Online Business Clichés That You Should Steer Clear Off

Online businesses are thriving these but they also some with a lot of usolicitied advice and cliches. Here's a list of some unnecessary cliches that you should avoid.

Taking your business online is the best decision you'll ever make. If you've already made that decision, chances are you're receiving a lot of unsolicited opinions about how to run your business. But you should not focus on all of them. There must be a USP of your business and a different way of doing things.

Suppose two businesses sell healing candles online, one makes their own scents and the other onebuys fragrance in bulk from wholesalers. These two businesses are using different strategies to run, but they both make a profit which proves that there's no one size fit all strategy that works.

Similarly, there are cliches about online businesses that are prevalent in the market. It may work for some but not necessarily all. In this list, we've compiled 5 cliches of online businesses that you should avoid at all costs. 

• Posting Every day on Instagram for Service-based businesses

Online businesses can be product or service-based. While it's considered good for product-based businesses to post every day, that's not the case with service-based businesses. You can't post photos unless it's some form of data or graph. For service-based businesses like digital marketing agencies, performance-based content is very important that can't be generated every single day.

There's so much noise around posting every daythat service-based businesses fall into this trap and start posting irrelevant content, which hampers their growth. So, it's better for these businesses to create a strategy that shows their expertise in the market rather than focusing on quantity. 5 days a week is more than enough.

• Beat the Algorithm for more followers

There are people who quote this exact statement and have created courses and e-books for this. Beating the algorithm sounds great but it's not really worth it. Businesses spend a lot of time and money figuring out a strategy that's meant to fight against the algorithm to get you more followers and engagement. But, the number of followers is not equal to the money that goes into your bank account.

Focusing on beating the algorithm will get you nowhere. You must focus on engagement as that's what gets you sales. People are out there making profits with 500 followers on Instagram and even brands are looking to pair up with micro-influencers with lesser followers and better engagement. There's no point running after followers now.

• E-mail marketing is dead

Whoever says this is missing out on the most useful and low-budget marketing platform in the world. Through e-mail marketing, you get your brand's message directly into the inbox of your potential clients and customers. Imagine the power of gaining access to their e-mails. On social media platforms, you're always trying to please the algorithm but that's not the case with e-mails.

You can personalize them to perfection and nurture your customers easily. There's only one prerequisite - you must deliver quality. You also know that there are several apps that spam the inbox of every single person out there. To make your e-mail stand out, you must hire a good writer and e-mail marketeer. Then, nothing can stop you.

• Buying followers

There was a time when this worked. But now it doesn't. Instagram pushes the pages with higher engagement and not followers. So even if you buy followers and get away with it, Instagram will not promote your content because bot followers don't comment and engage on your feed.

They are only numbers. Social media managers advise creators to remove bot followers themselves. Numbers look good but if they don't work for you, you'll get neither engagement nor sales.

• Using single-channel marketing

With ever-increasing competition, do you really think one channel is enough? Businesses are invested in Instagram marketing, e-mail marketing, influencer marketing, LinkedIn branding, and many more channels to build their online presence. It's important for every online business to do the same. 

If you can't afford people to do it for you, then you should select a few channels, for instance - LinkedIn, Instagram, and Reddit where you talk about your business every day. This way people will know more about what you do and how can you help them. When they see you driving results for real people, they definitely buy from you.

There's a very high chance that you've come across these at least once. Remember, some of these strategies have worked for some businesses in the past. But the internet has changed a lot since then and strategies should adjust accordingly. The most important thing that you should focus on is your content. If that's good, you'll make the sale.