform, but finding one or two platforms that you’re comfortable posting on will go a long way towards establishing an identity for your business online.
It has never been easier to start a business online
Have a business idea or a hobby that you want to start earning additional income with? Do you have a craft, or a product in mind that you want to bring to life? It has never been easier to start a business, and it is even easier to start a business online. You don’t even have to quit your job, and can start own your own business to earn supplemental income. If it becomes successful enough to become your sole source of income, then you can work for yourself. You get to set your own hours and your own pace.
Start today
1) All you need is a website
A simple website landing page for your new business can be made in as little as an hour. Modern website creation platforms like Squarespace and Wix make basic website creation simple, and are very cheap to continue using. You can purchase a custom .com domain for your business for around $20, and the platforms handle web hosting. Platforms like Shopify and Etsy have extremely robust, easy to use, commerce tools that you can use to create web stores, complete with shipping and automated marketing. Now that you have a website, you can turn a hobby into a small business, or start selling products and services to customers that may have never found you.
2) Social media helps you reach new customers
Start today
Now that you have a website, you can turn a hobby into a small business, or start selling products and services to customers that may have never found you. Add your website domain into your social media bio, and start posting to promote your new business. Post things that are relevant to your work, or start blogging from your website, and post those articles to your social media. Communicating on social media helps you share information about your business and what you do, while also engaging new and existing customers. You don’t have to over exert yourself either, just start with one or two channels that feel comfortable.
3) You can automate scheduling
If you’re monetizing a service that you can offer as a small business, like catering or dog walking, there are simple digital tools available that can help you automate customer scheduling. Square offers a service that can be connected to your social media accounts, where you can set your availability, then a potential customer pays for and schedules, never leaving your Instagram. Squarespace also offers a feature for this to happen on your .com domain. All you have to do is figure out how much time you have, set your availability, then let the digital tools do the rest. Once a customer schedules an appointment, you’ll be notified via push notification or email.
4) Bookkeeping tools are digital
Start today
If you use your website to sell products or services, you’ll get insights on how your store performs over time. Squarespace offers detail rich data, like per-product conversion rates (or the percentage of people who buy a product after visiting a product page), and will visualize a click funnel that leads to purchase (or which pages lead to which purchases). This helps you figure out what is performing best, and what needs improvement. These platforms let you export this data, which you can import into something like QuickBooks to handle bookkeeping and taxes, automatically.
5) Incorporate online
You don’t have to incorporate right away when you start your business online. You can just start slowly, selling a few items here and there, while you learn how to operate an online business, and then incorporate when you plan to dedicate more time. Incorporating online has never been easier, and services like LegalZoom will handle the entire process for you. All you have to do is pay their fee, and tell them a little bit about yourself and your business. You’ll get an EIN number right away, and they’ll mail you your business’ paperwork when it is available.
It has never been easier to start a business online. You can work at your own pace, and accept as much business as you decide. You can start by selling very few things, and then grow to become an independent business owner. Digital tools make this a simple process, because you can scale from zero at the rate you decide. An online business can either be a hobby for your time off, or something that you create to begin a new career. What would your business be?