Home-based businesses have a hard time developing successful ways to monetize their assets, and this is why a lot of them struggle to barely exist and break-even at the end of the month. Since you are working from home all by yourself, you cannot invest a lot of money in expensive promotional and PR campaigns.
However, home-based businesses can develop their own specific marketing campaigns, using specific tools provided by the online environment where they are performing their work. You have to make do with what you have at hand, and invest wisely into tools that bring a quick return on investment and not leave you strapped of cash for months on end.
Without further ado, these are the top 5 tools you should consider incorporating into your business:
1. A Website
This is the basic prerequisite of any home-based business. Your website is your office, your store and your staff. You communicate the purpose of your business and you attract customers through your website. You also sell your products or services via the website, so make sure it is adequately built.
This means the website needs to be search engine optimized to be found by Google spiders, mobile-ready so your clients can view it properly from any device and constantly updated with useful content and up-to-date product stocks on the catalog page.
2. Social Media
Except for advertisements, social media is free. Since you probably have your own personal accounts on the social media and you know how it works, there are no excuses for not doing it properly. It is very easy to manage your business accounts and to interact with followers. And you will reap tons of benefits from a constant, friendly and helpful social media activity.
3. Webinars
People love learning new things and the easiest way to teach them is by showing them. You do not need a lot of technology or background setting to host a free webinar and teach your followers how to solve a problem, use a tool, or how to take advantage of your services. You will certainly include a call to action at the end and follow up with an email containing a transcript of the webinar for people who missed it.
It is not recommended to charge a fee for your webinars, despite the temptation of the quick cash. Experience and statistics show that paid webinars get less engagement and conversion than free ones.
4. Referral Program
The power of word-of-mouth marketing has long been known among marketers. Invite your customers to share news about what they bought from your website with their friends. Every referral sends an email to a person containing a link to your website. When the referred person makes a purchase, he or she will also be invited to share this information with their friends… It is an ongoing cycle of creating new clients and free promotion for your products and services.
5. Email Marketing
Newsletters, “Happy birthday” and season’s greetings emails are important. They are a powerful tool to keep your customers engaged, build trust and show your clients that you value them. At the same time, you can share news about your business, latest trends in your industry, promote your content and recommend products and services.