Market Reserach - Vital to Transform Dreams into Reality
How many business start-ups have been based on a great idea?
What Is The Reality?
As my internet marketing mentor would say “it is easier to ride a wave than create one”
His message is simply is there an existing market for your product or service? If there is great, run with it because you have a much greater chance of success. If there isn’t think very carefully because you need to create a wave and that takes many resources.
If there is an existing market people already understand they need the product or service. if there is no existing market you need to actually convince people of the need before you can begin to sell.
Easy Market Research
Are there already magazines on the subject? If there are people are already spending money in the market. Great.
Take a quick look at Amazon for books on the subject especially dummies guides. They are a great guide about whether you have a market.
Go online and see whether there are videos and/or forums relating to your idea. This is a great indication of market existence.
Use the Google keyword tool to type in keywords related to your product or service. Google will tell you whether anyone is searching for it. If they aren’t it is not a good place to start.
Do a search online and see how many results there are. Pay careful attention to the number of sponsored links. If there are sponsored links that is good because it means advertisers can afford to and consider it worthwhile to spend money in that market.
Beware though if the page is saturated with sponsored links it may be a highly competitive market that will be hard to break into.
These very simple free checks are a good indication of whether there is an existing market you can leverage to transform your great idea into a great business. Best of all you can do it from your desk without going anywhere!
What Next
Look at the competitors in the market.
What does the competition have to offer?
Are they missing any key points?
Is there an unfulfilled gap that your idea fills?
What offers do they have, what language do they use, what emotions are they targeting? Copy details into your own little swipe file for reference later.
To check out your competition you can take advantage of SEO Quake toolbar for Firefox or Google Chrome. You can search for information on their site in Alexa.com or Compete.com.
If you are really serious you can look at Market Samurai which allows you to research keywords, check the competitiveness of the market, the commerciability of keywords, find and publish content and check your rankings when you enter the market.
I love Market Samurai and have no hesitation recommending it to even beginners because their training videos are that good that you can use it with their instruction even if you have no idea about keyword research!
Planning
When you know you have a market and you know you can compete then you can start planning your business.
Anything before this is starting out in the dark.
So before you start work on a great idea – work out it’s potential to be something more. Then set about focused planning. Analyze the market in more detail considering your place in it, analyze your idea and analyze yourself.
About yourself – do you have the skills, drive and determination to make it happen. Are you committed to the project enough to withstand setbacks and trials along the way. Save yourself the time and energy deciding this before you start!
Good luck and enjoy turning your viable ideas into valued success stories