Since the inception of the web, entrepreneurs have been able to take their wares and services and sell them to interested consumers internationally. From the outset, however, marketers have struggled to find effective ways to gain traction with consumers in a world of distractions and competition.

Thanks to social media and the digital marketing revolution, we’re now in an era where marketing to, and engaging with, consumers is simpler than ever before. With the right approach and some creativity, even virtual businesses can become highly successful ventures.

In this guide, we’ll run down some of the fundamental considerations needed to establish a solid foundation for your online store—as well as to begin marketing and selling your products or services to the world.

Set The Right Audience

When establishing your online presence, you first need to consider who you are aiming to attract and what they want. You don’t want to market to the mass market – you want to target a specific niche so that you can connect with a specific group of people. When done well, marketing to a niche audience can be extremely effective, especially if you do so through social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook.

By understanding your target audience’s needs and wants, you will be able to craft content and offers that they will value. Moreover, the most effective marketing strategies begin with a clear understanding of the audience’s demographic, psychographic, and digital marketing metrics.

Get To The Point

The purpose of any good sales pitch is to get the person you are speaking to to agree with you and, eventually, to do whatever it is you want them to do. The key to making a good impression is to keep things short and sweet.

When developing your marketing strategy, you need to keep in mind that people are busy. Busy making money, busy having fun, and even busier trying to stay informed about the world around them. Therefore, your content needs to be concise and to the point. This will make your content more engaging and, ultimately, more effective.

Be Creative

Nowadays, with everybody having a voice and a connection to the internet, content creation and marketing have become completely democratized. Anyone with a creative mind and a steady hand can step up and contribute, which means that marketers no longer have the monopoly on creativity that they once did. This is a great thing because it allows for more original and unique content to be produced – and, in turn, this makes content more effective. Additionally, being original and creative can help you stand out from the crowd, especially in a world where content is constantly evolving to stay fresh.

Measure Everything

Marketing and sales are not a one-off activity, but rather a process that needs to be continually assessed and refined. When you set up the initial groundwork for your online store, you will have the opportunity to collect data on the performance of your marketing strategy and to take this forward into the future. What worked and what didn’t work, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign are all data that you can use to inform your next move. Moreover, taking a data-driven approach to marketing and sales means you can tailor your efforts to meet individual consumer needs, as oppose to just relying on what has worked for other companies.

Don’t Forget About SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been around for a while now, but it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that marketers began to realize its immense power. The key to effective SEO is to focus on both on- and off-page SEO techniques, which work in conjunction with each other to drive traffic to your website. Off-page SEO techniques range from link building and content creation to social media marketing and reputation management, while on-page SEO techniques include everything from writing effective meta descriptions to making sure your imagery is optimized for search.

You can’t just will your website to the top of the search engine rankings because, at the end of the day, algorithms are all about authority and credibility. To be able to drive more traffic to your site, you first need to establish your authority in your niche—which, in turn, will help you to gain credibility in any niche.

Make Sure You’re Set Up For Success

Once you have established your online presence, the work doesn’t stop there. You then need to make sure that you have the tools and the infrastructure in place to successfully market and sell your products or services. This means establishing your email marketing campaign, developing your website’s content strategy, and figuring out your social media strategy – among other things.

At this point, you’re going to want to sit down and hash out a comprehensive marketing plan – one that takes into account all of your resources and, once again, keeps things short and sweet.