Many people have a big misconception that they have to quit their job to start their own business. In reality, it is perfectly doable to start a new business while you are still working. I highly recommend that anybody starting their own business gives themselves a year to start getting online exposure before leaping into anything. Laying down the foundation for online marketing success is most important. These days, if you are not online, you will struggle to be truly successful.
First, I recommend that you start your own business as opposed to buying a franchise or becoming a reseller. Subway is not in the business of making you rich. Yes, some manage to do it. If it was a foolproof plan, however, everybody would own one. To avoid having to deal with manufacturers, begin a service type business. Also, think locally. When you are just getting started, don't try to compete on a national level. Start small and work your way up little by little. If you take care with each step in the process, a few years down the line you'll be ready to launch a much larger campaign and your competitors won't know what hit them.
Lay down the foundation to get ranked highly on Google so your business can last for years to come. Follow these guidelines to make sure you do it right:
1. Pick a domain name that describes what you do. Do not name your company after your last name. Name it after the product or service. When I began my firm, I did not know this and it took me a while to get Google's authority on a particular subject. Now, my site gets around 400 hits per day, though I feel this could have been achieved far more quickly if I had chosen a domain based on the service I was providing. Only use.com domains, and shorter names are better than longer ones. To give you an example of how important this is, Google "NYC Sales Recruiters." Look at a company by the name of Sales Expert Executive recruiters. They have a template based 10 page website. Then, look at mine. We have 170 pages of articles written about sales recruiting. That is how much weight the search engine puts on domain names. It took me nearly a year to learn how to beat them in most categories.
2. Brand your company for Google. Start out with what are called long-tail keyword phrases. Long-tail keyword phrases are 5 words. When I began to learn online marketing, I went after words like "New York City sales recruiters." Then, as time progressed, I began going after shorter keywords and the traffic to my site increased.
3. Study how to build backlinks to your website. There are tons of articles out there telling you how to do this. Building backlinks to your site is very important, and at first, should be done gradually. Right off the bat, the best way to build links is to submit your website to several website directories. You can find these through some very basic research. It's well worth the money. Then, begin a blog and frequently update it with posts. Have HTML links with the keywords you are going after pointing back to your site. Also, write interesting articles and submit them to online article sites such as Ezine. Writing is the key to gaining backlinks to your site and is the most important facet of online marketing success. However, when submitting your first articles to these sites, make sure they are perfect. If you mess up on the first few, the editors will dismiss your subsequent efforts.
4. Keep track of your site's progress. You should begin to see an increase in website traffic and your Google page rank start to climb. Make sure people can contact you through the website. There is no better way to gauge your success with online marketing then how many clients are coming in.
So that's opening your own business, in a nutshell. Depending on the industry you choose and the product or service you are selling, you will run in to your own unique problems and obstacles. Figuring out how to get past them, however, is just part of the fun.
Ken Sundheim owns KAS Placement. An executive level sales and marketing recruitment agency with multiple divisions.