The guide to take your business to the Internet by Gustavo Mirabal Castro
Turn your business into an ecommerce or eBusiness
Entering ecommerce is a process that can be complex for businesses. However, it is an indispensable process to survive in this changing environment. Therefore, businesses should begin as soon as possible the evaluation of the benefits and obstacles to entering the Internet, as well as its effective incorporation.
Gustavo Mirabal Castro is an international financial advisor who developed a methodology for businesses to successfully access the Internet. His expertise as a financial advisor and entrepreneur is a great asset that this Venezuelan share with his followers and clients. This methodology is the result of years of experience and work of Gustavo Mirabal Castro with the business sector.
In this video we will see the first three steps for your business to successfully join the internet. We hope they will help you to take the first steps and start your adventures on the internet on the right foot.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
1. Research and Planning, the most important step for Gustavo Mirabal Castro
Analyze your business to see the benefits that can bring you to enter the Internet and what is the appropriate strategy to enter the Internet. In our video on How to digitize my business and join e-commerce we show you the multiple strategies to enter the internet. We recommend you look at it before continuing.
Additionally, we must analyze the scope of your business (local, regional or global) and investigate your target audience. It is important to understand what will be the best digital media to reach your customers.
This stage is fundamental for the success of the incorporation of your business to the Internet. In this phase you also define what they will be:
- Your digital media to be on the internet: Marketplaces, websites, social networks, etc.
- How will be the management of customers in each medium
- The digital marketing strategy and how to measure it.
For Gustavo Mirabal Castro, the research and planning phase is the most important. This helps us choose the most appropriate strategy for us. In addition, it makes our investment in the strategy more effective according to our objectives.
Having this evaluated we can move on to implement the first phase of our planning as we will see below.
2. Online presence:
With a defined entry strategy, we will have to move on to establishing the online presence of our business. Some of the options we have are:
- Simple website: This allows our customers to find us on the internet. There, we can account for the products and services we offer, and offer means of contact for our customers (WhatsApp, phone number, and others).
- Marketplace: If we want to sell our products or services on the internet, we can choose to publish them in a Marketplace. These are platforms that will allow us to sell our products without having to create a website. We will not need to install or develop means of payment and attention. These platforms provide us with the technology to sell and serve our customers online. On the other hand, we lose part of the control of our business and marketplaces charge us commissions.
- Online store: We can set up our own online store. Here we have more control, but we require expertise or dedicated staff to manage our store.
- Social networks: They can be used to sell directly or to make us known according to what we want. They do not cost anything in most cases, but the processes are manual within the business.
It will also be convenient to acquire an internet domain associated with the name of our company or our products. A domain is brand identity. An example of this is that Gustavo Mirabal Castro has the gustavomirabal.es domain to reflect the identity of his business in Spain.
How was this guide created to take our businesses online?
This guide to take your business to the Internet by Gustavo Mirabal Castro is based on Gustavo Mirabal Castro’s experience when entrepreneurship. Being Gustavo Mirabal Castro a successful businessman and financial advisor, his success is the best guarantee of this guide.
In the video about how to digitize my business and join e-commerce (you can see it in Spanish with subtitles) you can delve into this important step.
3. Customer Management according to Gustavo Mirabal Castro
A Venezuelan saying that Gustavo Mirabal Castro likes very much is “the one who has a store that attends it.” This means that it is not enough to have a website or an online store, you need to attend it personally or have people for it.
We must establish what our channels of attention will be and who will be the people who attend them. It is not enough to have everyone aware of social networks, phones or emails. We must have procedures and responsible for selling and serving in our digital channels. Another Venezuelan saying goes “If everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.” The responsibility must be individualized and for this we must assign tasks to specific people or attend them personally.
In this phase we must also try to have easy, safe and reliable means of payment for our customers. If people are interested and have good attention, but it is difficult to pay, you will lose the sale.
We must analyze the available means of payment, their cost, and their ease of use for customers. In this way we will be able to close the largest number of transactions.
4. Implement your digital marketing strategy
You must plan your digital strategy for each of the digital media in which you are present. Digital strategy is divided between SEO and SEM. SEO is organic positioning, and its function is to be located on the internet in relevant places thanks to the importance of your content. The SEM is the paid positioning that your brand has, that is, the advertisements.
This applies to all platforms including:
- Website: We can place relevant informational content for our customers on topics related to our products and services. We can also pay for ads on online advertising networks such as Google Ads.
- Social networks: In social networks it is very common to publish relevant content. However, social networks also offer the option to promote the content. This is promoted to reach more people and increase growth, obviously paying for it.
- Email marketing: With the lists of our clients, we can send you relevant information or promotions. These platforms can be managed internally or pay companies in charge of email marketing.
The best option is to combine the relevant content of our website and social networks with a budget for advertisements that give a boost to our results.
Relevant content will make our content rank better. Thanks to this, when bidding for advertisements, the budget invested will be cheaper and more effective.
5. The role of analytics in your digital strategy according to Gustavo Mirabal Castro
The analytics of the digital marketing strategy is the way we have to measure the results and improve them. In terms of analytics we have many tools depending on our digital marketing objective. Some of the objectives outlined can be:
- Position ourselves better than the competition for one or several keywords.
- Achieve a specific return on investment would publish.
- Establish a specific amount of traffic to the page or online store.
- Achieve increase the number of visits for a given advertising budget.
The important thing about this is that the objectives are measurable over a period. For this there are different tools. Among the best-known analytics tools is Google Analytics.
The second phase of this step number 5 is to adjust our digital strategy to improve our results. For this we can make changes to the budget, the target audience, or the relevant content of our page.
