Learn the key steps to start and run a successful digital business from your home, from finding your niche to marketing strategies.

The following is a guest post from my bloggy friend Taylor McKnight on behalf of Grow Advertising. Interested in having a guest post on my website? Click here for my guest post submission form.

Starting a Digital Business: A Home-Based Success Blueprint

Digital business is a huge part of the global economy, thanks to the digitization of just about every industry. That leaves countless opportunities for entrepreneurs and other opportunists as small businesses can compete with their larger counterparts more easily than ever.

Innovators have operated business from their homes for ages, and the internet has only made that easier. The benefits are obvious: You don’t have to commute, the hours are more flexible, and the work-life balance is way better. Beyond that, the overhead is lower, and there’s more flexibility to scale the business as needed.

But just because there are plenty of benefits doesn’t make operating a digital business from home an easy, risk-free endeavor. So if you’re ready to take the plunge, there’s much to take into consideration along the way.

Identify Your Niche

All businesses start with an idea or a question. Many times, they’re based on needs that you’ve had yourself, or perhaps you’ve simply had a good idea for opportunities. Whatever the case, you’ll need to figure out what it is you want to do.

Start by identifying what you already know about; whether you want to build an app or start an advertising company, many successful businesses are created by people who understand the problem they’re approaching.

From there, spend time ideating services or products that your ideal customers would want. Say you interviewed people who want to lose weight and found out that most of them struggle to motivate themselves; what kind of product might help them that you could offer? Some ideas include:

• 1-on-1 coaching for direct motivation
• An online forum where peers under similar circumstances can cheer them on
• An app with custom workouts

There are many solutions to different problems; it all comes down to what your ideal customer would respond best to.

Establish a Digital Presence

As important as it is to offer high-quality service to succeed as a business, you’ll need to develop your online presence so you’ll be noticed in the first place.

Social media channels can connect you to your target audience, but only a few of them have a broad enough reach to be worth it. Pick the top three platforms with the highest returns and don’t worry about any of the others.

Likewise, as obsolete as an email newsletter might seem, it’s even more effective as a means of communication; most people on the internet have email they check regularly. To encourage more sign-ups, put opt-in forms on your highest traffic web pages, or install an exit-intent pop-up to grab them before they close the tab.

Finally, a small business blog can provide information about the services and products that your brand offers, highlight their major benefits, and answer any questions that a customer might have. This customer-oriented content shows that you’re always available to offer the support they need.

Develop & Deploy a Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing is another essential aspect to establishing your online presence; it’s how you promote your services and brand on the internet, including social media and beyond. Depending on the nature of your business, the goal might be to build awareness, educate potential customers about your services, or to drive ecommerce sales.

Regardless of your goals, digital marketing strategies generally fall under one of two categories: paid and organic.

As the name implies, paid campaigns have marketers pay to put their ads wherever their audience is. These might look like bumper ads on YouTube videos, sponsored social media posts, or Google search result ads. Organic, by contrast, developers content that your potential audience “happens” upon; you might post a video about your product development process and send out emails to newsletter subscribers.

Developing and deploying an effective marketing strategy comes down to four key steps:

1. Define your audience: You can’t know how to effectively market to someone if you don’t know who it is you’re advertising to. Develop a clear picture of the kind of person you want to reach, including demographic, behavioral, and psychographic traits, as well as the pain point that your product or service solves. Developing a buyer persona is a great way to complete this step.
2. Figure out where your audience is: The digital marketing channels you choose depends on where your typical target audience hangs out online (i.e. which social media platforms do they use?) and where they already shop online. For instance, if your audience uses search engines, keyword research is your next step.
3. Identify your content: With your target audience and their preferred digital channels in mind, structure your content. This may require some planning ahead and mid-campaign adjustments.
4. Establish your benchmarks: More than knowing how much of a budget your marketing campaign will require, it’s important to keep track of all the important metrics and respond to them when they’re only trickling upward.

The marketing landscape has certainly evolved over the past few decades as new platforms and tools have arisen and outright replaced others. And yet, the need to connect to the right customers at the right time still remains; good digital marketing is the key to unlock that power.

The Bottom Line

It’s difficult to talk about as massive a topic as digital business in only one post, but this outline should give you a good starting point for your own business; even though digital businesses are all quite different, many of the concepts are nevertheless universal.