Resources
Free Resources
Setting up your own Online Digital Marketing business will require a few systems set up to help facilitate your connection to your audience and the general online marketplace. Things like setting up a professional email, a website, automating your email responses and video editing software – these are the “mechanics” of your business, and depending on where you are located in the world, you may have a slightly different range of options and price points to what I have available in Australia.
Web Site Hosting
Best Providers for Web Hosting and Professional Emails
The easiest option to find the best web hosting services is to do a Google search of “best web hosting for (your country)”. You could narrow the search down to include “2021” and/or “…for small business”. This will give you the most appropriate list of web hosting providers in your country and the relevant pricing. I personally use GoDaddy as I just found it super easy to use to register a domain name, set up professional emails for my business, and create websites using fairly good and easy to use templates. And all of this can be created within the one Service Provider platform. My only frustrations with GoDaddy is that the WordPress integration and email marketing integration is not as smooth or easy to achieve, but I think it’s all fixable.
For us here in Australia, these are the providers that typically come up as the first 10 highly recommended options:
Sales Funnels
Best for Hosting Sales Funnel
One of the most important aspects of building an Online Digital Marketing business is being able to build an email list of potential customers that you can communicate with over time. The first step in collecting these emails is setting up your website to collect Subscribers for your newsletter or mailing list. If you did not want to spend the time creating an entire new business website for your new Online presence, the other popular option is to set up a simple two page marketing website, called a “Sales Funnel” in industry jargon, that is created to provide a brief overview of your Product or Service (Landing Page), followed with a request to submit an email, before sending your potential customer to a Link Page (Bridge Page) which connects the new Subscriber to your official website or the website of your Affiliate Program partner.
There are entire YouTube channels and Internet articles on the right strategy in creating your Landing Page and Bridge Page, and there are specific service providers that allow you to create these Sales Funnels, and twin it with a range of analytics and split testing, to allow you to tailor your marketing strategy to the various products and services your plan to offer.
For those of us here in Australia, these are the providers that typically come up as the first 10 options to host Sales Funnel websites:
1. https://www.getresponse.com
For a deeper dive and description of each of the above service providers, click this link to view the full research article provided by Codeless
Email Auto-Responders
Best Providers for Email Auto Responder
Closely following on from setting up your Sales Funnel website, or building your Subscriber List via your official business website, is the ability to automate your email replies and continuing email communication with an Email Auto-Responder. The benefit of setting up an Email Auto-Responder is that you can decide in advance the messages you wish to send out to follow up with a potential new customer, how often you send those messages out, and who you send those messages to. And this can be set up to respond automatically once a potential new Client of Customer signs up to your website mailing list or subscriber list. This is all done automatically, even whilst you are asleep. And you don’t have to wake up each morning and manually send out individual emails to everyone that subscribes on your website. You no doubt are personally already on automated mailing list for newsletters, sales promotions, airline travel updates or some other form or automatic and regular email notifications that you receive in your inbox.
These are a list of the popular Auto Email Responder service providers that come up on an internet search:
1. https://www.getresponse.com
7. https://app.mailercloud.com
For a deeper dive and description of each of the above service providers, click this link to view the full research article provided by Digital Marketing Tipsy.
Video Hosting
Options for Video Hosting
The need to host your personal marketing or promotional videos on a separate and secure website is not critical when you are first setting up your Online Digital Marketing business. What you create on the TikTok or Instagram apps can be left on these platforms, as are all your videos uploaded onto YouTube and their servers as well. However as you produce more and more unique videos that are more proprietary in nature with content that is of a commercial value, you may want to consider storing your videos on a server were you retain ownership and control and can you make the choices as to where you link your content to individual websites or other social media platforms.
The main reason for this is to ensure you don’t get locked out, or lose rights, to your own video content with any technical glitches or rule changes that occurs from time to time on various public social media platforms. And you don’t want to be charging money to clients who cannot access your training or coaching videos for example. There is also the danger your account gets shut down for any number of reasons and all of a sudden you lose access to all your content.
Here are some options as to where you can store your valuable video content:
3. https://www.dailymotion.com/au
8. https://www.brightcove.com/en/
For a deeper dive and description of each of the above service providers, click this link to view the full research article provided by Hubspot.
Training & Coaching
Best for Digital Marketing Training and Mentoring
The value of having some proper training and ongoing mentoring as you build an Online Digital Marketing business cannot be underestimated. Let me take you back to high school – did you and your classmates every try to win a Football Game, or Baseball game, or Gymnastics or Dance competition without a coach? I’m guessing the answer is NO – and it would be hard to imagine winning against other teams without a Coach that could give you a game plan, or a strategy, or the motivation and energy to go out there and win.
