Market Research Determines Your Product Development

Finding A Research Compass

Before you begin to perform marketing research it is important to point out that there are really only three categories of products which you can sell. One would be to sell an existing product which could be your own product or someone else’s (in which case you would be an affiliate).

A second would be to create a unique product which is derived from other products in an existing niche. That product could be unique and based off existing ideas in the niche or very similar to an existing product but offer better features or service.

The third type would be a unique or similar product to others in a niche, but derived from survey research in a niche. I will discuss how to create or handle all three types of products and services, but let’s discuss some foundations on which to choose your marketplace before getting into product selection and creation.

I have discussed previously how to decide what marketplace you want to build a business in and how the idea of passion marketing will give you the best place to lay your ground work from. So once you have created a list of the markets you are most passionate about you will begin to do your industry research on those to discover which of your interests is marketable. Let us now examine how to build your passion list and decide which to choose for your business.

Finding a profitable and rewarding market online is all about the research. In fact research once done properly is probably 80% of being successful and some say a lot more. What does that mean? It means before investing your time and money in producing or affiliating a niche product to sell you make sure that there is a demand for it. This series presents a method for allowing you to choose a marketplace easier. You can look for a couple things to make your work easier in choosing your market:

• A niche with a high amount of prospects which can be verified through site traffic, site advertising, forums and periodicals published in that marketplace is a definite money stream. A high amount of prospects is all relative but it needs to be high enough so you can capture enough leads (use common sense). You do want a specialized niche, but you don’t want a niche where there are not enough prospects. Many people think the word “niche” means a small marketplace. This is not true a niche is just a specific and targeted market.
• Less competition for the product you’re selling makes it easier, but you can make profit in markets where a lot of people are selling the same product as well. This is one of the fallacies most people try to lay on you that heavy competition of your product means you cannot make money. You will make money easier than your competition because you find a way of presenting your niche product in a unique way.
• The industry is growing and more people are becoming interested in it. (Internet marketing and vitamins are good examples). You do not want to start in a shrinking niche that is no longer going to be productive like VHS cassettes or some technology that won’t be around much longer.
• The prospects must be reachable and there should already be newsletters, forums, websites and magazines or publications in that marketplace. This is vital and the more places there are to advertise to those people the easier it will be to make money and the cheaper the ads will be.
• The prospects need to WANT to pay for a solution or desired product. You don’t want to spend time and energy to create a product that targets a niche of non-buyers. The point is to research your niche and see if there are any ads on related sites forums, etc. Ads are a sure fire sign of money being spent in the market.

You hear a lot online about finding niches. A niche is just a highly targeted segment in short. A niche business idea targets:

1. An audience you want to serve.
2. The mission and USP for your business.
3. The main product line of your business.
4. How to design, promote, and plan the growth of your business over time.

To find a niche and create a business based on that niche is the difference between having a targeted business plan and no plan at all. If you target a well thought out market it maximizes your chance of success. Niches are not usually newly discovered markets they are just markets within markets that are ready to buy. I say ready to buy because otherwise you won’t consider targeting it.

I am going to cover some approaches to what I call “Want Marketing”. This is a way of describing the market research process, and how the types of opportunities you find can be diverse but should always be based on viewing markets in terms of people first.

Market Research Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Part 2 >>