In March 2020, when COVID-19 hit the whole world moved online. As a business, it didn’t matter if you were ready for it or not, online business is no longer a choice, it was necessary and is now the normal.
We consider ourselves one of the lucky ones; we’ve been 100% online for the past nine plus years now. We made that transition when it was a choice and that gave us the luxury to do it at our own pace. A lot of businesses served their clients in person at the beginning of March 2020 and by the end of that same month, had to bring it all online!
But we at CJE want to offer some hope here. While this transition has been bumpy and uncomfortable for many service businesses, it may be the change you needed to grow your business and live the life you want to live.
Working online offers you more freedom, flexibility and the opportunity to scale that is just not possible when you serve clients in person. To help you reach your goals in this new world and make the transition a little smoother, our team have put together the best five tips that we have gathered over the last nine years of working online.
1. Embrace Organic Social Media Marketing
Keep your costs down by focusing on organic, non-paid social media marketing.
This is content led marketing. It involves you showing up on social media, giving people valuable content, and connecting with the these people in a real way.
We recommend focusing on two platforms to start with and mastering them. Focus on creating the best, value driven content for your ideal clients and becoming the go to authority in your niche.
Your organic social media marketing strategy can broadly be defined in two parts:
– value driven content
– authentic engagement, and conversations
This is a winning combination that will create an audience for you, full of ideal clients. This works. You can get results pretty quickly when you do it right, please be very aware that this is a long term strategy. Meaning the more you put into it, and the longer you are at it, the more it will pay off.
Move away from selling single sessions or classes. Instead, identify the transformation you provide for your ideal client and sell it as a high ticket transformation. That way you can forecast your earnings and plan for the future. And you will be able to give your clients what they truly need.
Rather than having someone come to you every now and again for a session, you will be able to work with your clients on a much deeper level and provide them with real transformation. For the results that you are able to provide through a full transformation, your clients will be happy to commit to the investment in your time.
You will need to track every process you create so that you can outsource or automate it later. Everything you do requires a process. Think about what happens when you get a warm lead. You have a process, even if you are not aware of it:
– You reach out to them,
– You send them more information,
– You follow up with them,
– You get on a call with them.
These are all steps within your sales process. Once you track these you will not only save yourself time, but you will create an automated process that can be done by software or outsourced to a virtual assistant. Tracking each, and every process, no matter how small, will all go towards freeing your time up and enabling you to grow faster.
Have you ever heard of Shiny Object Syndrome? Well, it’s a real problem for business owners in the online world.
Shiny Object Syndrome is when you get distracted by the next new thing out there before you have finished giving the method you were working on a proper chance.
There is so many great information out there that it’s easy to get distracted trying out all these methods. However if you never give one of them the time required to make a significant difference in your business, you’ll just keep hopping from one thing to the next.
What we always suggest is when a new client Joins any of our programs we tell them to ignore every other program and strategy out there for our first 6 months together. That way, when they invest their time and money in our strategy, they see it through and immediately can see their results.
So when you start with a method or strategy, focus on it and give it time before you start looking for the next one.
Blinkers on, double down and the results will come.
Growing your business online through social media is all about connecting. Connecting to your ideal clients in comments and direct messages on Instagram and connecting with other leaders to cross share audiences.
This is where we adopt the belief of community over competition.
By connecting with someone similar to you on Instagram and doing joint content together (IGTV or a LIVE) you both benefit from each other’s audiences.
gravitate towards you won’t gravitate towards someone else. In other words work together not against each other are another phrase is two heads are better than one.
We make our decisions to work with people we can resonate with. There is huge power in cross sharing audiences. Look in seeking out collaborations that you can see as mutually beneficial and create great content together.
Being forced abruptly online because of COVID 19 is a blessing in disguise! Focus your time on an organic social media marketing strategy. This will save costs and allow you to grow at a steady rate.
Shift out of sessions and into selling transformations. Track every process you have so that you can automate and outsource quicker. Social media is a broad topic with many platforms and methods out there that work. Focus on one and master it before you move on. Connect! The key to your online success lies in the connections you make and relationships you formulate.
Boost your sales and maintain a competitive edge by connecting to our system via API, and being one of the first to leverage our revolutionary solutions designed to transform your marketing efforts, and drive measurable results.
