Starting an online business? Want to get customers to your online business and generate traffic to your website?
There is no business that succeeds without customers.
For an online business, customers = traffic to your website and converting those visitors to sales and then profit.
Starting an online business? Want to get customers to your online business and generate traffic to your website??
There is no business that succeeds without customers.
For an online business, customers = ‘traffic’ to your website and converting those visitors to profit.
To get visitors to your website, you first need to know:
- What your idea / product is, and
- Who your target audience is
- Where they hang out so you can connect with them and make sales.
In the online world – there are lots of ways this can be done, it can be overwhelming.
This article looks at actionable options to get customers to your online business and generate traffic to your website.
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Before you start creating a tonne of content, paying for advertising, and shelling out money and time. Read this.
It will help focus your efforts and $$$.
As part of my journey to financial independence, I am using a portfolio of online businesses. The ‘fun’ for me is the creation, setup and establishment. This includes the initial research, idea development, branding, product / market fit and marketing. You can follow my journey here.
Good research is a powerful tool to get profitable quicker.
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Help! How do I find my customers to get them to my website?
Market research will help you understand who your customers are, where they are hanging out and how to get them to your website.
Once you have this information, you will be ready to go out and get the customers to your website.
Wait – do I have to do market research? Can’t I just start an ad or something?
Sure, but if you don’t develop a good understanding of who your customer is you will be spending a lot of money (and / or time) with little to show for your efforts.
For example, the audience on Tik Tok is different to that on Instagram, Reddit or Facebook. People may be actively searching for the solution you are providing on Google.
Step by step guide to get customers to your online business and generate traffic to your website
There are always tools and templates to help! When you have the whole Internet at your fingers it’s easy to get lost in the information.
This step-by-step guide, follows what we do to research and identify profitable audiences.
Start with FREE tools. Always.
We want to be profitable. That means we keep track of our expenses. The best expense costs $0.00. For online market research that is Google! But, there is always another tool to use and make your life simpler online. When you are ready, you might want to step up to the paid versions.
There are three main tools we’ll take you through in this guide
Step 1 – Get to know what people are looking for
Everyone should start in Google, not just because its free. Its also a treasure trove of information.
What Google will tell you through a simple online search:
- How your business looks to anyone ‘searching’ for it. First impressions count.
- What your audience is searching for.
- What your competitors are doing
If our keyword plan template would help you, let us know in the comments. We use it for all our sites. It puts your keywords and research in one place, to track and measure over time.
With YOJ, we blog about our journey to financial independence. Specifically, using online businesses as our side hustle to increase our income. So, our audience is interested in both the FIRE journey, and starting an online business. This meant our initial keywords were:
- FIRE
- Your Online Journey (you always want to rank for your business name, if possible)
- Financial Independence
- Starting an Online Business
What to do:
- Put your initial keywords in the keyword plan template (or just write them down)
- Do a Google Search for each of your keywords. Take a look at the ‘people also ask’ and ‘related searches’ (bottom of the page boxes that come up. This tells you what people are typing into Google to answer their questions.
In Australia, Fire is a big topic, not the Financial Independence Retire Early type of FIRE, but the bushfire / campfire type. It dominates Google when you search for ‘FIRE’. But, if you add the word ‘Financial’ this changes a lot.
Do this for your topic. Check out some keyword variations and note them down.
Google is telling you what people are interested in. It won’t give you numbers, but Google is showing you the most popular phrases. It will also show you some of your competition.
TOP TIP: There’s lots of people searching for information online. If some of your keywords comeback with things like ‘products’, ‘courses’ and other words that indicate they are looking to BUY, that’s an indicator they are potentially looking to spend money.
Step 2 – Take a look at your competition
While you are doing this initial research, this is a great time to have a look at what other businesses are around. Note, a couple down. You actually want competition. It sounds counter-intuitive but competitors are a great indicator there’s people that want what you are offering!
Step 3 – Who is typing these search phrases into Google?
To find your customers, you need to know who they are and what is motivating them. That way you can connect with them.
- What are they trying to do?
- Where are they at currently?
- Where do they look for help?
- Who do they trust?
- What are they willing to spend to solve their problem?
- How would you describe them as a person?
You can do this by creating a simple table and jotting down the answers. This will give you both text and visual map of who you think your key customers are.
Put it all together.
You now have:
- Information on how people are looking for / searching for the solution you offer.
- The language they use.
- A keyword plan that can be the backbone of your SEO strategy.
- Identified some competitors
- A better understanding of who your customers are and where they hang out.
How you use this to get customers to your online business and generate traffic to your website.
- Put your energy and resources where your customers are.
- If your customer is not on Instagram – don’t spend your energy there, focus your energy and $$ where they DO hang out.
- Find that there was lots of conversation from customers looking for answers on Reddit? Consider hanging out there too.
- Use the language your customer uses.
- Not getting sales on Facebook? Is it because your customer isn’t there or is because you aren’t speaking the same language?
- As ‘experts’ we fall into lingo / industry speak all the time. Is that the language your customers are using?
- Provide the answers they are searching for and establish your expertise
- Use the information you have learned to directly respond to what they are looking for.
- Talk with expertise and authority.
- Help them