If you recently started selling online, this is for you

11 min readJun 12, 2020

Recent disruptions have created tremendous opportunities to generate additional or new sources of revenue online. Shopify, the off-the-shelf website building platform, recently announced that their sales grew +47% versus the same quarter a year ago.

Whether you are a small business owner feeling the urgent need to shift some of your activities online, or a side hustler looking for a new revenue stream, this article is for you.

I recently finished a 40-hour Google Digital Marketing course certification. I compiled my structured notes with my personal experience as a marketing manager, consultant, and business owner to create a step-by-step practical playbook that will help to get you started on your way to building a thriving online business.

Request the full (free) 50-pages Digital Marketing Playbook by clicking on this link.

Aside of the basics covered in the Google course (SEO, SEM, Social Media, Search & Display Ads, Mobile, Analytics, e-com, and more), I put flesh on the bones with links, tools, visuals, methodologies, tips, and tricks to make it a comprehensive ‘how-to’ playbook.

What you will find in this article are two summaries of the document: an executive one with the main points, and a more detailed one listing some of the steps, tips, and tools.

So let’s jump right into the content.

Executive summary

Plan your strategy & create a website

Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Identify your goals
Design your customer journey
Build a website using the right tools

2. Appear in online search queries

Understand how search engines work
Optimize your page to perform in organic search => SEO, OPO, OSO
Be noticed with search advertising => SEM/SEA
Help people nearby find you through local directories

3. Advertise to reach more people

Target your audience with display advertising
Advertise on mobile devices
Build a social media presence
Grow with content marketing
Connect through email marketing

4. Use analytics to track and measure results

Turn data into insights
Use web analytics for organic & paid search

5. Expand internationally

Identify opportunities abroad and target new markets
Advertise cross-borders
Build a robust support system

Detailed summary

1. Plan your strategy and create a website

“Plan your work and work your plan,” wrote Napoleon Hill in the early 20th century. This quote remains relevant today, almost a hundred years later. Even driven by an incredible ambition and hunger to do, fail, and succeed, it is key to put some thoughts into your strategy before jumping into action.

Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Start by defining your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. Your USP is characterized by what makes you stand out versus your competitors, the added value that you promise to deliver with your product or service.

It doesn’t mean that you need to solve problems by creating something from scratch. Today’s biggest and most successful businesses were rarely the first movers in their industry. Nonetheless, they could identify a key product component to improve versus their competitors to create additional value.

To define your USP, answer the following questions: who is my target audience? Who are my competitors? What problems does my target audience have? How can I solve these problems? What can I do to solve these problems better than my competitors?

Tools like Spyfu can help you get a better understanding of your competitors and what makes them successful.

Once defined, embed your USP in everything you do, and communicate it clearly to your target customers.

Identify your goals

The next step is to identify the goals of your online strategy. Do you have a physical store and wish to raise awareness? Do you want to generate additional revenues by creating an attractive e-commerce platform? Are you looking to gather a community of followers to sell online services?

Once you have identified your goals, set KPIs to measure your success in reaching them. KPIs should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Design your customer journey

If you are running both an online and offline business, your customer journey will likely be hybrid. Customers can adopt two different behaviors in hybrid customer journeys: showrooming, which means seeing a product offline and buying it online, or RoPo, meaning researching online to purchase offline.

If, on the other hand, you run a 100% online business, think of your online customer journey in four steps: See (getting inspired), Think (researching), Do (buying), Care (sharing). Put yourself in your customer’s shoes to create the journey and identify the most relevant touchpoints to target them with specific communications.

Answering the following questions will help: where do I go when I need answers? Where do I spot new brands? What helps me make purchase decisions? Do I see a brand again after purchase?

Alternatively, ask prospective customers directly through surveys with the help of tools like SurveyMonkey.

Build a website using the right tools

If you have yet to build a website, don’t get spooked by the task. There are multiple off-the-shelf website building tools available on the market today, and none of them require any coding knowledge or experience.

I use WIX to create any type of website and strongly recommend it. The templates are great, the interface is user-friendly, the personalization is infinite, and it is very affordable — I recently paid $313 for a 1-year ‘business unlimited’ plan with a private internet domain name, two mailboxes and got ~$100 in freebies.

