Find The Fastest Path to Profitability

April 10, 2012 (Powerhomebiz.com) Being profitable has always been a topic that is dear to me. One of the biggest undertakings owners have when growing their business online is trying to figure out the best plan and fastest path to profitability. It’s confusing, in part, because, many times, people dive into into online marketing without having a real plan.

They know they want to have their own business. They have skills they want to offer, but the direction they need to convert their skill set to profit is confusing.. They may not have a clear sense of their offer, but, if they do, they may not understand how to create a sales funnel leading people from one offer to the next.

Or, let’s just say that the offer is crystal clear- then what’s not fully formed is the marketing processes and methods to get that sales funnel filled up.

You need to recognize that you need the business blueprint-what you sell, how you deliver, and how you sell it. These are three unique pieces that often get mashed together.

Then what happens is the business owner is putting in lots of time, lots of hours, but is not making any money.

So let’s take a closer look at each of these, one-by-one, and dig deeper.

The first component is what you will sell. What you can offer is your service or your product, both as separate items to offer or a combination of both items, for example offer your e-book and a few hours of consulting services..) Although direct coaching or consulting can be slow and tedious, it is often the fastest way to sell anything, and doesn’t require a lot more infrastructure than a basic web page, a means to accept payment, and then a way to deliver services, either in person or by phone.

The second component is how you will deliver what you sell. If you are offering coaching or consulting, you can offer this in person, by phone or videochat, or in some combination. How you deliver your services will often have effect on your pricing models and client availability. If you only deliver services in person, for example, you are limited by your immediate geographical region. If you only deliver services online, it might be difficult to command the highest fees, as, often, high fee ranges lead to an expectation that there will be direct in person contact with you.

The third component is how you will sell whatever you are selling. There are many ways to stimulate interest in your products and services- blogging, social media, joint ventures- are just a few. But even in this component, there is a fast path to profitability and a slower path. The slower path is along the lines of blogging, social media, video marketing (in most cases)- where the faster path is through direct networking and joint ventures. The reason for this is that direct networking and joint ventures tend to reduce the barrier of hesitancy where people don’t know you that well and therefore don’t want to invest with you.

The fastest path to profitability is always found where what you sell, how you deliver it, and how you sell it all meet- what we might call the right offer to market match.

Often times when I am consulting with owners about how to grow their business, it is often clear they are troubled because of a lack of offer to market match. They are, generally, adopting longer term marketing approaches, like blogging, when they really need cash flow right now. Many new online business owners spend a great deal of time with social networks and fail to recognize that social media should be considered as lead generation or a way to send people to free webinars or trainings, lower cost products, to develop an interest in your product or service as opposed to trying to sell. .

Your goal, as a business owner, is to have the best offer to market match that you can, and to be able to promote this offer as effectively and efficiently as you can. One of the best ways to do this is to reduce your marketing efforts to focus only on what’s been most effective to so far- the idea being that if it has worked before, it will work again.

So if you think back to the last method that worked to bring you a client, or how you got people signed up for your most recent program, you’ll start to see where you might focus.

You must commit to those strategies once you determine where to focus and put all other things on hold. Strive to become profitable, first, and then you can learn and bring in all the other tools for marketing marketing and areas you want or need after that.

To be successful you must find the fastest path to profitability in your business and at the sametime maintain a strong cash flow as the foundation building a successful and lasting business..

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Dr. Rachna Jain is a content marketer and traffic generation specialist who helps her clients become more profitable and more popular online. Learn how you can get the right kind of attention to become liked and rich by requesting your own copy of the 7 Keys to Profitable Popularity at http://profitablepopularity.com/7-keys-ecourse