Main asset of a business
Recently I decided to start an affiliate marketing business, hoping to get a break even result while building my email list. As I had an e-commerce business a year ago, it’s easier for me to start because those marketing and business terms seems familiar this time. Today I just want to share a concept that I think it’s super important for an online business.
“The only asset of a business is your list.”
I remembered that I when I first started out, I couldn’t understand what is a list. After failing for few times now, I finally understand a list means the data of all my potential and ideal customer. It is the traffic that I can control as I can email or call them whenever I want without paying to Facebook or Google. The bigger the list, the higher chance of having higher revenue. So main goal of a business is to build up a list of ideal customers, either by free or paid way.
Free way of traffic can be defined as organic traffic. This type of traffic doesn’t required money but do required time. There are lots of way to build up this organic traffic, one of it is by posting valuable content consistently, either by writing in a blog, publishing in podcast or sharing videos in YouTube or having live in Facebook. Main purpose is to build relationship with your ideal customers and gain their trust. Usually this required longer time to achieve.
Paid way of traffic is relatively simpler. This required lesser time but do required higher capital. Usually I will source out where are all my ideal customers congregating, for eg in which group or which page, then I will buy some ads targeting these ideal customers.
Both ways are workable, suggest to do both at the same time. Paid ways usually works better for shorter term and combined with a series of follow up action, eg follow up emails to build a relationship with customers. Organic ways usually works better for longer term because your ideal customer already knew who you are and what you do since you are posting valuable contents consistently that are of help to them.
I remembered when I started my first e-commerce business, it was a failure. I couldn’t break even and ends up having residue stocks piling up in my room. After that failure, I realised that my mistake was lack of planning. I emphasised too much in product selecting. In fact I should have identify who is my ideal customer and where are they congregating first before I do anything else. Then I should study what is the thing that my ideal customer is looking for then only select which type of product to sell. One more important thing that I learned during this process, do not let your own ego decide which type of product to sell, listen to the market demand and let the market decide. This is one of the mistake I did too.
Traffic is the bloodline of a business. Hope this sharing able to help some of you.