Perhaps the most critical part of building a website is to make sure that it is mobile friendly as most of the online traffic today comes from mobile devices. Almost all website building tools have responsive design integrated, meaning the design of your website will be automatically adapted to fit all types of devices. Nevertheless, it is worth running multiple tests to make sure that your load time is short, and the design simple enough to be clicked on and navigated through easily.

2. Appear in online search queries

Understand how search engines work

The goal of a search engine is simple: connect the searcher with what he is searching for. To do that, search engine bots scout all of the content of the internet by reading the HTML code of websites, index each piece of content, and rank webpages.

How search engine rank webpages is part of Google’s secret formula. However, we know that they value unique, engaging, and relevant content that best matches the search query.

Optimize your page to perform in organic search

Building unique, engaging, and relevant content should be your ultimate focus when trying to improve your ranking on search engines (Search Engine Optimization, SEO).

Use Google Keyword Planner to target keywords your customers are typing for searches related to your business based on frequency, competition, and relevance. When identified, adapt your website content (On-Page Optimization, OPO) with the right titles, meta-descriptions, and headings to best match those keywords.

Search engines are also influenced by what other websites are saying about you. To increase the number of qualitative external references to your website -or backlinks, encourage others to write about you (content marketing) and link your relevant social media profiles to your business (Off-Site Optimization, OSO).

Be noticed with search advertising

Aside from organic search, another option to be noticed by customers is to engage in paid search (Search Engine Advertising, SEA), or ‘pay-per-click’ advertising.

In SEA, advertisers compete in an auction for the highest slot on search results for specific keywords. The auction score is a function of the bid (maximum Cost-Per-Click you are willing to pay for a particular keyword search) and the relevance (a ‘quality score’ from 1 to 10, which determines if your content matches the query).

Remember: the goal of a search engine is to connect the searcher with what he is searching for. As a result, relevance in the auction score will always get the priority versus the bid.

Help people nearby find you through local directories

If you have a local business with a physical shop and want to increase traffic in your store, use the power of local directories. Local directories are online listings containing critical information about your business like your name, address, phone number, and opening hours. For instance, if you research “hairdresser” on your mobile, Google will provide you with a map, information, and directions towards all listed hairdressers nearby.

List your business with well-known local directories like Google or Bing, and search for smaller, industry-specific directories, famous blogs, and review sites. Don’t forget to fill in all relevant information on your social media profiles as they also appear in search results.

3. Advertise to reach more people

The next step after optimizing your online presence through search is to increase your reach through advertising. We will look at several ways to get your product or service in front of new prospects and feed your leads funnel.

Target your audience with display advertising

Let’s start with display advertising. In a nutshell, display advertising is banners, messages, or videos about your product displayed on other websites — think blogs, media sites, YouTube, etc.

Display advertising provides an excellent opportunity to reach potential customers that are not necessarily looking for your business. The goal is to target websites that your ideal customers are the most likely to visit. For example, if you are running a specialty coffee e-commerce platform, you might want to target placements on blogs publishing coffee-related content aimed at coffee enthusiasts.

To run display advertising campaigns, you will have to go through ad networks, like Google AdSense. Ad networks are marketplaces connecting businesses that want to advertise with websites that have available ad spots to sell.

Another great tool to leverage through display advertising is retargeting. Retargeting means advertising to people that have visited your website, but haven’t necessarily taken action. By using tools like AdRoll or Criteo, you will be able to set up targeted ads to increase your conversion rate based on prospects’ behavior on your site.

Advertise on mobile devices

Most of the internet traffic today comes through mobile devices. Therefore, it is vital to plan advertising campaigns that are specifically tailored to those devices. The most important adjustment to make is to create ads in many different shapes and sizes to adapt to all kinds of screen sizes. You can do so by using tools such as Google Ads Editor.

Build a social media presence

Building a social media presence is a great way to reach people on their mobile devices. An April 2020 study showed that 98.2% of Facebook users were using mobile phones to access the platform, with 78% of users accessing it only via their mobile.

The great thing about social media is that thanks to the amount of information people share on their social media profiles, you can tailor your ads to target people fitting your current customers’ profile with high accuracy. Social Media Management tools like Later, or Social Media Monitoring tools like Keyhole can help you plan, set, and monitor social media advertising campaigns.