Some examples of adjustments that can be made are:
- Relevant content increases our positioning and reduces the advertising cost, or increases its effectiveness.
- Increasing the budget can decrease the cost per click.
- Changing the target audience of our advertising can make it more focused on interested customers and therefore increase effectiveness.
Thanks to analytics we can see if we are on track to our goals and also allow us to correct.
This guide to take our business to the Internet by Gustavo Mirabal Castro emphasizes his philosophy. Analytics for Gustavo Mirabal Castro are the compass we need to travel to a good port. A famous phrase says that “no wind is favorable for those who do not know where they are going.” This is because if we do not know how we are going, we surely do not go where we want.
Step number 6. Stay up-to-date and innovate.
Innovation plays a fundamental role in modern business. Today on the internet, social networks and technologies are changing day by day. An example of this is formed by hundreds of social networks and applications that had a high relevance at the time and have almost disappeared. Examples such as Snapchat, Microsoft Messenger, Skype, among others have stopped innovating and have disappeared.
The case of technology companies is the most dramatic, however, our digital strategy must keep up. Some examples are:
- If we are in a social network that loses strength, we must evaluate our next steps so as not to be left behind.
- Digital payment methods are constantly evolving, we must make a conscious effort to keep up.
- Digital channels are also constantly evolving. That is why we must be attentive to emerging Marketplaces and social networks that add marketing functionalities.
- Mechanisms for customer service and product dispatch: Our customers may want immediate attention or home delivery. The options are constantly evolving. Chatbots and delivery companies have evolved and grown thanks to the pandemic. We may need new ways to dispatch and serve our customers.
These four points are just some of the innovation points that we must consider. We must monitor your business permanently to keep you updated.
Other points of attention
An online business seems to be in no man’s land. However, this is far from true.
There are countries with elaborate regulations on customer privacy and the use of their data. In addition, in these cases, obtaining the consent of customers is essential. Therefore, we must validate that we are complying with all existing regulations.
Additionally, online security is essential to avoid economic losses or fraud to our customers. Security will prevent them from making fraudulent purchases from us, and it will also prevent them from stealing our customers’ data and thereby bringing us legal consequences. Make sure you use secure payment methods.
To achieve a secure website, it is important to keep our website updated. This implies constantly updating all things. But we must also keep the information of our business up to date. This way our customers will fully trust our business and the information on our page and enhance its use and confidence.
Among the points to develop are other commercial strategies that can help us develop our business on the internet. Among these business strategies are bidding strategies and loyalty strategies.
Through these, we pursued to attract new customers and then retain them. Acquiring a new customer is much more expensive than keeping the customers we have. That’s why it’s so important to develop loyalty strategies, as we’ll see below.
Loyalty Strategies to Take Your Business Online
As we mentioned in the previous point, acquiring customers can be quite costly. Whether it’s a decrease in revenue from the offers we make or from the investment in advertising, a new customer is an investment.
Business specialists have found that keeping a customer is cheaper than acquiring a new customer. That is why we must have strategies that help us generate customer loyalty.
The most important thing to carry out an effective loyalty strategy is to know our customer. This way we can offer you something that really interests you.
Below, we’ll mention some of the most used strategies to build loyalty.
Cashback.
With the incursion of the internet and computer systems, we can always appeal to the follow-up of our client. Offering some future application benefit with the present purchase has become popular as a loyalty strategy.
An example of this is cashback initiatives. Cashback is a loyalty strategy that promises to return part of the amount of a product in the future, if it is purchased now. This strategy serves to provide liquidity to the company and the customer may end up using the money for a future purchase.
The customer receives the discount and also perceives that they will receive an additional income. This often feels even more than a simple discount. In addition, there is always the possibility that the customer does not claim the cashback and the money remains with the company.
Our company will remain in the customer’s mind, attentive to the use of cashback. This can have a positive impact on our positioning within the customer’s mind.
One point to consider is that the administrative processes behind it are complex, but there are companies that take care of simplifying and automating it. It’s a very powerful strategy that shouldn’t be dismissed.
Remarketing and Communications Marketing.
When a customer has shown interest in a product, they may be more likely to purchase it. That’s why we need to have strategies that help us detect those patterns.
There are tools that help us with this point. Many CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems can help us with this follow-up.
The keys to using this type of marketing are:
- 1- Have the contact details of the customers
- 2- Record the products that have interested the customer, either in the store or through sales executives.
- 3- Have ways to effectively manage this information, either through processes or through computer tools.
As we mentioned, there are many tools designed to fulfill this function. But beyond having them, it is important to incorporate them into business processes.
People may make little of recording customer contact details. But only by incorporating this will we be able to carry out loyalty strategies, we must know the customer. Only in this way will we be able to add value by offering them things that are really of interest to them.
Gustavo Mirabal Castro’s guide to taking your business online.
With this guide to take your business to the internet, Gustavo Mirabal Castro seeks to help entrepreneurs who want to enter the digital world.
Having an online presence increases business visibility. Consumers often search for products and services online. Therefore, the presence on the web makes it easier for people to find these businesses.
Additionally, digital marketing is often more cost-effective than traditional tactics. Businesses can reach their audience effectively at a much lower cost than print or television advertising.
The digital economy is growing more and more and after the pandemic it became more relevant. That is why Gustavo Mirabal Castro seeks to support small and medium enterprises by teaching them techniques and secrets to improve their business.
Countries depend on SMEs for the strengthening of the economy, as we could see in the video about entrepreneurship as a Source of Development of Countries – SMEs and entrepreneurship (you can see it in Spanish with subtitles) that we leave you below.
If you want to know more about Gustavo Mirabal Castro and his secrets for business, we invite you to visit Gustavo Mirabal’s youtube channel.