And yet, when we get into business – and it doesn’t really matter what business it is – we think we can do it on our own. I’m 55 years old – and I still have a Coach to help me build my business! Building an Online Digital Marketing Business is really no different. I can fumble around trying to figure out everything on my own, or I can find a Coach who has done it before, and with his, or her, Coaching team, help me get to where I want to go far quicker than on my own.
I only have one recommendation for who you should join and that’s Dave Sharpe and his team at Legendary Marketing. There is an incredibly valuable 15 day challenge when you access the Legendary website and once you decide to join in you will get access to coaching, training and mentoring which is unparalleled, and without peer, in this industry. To find ouit more about Dave and his team click this link.
Affiliate Programs
Best Affiliate Marketing Links
There are a number of different ways to find companies with an Affiliate Program that you could potentially partner with. A simple Google search of any well-known company that you are you familiar with combined with the words “affiliate program” after the company name will very quickly reveal whether they have an affiliate partnering program or not. And you will be surprised at many well-known brands – such as Wlamart, Target, Elizabeth Arden, Adidas, Gucci, Apple iTunes, Amazon – all have Affiliate Programs that you could join if your Online Digital Marketing business is aligned with that particular niche.
The other option is to promote a range of digital products, either products, services, software, e-books or training programs, which you can promote as part of your marketing campaign. There are online companies that specialize in bringing all of these affiliate program products and services under the one platform, and they also provide extensive training and customer support services.
Here are some of the more well-known Affiliate Marketing platforms were you can source a range of digital products to promote:
2. https://elementor.com/affiliates/
3. https://www.dfo.global/affiliates.html
4. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
5. https://partnernetwork.ebay.com
6. https://www.shareasale.com/info/
11. https://www.partnerstack.com
12. https://affiliates.fiverr.com
For a deeper dive and description of each of the above service providers, click this link to view the full research article provided by Outbrain.
Website or Blog?
Deciding on a Website or Blog?
There are a number of different ways to find companies with an Affiliate Program that you When setting up a new Online Digital Marketing business, the question always comes up … “should it be a website or a blog?”. Website are traditionally static sites that act as an online company brochure, whereas a blog tends to be a site that is regularly updated with new content. The reality is today you can create a web presence that is both website and blog on the one site very much in the way this My Personal Blueprints has been set up.
There is a wonderful article written by a gentleman by the name of Mark Spera at GMP (Growth Marketing Pro) which goes through the clear logic behind “What is a Blog and How is it Different from a Website”. Click the link here to take you directly to the article. Its an excellent read.
Video Editing
Video Editing Software
To produce short video post ( 15 seconds to 3 minutes) for Tik Tok or Instagram, the proprietary video recording and editing capability built into those applications are already very good for the purposes of creating short entertaining and/or educational content. The videos you create can be downloaded back down into your own personal laptop then reposted onto Facebook or YouTube. TikTok videos come with a watermark and to remove the watermark requires a few steps. To find out how, just Google search “how to remove TikTok watermarks from videos”.
I use a separate video editing application called Splice. Its created specifically to use off a smartphone and I like it because it allows me to format my video for different aspect ratios (size and orientation) that changes from TikTok to Instagram Post which is different to Instagram Reels, which is different again for YouTube. It also means I don’t have to deal with the TikTok watermark issue. And I can also keep the original raw recordings to potential edit and reuse in the future for repeat postings.
To create longer videos for a YouTube channel, you may need to consider different video production and editing tools to create a more professional finish. Some of the software you may want to consider include the following:
1. Adobe Premiere Pro CC
2. Apple Final Cut Pro X
3. CyberLink Power Director
4. HitFilm Pro
5. Adobe Premier Elements
6. Splice
For a deeper dive and description of each of the above service providers, click this link to view the full research article provided by IT Pro Portal.
Branded APP
Want to Create Your Own App?
Just as creating a website, setting up sales funnels, and creating a video with creative edits have got easier and quicker to achieve over time, so too has the ability to create your own Branded App. There are service providers now being established where you can create a personalised App for your business, and your followers or subscribers can download it from the Apple Store or Google Apps.
Having all the components of your website condensed into a customised branded App is a powerful transition, and possibly transformation, of your business. Platforms that allow to create your own App quickly and creatively enable you to bring together your content, customer interaction, live streaming, community building, notification of updates, user tracking, scheduling and appointments, videos on demand, online payments, and a whole host of other specialised requirements unique to your business and offer.
Take a look at the possibility of creating your own Branded App here by clicking this link.