Remember that social media is not all about you; people are not there to hear your sales pitch, so don’t get boring. People on social media want to be on a two-way street, knowing that you are listening, engaging, and have a plan to answer comments or questions.

Grow with content marketing

Content marketing is defined by creating and sharing online material like videos, posts, or blogs to capture attention from prospects and customers. The key to success for content marketing is to accomplish three things: answering your audience’s questions and needs, providing something of value, and making your audience wanting more by keeping them engaged.

The first step to growing and engaging with your audience is to get to know them. Use segmentation to identify groups based on specific behaviors and target content fit to their needs. The content you create must entertain, inspire, educate, and convince.

To get insights about your audience to help you create the most engaging content, use tools like Answer the public or Inmobi.

Connect through email marketing

Email marketing helps build customer loyalty and engagement, barely costs anything, and works on all types of devices — which makes it one of the most valuable marketing tools.

The starting point is to build a mailing list, which can be achieved by offering a discount to customers if they subscribe to your newsletter, for example. Use marketing services tools like MailChimp to guide you from connecting your database to tracking recipients’ behavior after receiving your emails.

To craft great marketing emails, keep the content concise, and get right to the point. Paragraphs should be short (1 to 3 sentences) and focused on one single idea. Use the right tone of voice for your audience; be a bit more casual than you would be in your other communication channels. Don’t forget to add links to your website with specific calls-to-action (CTAs) to help drive traffic and conversion.

4. Use analytics to track and measure results

Turn data into insights

Collecting and analyzing data is critical. The better you understand your customers, the better your marketing will be. Break down your data into two groups: quantitative data compiling anything that can be numerically measured (time spent on your site, number of purchases, etc.) and qualitative data collecting all descriptive information (customers’ opinions, comments, reviews, etc.)

Gather quantitative data through analytics tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, or social media. Gather qualitative data through customer surveys or by scouting what is being said about your products online.

Once you have gathered your data, interpret and analyze it to identify trends and deviations that will transform into insights. Those insights will help you create assumptions and take specific actions to test them.

Use web analytics for organic & paid search

Google Analytics will help you monitor how many visitors are coming to your website from different search engines and keywords. Take a look at the themes attracting traffic to your site. From this traffic, identify what percentage is converting into sales. Respond and adapt by matching the needs of what people are researching online to make your content as relevant as possible.

Analytics can also be used to analyze the efficiency of your paid search campaigns. Track what you spend, and identify when and where it is converting into whatever goal your campaign is trying to achieve. Lower your bid if your content is particularly relevant to specific keywords, as your conversion can be as good on a lower page ranking.

To create data reports, use tools like Infogram or Google Data Studio.

5. Expand internationally

The beauty of the internet is that you can theoretically reach 4.5 billion people with your product or service from the comfort of your home. But you have to start somewhere. And when you feel comfortable beginning to sell outside of your home country, there are several steps to follow.

Identify opportunities abroad and target new markets

The first step is to identify which markets have the most demand for the type of business you offer. You can use tools like Google Market Finder to analyze search traffic on relevant keywords, and Google Keywords Planner to find out how much competition there is for those keywords in your target market.

Start thinking about how foreign customers will find out about your product. It will lead you to two processes: translation, which means changing your content from one language to another, and localization, which means making locals from your target market feel like you can speak their language.

Keep in mind that some countries may pose legal, regulatory, or tax issues. It is worth investing time in doing research beforehand.

Advertise cross-borders

To advertise cross-borders, check relevant keywords in your target market as they might be different from your home market. Adapt your content, place ads, and point towards a landing page in the target language.

For social media, research which media sites are prevalent in your target market as they may be different from what you know or where you are already listed.

Build a robust support system

A robust support system is critical to provide a customer experience in line with your brand positioning. Find a reliable cross-border shipping partner that will enable you to deliver your products everywhere you want to sell them.

Provide customer support via email and contact forms on your website, while keeping in mind that in the long run, it might be worth investing in a phone line with a toll-free number.

Explore the opportunity to source your products with local suppliers to cut sourcing costs and increase profitability. Lastly, investigate all payment methods for your target markets while helping customers pay without having to think about exchange rates or taxes.

I hope this article will help you get started towards building a thriving online business. To gain access to the full content, check-out the link hereunder: