I am convinced that you have already seen or heard dozens of different definitions for the term “business strategy”. Let me give you another one:

A business strategy is all bout finding the best ways to overlap your business objectives with the goals of your customers.

If you want to start an online marketing business and if you want to be successful, your entire business and of course, your entire marketing strategy must be built with the above idea in mind.

Needless to say, in order to define the avenues that can lead you to those overlapping areas, you’ll have to carefully analyze any factor that may influence your strategy: your own strengths and weaknesses, your target audience, your main competitors, market trends, possible threats and opportunities, etc. In other words, an efficient business – or marketing – strategy is a continuously changing and evolving mix of different tactics and methods that are constantly re-adapted to the actual existing realities.

OK. Now, let’s see what are the 3 most important sections and elements that must be included in any business strategy when you want to start an online marketing business …

1. Business summary

Evidently, the very first requirement is to know your own business. In this segment you’ll have to define:

• A strong mission statement that will concisely summarize what you are trying to do. You are going to use your mission statement to keep everything else in check.

• Some powerful, demonstrative value propositions to denote the unique values provided by you over your competitors. You should craft at least one soulful value proposition for each of your main objectives.

• Specific, measurable and attainable short-, mid- and long-term goals for you business (both quantitative and qualitative goals).

2. Market summary

Once you are committed to start an online marketing business and you have defined what your business is about, you’ll have to gain a deep understanding of the current marketplace.

This segment is about the customers whom you sell, the available distribution channels, the geographic boundaries, demographic data, product- or demographic-related market trends, etc. Basically, it’s a simplified market analysis … All you have to do, is to ask yourself a few quintessential questions. Let me give you a few examples:

• What you need to invest in order to launch your business in the given market segment?

• What is the size of your current market(s)?

• To what geographic area are you going to sell?

• Who are your customers and what are their needs?

• Do you need to create tailored plans for different target segments?

• What is the population of your main target audience?

• What are the most important and useful demographics of your audience?

• Are your current market demographics working for or against you?

• What is the average income level of your target audience?

• What are your best products or services?

• Are your products or services “prepared” for success in the current market situation as they exist right now?

• What is your sales and distribution set up?

• How are you actually going to market your products or services?

• How well have your products or services sold historically?

• What are the current, predominant market trends?

• Which trends are useful for you and which are working against you?

3. Competition

I know, it’s another cliche, but the fact remains: in order to survive you need to know and to understand your competitors. Another fact: competition analysis is usually perceived as a scary, complicated task by many online and offline business owners.

Believe me, it’s easier than you may think! Presumably, you are not running a billion dollar company, so there is no need for sophisticated solutions or expensive reports provided by famous agencies. All you have to do is to step into your major competitors’ customers’ shoes to experience their buying journey! Simply become their customer and you’ll have the possibility to discover and to understand what your competition does better than you and what it doesn’t do so well. Simple as that!

More than that, you can always gather a ton of useful information about your major competitors using other simple, free methods or resources such as official websites, Google searches, Google alerts, customer reviews, industry news, official reports, online forums, social media platforms, mailing list, public opinion, printed press, offline media channels, etc.

And again, ask yourself some fundamental questions:

• What are they offering?

• Is their product positioning more prominent?

• Are their prices competitive?

• Are their prices too high for their quality?

• What is their market share?

• Is their market share increasing?

• What are their strengths and weaknesses?

• Do they have any technological or innovative advantages?

• Are there any unmet needs or customer frustrations that you can capitalize on?

• How is their checkout process?

• Is their customer service better than yours?

• Which competitive trends are working in your favor or against you?

• Are there threatening competitive trends?

• What does this mean for my business?

Wrapping it up

One of the first things you’ll have to do when starting an online business, is to create a simple yet powerful business plan that will define and justify your actions both on short- and long-term.

What is really important: once you have developed a business plan, stick with it, because it’s the road map to your success. Yes, of course, sometimes you’ll have to refine it or tweak it a bit here and there, but your core concepts and values should always remain unaltered.

And here is my final recommendation … Don’t overthink it, just define the above three segments to create a transparent one-page business plan that is focused on one and only one thing: overlapping your business objectives with your customer’s goals. This is probably the most important “golden rule” when you are trying to start an online marketing business.

Which brings us to the next lesson and the next important question …