One of our favourite cases of having to consult for our many clients is that of helping them start and grow their business, whatever market they’re seeking to get into. We’re ordinarily tasked with helping them map out their financial planning, but it always goes beyond that because in addition to that being the natural course of action, we also just like to give our clients more value than what they pay for.

The first port of call when starting a business, whatever industry that business will be operating in, is indeed that of establishing yourself as an authority. It certainly helps if you have an academic background in the field or some experience, but these aren’t explicit requisites. It’s not as hard as you think either – all it really entails is setting up a web presence through which you can provide information that your audience and prospective client base can use. Preferably the information you provide leads them to buying your product or service, but this isn’t the primary focus. Okay, so maybe it is the primary focus, but it certainly shouldn’t be glaringly obvious that you’re just trying to sell your product and services.

Focus on the content

There are some businesses which essentially exist and operate in their entirety online while making a killing profit-wise. Whatever type of business you’re running and whatever industry or market it’s operating in, you should take a leaf out of the books of these types of virtual businesses. Yes, you might have a physical product or service to sell, but equal value if not more must be placed on the inventory that never runs out, which is that of content.

When one looks at online businesses such as those operated by affiliate marketers or even consultants and bloggers, their most prized asset is the content they publish. It’s the information they have.

This content is where their power lies in that it makes for a base from which more value can be created and subsequently monetised. If you have eyeballs looking over your content it means you have some prospects who are interested in a certain set of topics you’re discussing and that can always but always be monetised in some or other way.

You can sell advertising, albeit subtly since the likelihood is that you have your own offering to sell. You could go one-up and advertise products and services which complement the ones you offer, perhaps as up-sells of sorts and this can also be done as an affiliate through which you’d earn commissions.

The golden rule of content creation

Unless you’re exclusively running a blog, then jumping on trending topics in an attempt to stay current should be avoided. What you rather want to do is create content that is technically very rich but still has everything to do with the industry in which you’re trying to establish your business. The golden rule is that even if a visitor to your website doesn’t buy anything, send through query or interact with your site in a way that suggests that they want to make a purchase, they must come away from the site having gotten some valuable information about the topic they’re clearly interested in.