The main reason why your online business isn’t making any profit and what to do about it.

How to get more traffic?

How to improve the design of my landing page?

How to optimize my lead generation attempts for better conversions?

How to fill-in-the-blank?

I bet you $100 that if you have all of those things in mind and are wondering about all of those things than you have not cracked the code to your online business yet.

Why?

Because 99% of the time when a business does not make any sales (and with it, revenue), it is due to unfocused messaging in combination with not targeting the right people for your offer.

So, what needs to happen in order to change this?

(1) Focus on getting clear on your messaging.

(2) Speak to the right audience.

You would be surprised at how many online entrepreneurs and business owners are getting this wrong.

Not only that, they also ridiculously undervalue that messaging and audience-matching aspect that needs to happen for an online business to become profitable.

Instead, they buy into every tool or analyzation app they can find, get a funnel building software, hire a Facebook Ads person, a designer, a social media manager, etc. and expect them to create pure magic.

Don’t get me wrong…

All of these people and professionals are super important and if you are not a specialist in any one of them, you want to look into partnering up and hiring a professional like that.

My main point though is that as the CEO, the business owner of your business, the entrepreneur of your product, it is your main responsibility to listen to your target market and figure out HOW to sell WHAT it is that you are selling.

Because, you see, if you do not have an answer to the previous paragraph on the HOW, the WHAT and the WHO, than you won’t have a successful, thriving business.

You would be surprised though how many business owners and entrepreneurs want to rub off this responsibility on a service provider of theirs when it’s really not.

Service providers are there to provide their expert knowledge and further help you scale up your company in different ways and through different implementations of their skill sets.

I’m arguing though that it is not their responsibility to “fix the core of your business”.

And if the core isn’t working, the rest isn’t working either. Not 100%.

Because when at its core your messaging is off and unclear or, the quality of your product/service is crap or, the fact that you are not selling to the right audience… when all of this is happening, this means that no one could ever fix your business for you.

So, I want to encourage you not to ever shy away from these very basic responsibilities and instead take ownership of your business and brand (in the digital space, especially).

If you are actively in business, you are the person that should understand your audience completely inside and out (as if you could almost read their minds).

Let’s get to the important questions though in regards to what you could do if you’re unclear about all of this.

Well, there are 5 things that might help you:

(1) Are you promoting and talking about your product/service with the BIG DOMINO effect in mind?

What is the BIG DOMINO effect you might ask?

Think of a domino as an objections to your product/service and overall message.

In essence, it’s for you to figure out now which domino of all the dominos is the one that you need to make sure off that if you kick it, ALL of the subsequent other dominos will start falling down too?

If you can do that, you’ve found one of the secrets for online business success.

(2) Focus on the vacation, not the plane ride.

Most business owners and entrepreneurs love to talk about all of the features that they’re able to get from a particular product or service.

Your target audience does not care about that.

They care about the vacation!

In other words, they care about the end result and how it will immediately make their life better.

The plane ride is boring.

Telling them about the awesome vacation is cool.

(3) Positioning.

The way you position yourself and your brand is everything.

Sometimes, a slight shift in how you position yourself, can have a HUGE impact on how your product/service offering is coming across to your target audience.

As a basic positioning statement, this might help:

For [your target audience] who are [fulfilling specific characteristics][your company name] provides the [specific category of buyers] with [competitive advantage] because of [unique value proposition and social proof].

(4) What OST are you known for to your market?

OST means ‘One Simple Thing’.

What OST of the entire breadth of products or services you offer are you most likely known for?

Remember, it has to be simple and memorable.

If you have too many things in mind that you could be known for, you need to dig deeper and figure out the OST.

(5) Context, context, context.

I can’t repeat this enough but if your messaging isn’t sent to the right audience, it’ll feel like spam to whoever gets it.

Think carefully about your target audience’s environment, location, activity and time of day when you deliver your message about your product and service.

Also, depending on the type of platform that you’re sharing your message on (Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, a Podcast, Blog, etc.), your target customer/client comes to this platform for a different reason and with a different intention.

Just think of how you use those different platforms yourself and the amount of time you spend on them as well as what type of content you usually consume when getting on the platform… that should give you a very good idea of why your customer/client is on there too.

Depending on that, you have to adjust your messaging to FIT the CONTEXT.

You can read more about this particular point in this other blog post of mine as well:

https://corneliapauline.com/2017/12/13/essentials-social-media-strategy/

Finally, if you’re really stuck…

Now, you’ve started to overthink things.

No good.

You need to get away from your laptop and desk for a while, sometimes even a couple of weeks.

You need to give yourself space for new ideas to form or old ideas to confirm themselves.

When you really struggle to pin-point exactly what your message is (the WHAT) and how you’re best delivering it to your ideal audience (the HOW), than the best thing is to step away and let yourself be inspired.

 

Hope you found this helpful.

P.s. If you feel like you truly need more mentorship and coaching when it comes to this topic, you can hire me as a coach on an hourly basis HERE. I also offer monthly packages. Feel free to CONTACT me for more information.

  1. Peter Diaz says:

    Boom! This is such a great piece Cornelia!

    I love the idea of the OST. The one simple thing your known for. That really stuck out to me and made me think. Russel Brunson has got funnels, Pat Flynn has passive income. … What’s mine?

    Going to take some time and decide this and then go back and reread Expert Secrets!

    Keep putting out great content for us all!

    Cheers,

    Peter

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