How to Use Online Marketing for Small Businesses w/ Riaz Shah

MTO9- There may be affiliate links in this article on how to use online marketing for small businesses, read the full disclaimer here.

You probably know that businesses today need to use online marketing to grow and scale. 

Whilst your business is growing it can be really hard to even think about how your website looks or what SEO stands for... let alone learning and implementing this. Well, Riaz Shah found a way that he was able to learn about online marketing and then implement this into his offline small business in events management. 

This podcast shows how to use online marketing for small businesses and some of Riaz's top tips for those looking to learn more.

 

Background

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2 mins

Riaz started his online business about 5 years ago way back in 2014. Do you remember those days?

• The World Cup was held in the mighty Brazil
• The Ebola epidemic gripped the world
• And how can we forget Ben Haenow (who?!) winning the UK X factor?

 

In this part of the podcast Riaz talks about:

• What he knew about internet marketing when he first started (he had hardly heard of Google... so no you don't need to be a techie!)
• How he started in internet marketing 
• Being scammed by certain online programs
• The program he joined to really learn his online marketing knowledge
• How the program helps to use these skills to grow any existing business

 

The more you listen to this podcast the more you realise how online marketing skills are transferable to any kind of business.

 

Understanding Google Sandboxing

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5 mins

What on earth is Google sandboxing?

 

 

No, it's nothing to do with sand!

 

Riaz talks about:

• What Google sandboxing is 
• How long this "probation" period typically lasts
• The number of websites created every day (spoiler alert... it's a lot!) 
• How long it took him to get an article onto the almighty Google's page one!

 

Little by little you begin to realise why so many people give up with online marketing. As you keep reading through this article, you're starting to understand what you can do to learn more about this. 

 

Making Money Using These Skills

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6 mins

So Riaz eventually started writing articles for his own bricks and mortar business in events management. 

This made his website stand out like a Christmas tree in July. 

Let me ask you this... if you were another business owner seeing the success of this website, what would you do? 

That's right! 

Other businesses saw this and asked Riaz to help them grow their websites too.

Are you beginning to see how learning these online marketing skills can be a valuable money-making asset? 

Related content:

• Why do People Create Blogs? These 28 Bloggers Explain Their Story

 

Neil Patel Strategies to Grow Offline Businesses

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8 mins

In case you didn't know... Neil Patel is kind of a big deal!

• Forbes calls him one of the top 10 influencers on the web
• He has over 1 million monthly page views to his website
• And he is a New York Times bestselling author

Simply put:

He really knows his stuff. 

Check out some of the stats he produced in a tweet below...

 

https://twitter.com/GarriganLyman/status/774392225958539265

 

Riaz related to him a lot because of his knowledge in offline sales and business.

 

Riaz talks about a lot of goodies during this section including:

• How you can get offline sales using your online marketing skills
• How Riaz has got a closing rate of around 20% of the calls he receives!
• The advantage of getting people contacting you
• Using email "split testing" to improve results
• The best email autoresponder's to use 

Some of the autoresponders he mentions are:

• Mailerlite (free for first 1,000 subscribers)
• MailChimp (free for first 2,000 subs)
• Aweber (paid but more features, needed if you're in the make money online niche)
• GetResponse (paid but more features, needed if you're in the make money online niche)
• Convertkit (what I personally use and recommend... if you are a blogger or online marketer it's just so easy to use and genuinely really helps to grow your business!)

There are so many online tools that you can use with your online marketing. So to really separate the wheat from the chaff check out how to "Save Hours of Time with these Resources".

 

 

How Riaz Monetised His Websites

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16 mins

This is probably the juicy section for people starting out with online marketing. In this part of the podcast you will find out:

• The one way Riaz made money online at the start
• How Riaz made money online from Uber 
• When the best stage is to promote affiliate links
• The benefits of affiliate marketing compared to creating your own products
• How it's possible to monetise any niche website

Are you beginning to notice that Riaz is speaking from experience? He's not just guessing with what he is saying he has been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Find out more about this in "How does Blogging Make Money". 

 

Riaz's Reflections

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22 mins

Riaz made no mistakes about the reason why he started his website My Internet Quest. He knew he wanted to learn more about internet marketing and he knew the best way to do that was to create a website and learn.

Why not make money at the same time eh?

How many hobbies do you have that generates passive income?

 

Riaz knows his memory isn't great and so he found that writing about his learning straight away helped to remember more, but also he could go back to things that he's written to help himself! Clever lad isn't he!

He has a pretty big goal:

To automate everything, so he can spend more time doing what he wants to do. 

 

 

He is teaching people in his team how to do the things he knows how to do which means it can grow exponentially and free up his time. 

Just picture what that would be like for a moment... 

This is the exact reason why this website exists, you can read more about it in "Why Make Time Online? Financial Independence Retire Early Blog"

 

Top Tips from Riaz

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24 mins

So I asked Riaz a simple question here. 

"What tips would you give to yourself before you started the online business?"

His top tips were:

1. Get your mindset right - it was easy to get scammed at first due to the courses that "seem so real" to make money overnight. 

But success is not overnight. Do not jump on these shiny objects that promise to make you money instantly for not doing anything... it doesn't exist!

It may take you a month or a few months but it certainly won't happen instantly. 

Be aware of this fact and your whole online marketing experience will be much better. 

 

2. Consistency - to achieve success, you must be consistent. 

Your statistics may not go up straight away and you may find it hard to get on page one of Google due to the competition. But you never know what post may reach page one of search engines. 

Be consistent and it will happen.

Are you beginning to notice the importance of using the right program and getting the right training? If you're consistently putting out poor quality content that will not help you, your business or (maybe more importantly) your readers. 

 

Knowledge is power

 

So make sure you get the right knowledge!

 

Links

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27 mins

If you'd like to contact Riaz then do so on any of the below links and email addresses:

riaz@myinternetquest.com

riaz_90@hotmail.com

Twitter @riazshah90

Facebook 

 

 

Action

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29 mins

Keep reading 10 pages of self-development books every day. This will really help to make sure you have a positive mindset, which is a must for starting any business. 

My top recommendations for improving your mindset are:

1. The Happiness Advantage- The science behind success and happiness
2. The Miracle Morning- Learn how to use the 6 habits of high-performance people before anyone else wakes up
3. Rich Dad Poor Dad- Learn how to think about money in a healthy way
4. The Millionaire Fastlane- Find out what will happen if you follow the usual advice
5. Financial Freedom- Discover the best way to retire early and optimise your life right now
6. The Chimp Paradox- Find out why you sometimes don't think logically and how to control your "chimp"

 

You can find out "What I've Learnt from Reading Over 100 Books in the Last 3 Years" to see some of the big takeaways from these kinds of books. 

 

How to Use Online Marketing for Small Businesses Summary

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The more you listen to this podcast the more you will see how it's possible to use online marketing skills to help small businesses grow.

There are 2 crucial things to seeing success in the online world:

1. Mindset 
2. Consistency 

 

What main takeaways did you take from this podcast? Is there anything you would like to know more details about?

 

Keep changing for the better,

 

Mike

 

P.S. FYI I spoke to Riaz at 12 am Malaysian time after he had been at work all day in his bricks and mortar business! So hats off to a genuinely great guy who is a real friend and continues to be a great help to me!

 

P.P.S. If you are interested in making money online to free up your time, check out this 1-minute video to see more information about my #1 recommended program...

This is actually how I first contacted Riaz and also the program he started using in 2014! Compliment this with the free email course below to set your online business up for success...