Guide To Growing Your Online Business In 2016

The sooner you stop believing in magic formulas for success the better.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In case you haven’t noticed, there are more than a few entrepreneurs online daily talking and marketing the same kind of business, and offering the same services. You log onto social media and you see many of your entrepreneur friends that sell podcast services, build funnels, run ads, can teach you how to use live video, teach you how to create a profitable blog, and the list goes on. Building an online business isn’t easy, and there are some hard realities that you need to realize, CopyBlogger tells us.

I know I’m not telling you anything new. Having said that, I love the freedom an online business can provide. As you’re reading this, I’m writing this article from a cafe in Nairobi, Kenya. I'm here in Africa as part of a six-country consulting tour. While I’m writing this, people are buying my books and other products on my website. I’m making money passively while enjoying the amazingness of Africa. If this is one of your goals, there are seven things you can do to get better results from building an online business or increasing your business' presence online.

1. Stop copying other entrepreneurs.

Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform that helps independent business owners sell online and in-person. We have many step-by-step guides and video tutorials to help you get started with selling online. You'll learn how to set up a well-designed online store quickly, list your products, convert more customers, and track your results. The information communications technology (ICT) is one of the fastest growing business sectors in Kenya, and Internet access rates are some of the highest in sub- Saharan Africa. Kenya is a regional leader in terms of value-added mobile services, most notably Safaricom's M-Pesa mobile banking service, which has brought about a revolution in.

Customers buy from someone they know, like and trust. They don’t buy from strangers. If you are the clone of some other and/or famous entrepreneur, they’ll never get to know the real you. When they want to buy, they will buy from the entrepreneur you are copying. Use frameworks that work, but don’t be a clone. Model success but don't copy it. Let your voice come through, and build a business that’s yours.

Related: 10 Simple Things Successful People Do Every Morning (Infographic)

2. Be clear about who your core audience is.

If you try to reach the whole world, you’ll end up reaching no one because your efforts to reach customers will be scattered. You won’t be able to help people where they are if you’re not speaking to a specific target audience. The more specific you can get with your target audience, the easier time you’ll have marketing, which is what ultimately grows your business. When you do, you will be focused on your strategies. Your branding and messaging should be very clear.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask Before Determining Your Target Market

3. Keep it simple.

Keep your website simple and clean. Even though Wordpress has a variety of options for widgets and plugins, you don’t need all of them. When someone visits your website it shouldn’t confuse them. When it comes to your business, keep it simple, too. Build traffic to your website. Learn the biggest struggles your target audience is facing. Create products and services that help solve those problems. Rinse and repeat. Yes, it can be that simple to create a solid foundation.

Related: Don't Just Start a Business, Solve A Problem

4. Don’t rely exclusively social media.

While you can’t ignore social media, don’t make it your number one strategy for traffic and leads. New York Times best-selling author, Crystal Paine, clearly illustrated this. The bottom line is that you want to build your business on your platform, not someone else’s. You want people to sign up to your email list, and interact with you personally, not just on social media.

Related: The Only Technique You Need to Quickly Grow Your Email List

5. Focus on what’s important.

There’s a wealth of information you can learn online. Most of these things aren’t important to where you are in the process. If you’re building, you probably shouldn’t be learning about SEO. If you guest post and build your audience in other ways, the SEO will naturally come, so your time is better spent writing guest posts. Sit down, and evaluate where you’re at in your entrepreneurial journey, and stick to what will help you where you are. Don’t fall victim to information overload because it can easily keep you from making progress. The speed of implementation is what makes you successful in business.

Related: How to Treat Information Overload in 3 Simple Steps

6. Don’t be afraid to charge a fair price.

It would be great to help as many people as possible for free, but you have a family to care for and bills to pay. If you add value and help people, you should be paid a fair price for it. Remember, you’re building a business; it can’t be a business if it doesn’t make money. There are people online who should be ashamed at what they’re doing and charging, but you’ll find that in any industry. As long as you focus on serving and adding value to your customer's lives, your prices will be justified.

Reading: 3 Lessons About Setting Your Price Learned From a Vegas Prostitute

7. Keep pushing towards your goals.

At the end of the day, if you want this to succeed, you have to determine right now that you’ll keep going no matter what. Perseverance is what makes your business grow. Even if you haven’t made the process you wanted to make at this point, you can’t give up. Build this business one relationship, and one sell at a time.

Have patience. This takes time to build. With focused effort, you can build a powerful online business or grow your business' presence online. Use these seven strategies to optimize your building efforts. Have patience, and build something that helps your target audience. Focus and you will do this.

The sooner you stop believing in magic formulas for success the better.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.