What is Market Research?

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”

-Zora Neale Hurston”

You might ask the question, what is market research? Market research is the crystal ball that tells you which of your ideas are going to fly in the market place. It helps you determine the need for your product or service.

By far, the most prevalent issues among online marketers, both new and experienced are: mistaking the ability to start a business, for the ability to satisfy a need.

Like Cinderella’s prince charming seeks out the beautiful princess whose feet are a “perfect fit” for the glass slipper; the challenge for online marketers is to understand what makes their business “perfect” to meet the demands and needs of a large enough group of customers.

Why do you think its love at first sight with a colorful and beautifully designed bottle of perfume? How did the company come up with a great design that attracts you? It would have involved hundreds of hours of market research to find what buyers want.

WHAT IS MARKET RESEARCH? – THE FUNDAMENTALS

Understanding the potential your product or service has – is where it all begins. It’s not as complicated at it all sounds.

Market analysis is like fishing. To attract the fish you need to use the right lure. If you’re fishing in stained water, you need a lure that attracts the fish with sound. Similarly, you want to rope in highly targeted leads for your business.

For a business to be successful, this is what you need:

* Proper Planning

* Market Research

* Product/Service

* Website and Content

* Traffic Generation

* List Building

Do this and sales follow. For now, lets answer the question, what is market research, as that’s what this article is all about.

DETERMINE YOUR MARKET

You’re interested in promoting your marketing business to gain hundreds or thousands of leads. But the question you have to be asking yourself is whether the marketing model you’ve chosen or the product you’re promoting is something people are interested in.

Ask yourself:

* Who has a need for what I’m promoting?

* How many people are interested?

* Are they spending any money on such products/services/information?

* If they are, how are they priced?

* Does my offering has the capacity to fulfill their need?

Finally, ask yourself the all-important question. Why would people want to choose you over a bevy of competitors, all vying with each other to give them the best? What do you have to do to ensure you secure a place in their hearts?

Basically, you get a clear picture of what the future holds. You don’t need to hire someone else to answer these questions for you. You can do the market research yourself with the simple market research tools available online.

USE THE POWER OF SEARCH ENGINES

* Keyword Search: Keyword search is the single most crucial component of market research. People enter a number of keywords into the search engines to find what they’re looking for. The idea is to find the keywords related to your niche that people are searching.

There are several good paid keyword search tools available like Market Samurai and others. But I suggest you use Google Keyword Planner. It’s one of the very best tools that give you a great insight into the number of people searching for your keywords as well as related keywords. A large number of searches are an indication of high demand.

Here is a 2 minute tutorial on how to use the Keyword Planner to conduct your keyword research. 

* Competition Analysis: Whether you admit it or not, you have competition out there, hungry and waiting to divert your customers their way. But you must know how many of them are there and how they’re doing. Keeping tabs on your competition is the best way to get into a business and grow in it.

Type in your keywords in the search engines and see how many sites come up. If there’s too much demand it will be difficult for you to break into, and if there’s too little demand, the niche may be a waste of time. You may want to visit their websites to see what keywords they’re using in their content.

AMAZON AS A MARKET RESEARCH TOOL

Sometimes you may find hundreds of people out there searching for your keywords, which makes you feel that your product has a great market.

You know they’re hungry, but are they just “hungry for information” or “hungry enough to spend money?”

Type in your keyword on Amazon and visit the first few results. Check their product details and you’ll find the Amazon Bestsellers Rank.

In this example, I typed, “network marketing” in Amazon and it showed 11,787 results. Clicking on the first book on the list reveals that the book is doing very well and there’s a huge market for this niche. Check at least five results in the list.

ANSWER SITES

People may have been doing this for ages, but it still works beautifully. Answer sites like Yahoo! Answers, Quora and Microsoft Answers are some of the more popular answer sites, where people ask questions and they’re answered by others. Visit these sites, type in your keywords and if you find lots of questions – you’re in demand! Of course, spend some time figuring out what people are asking.

SELL YOUR IDEA

Have you ever heard of this? This is considered to be one of the best strategies to analyze a market, even before you create your product or begin your business. You’re creating a buzz around your business first whilst still conducting market research!

Create a very simple sales page with just the key selling points and the title. Tell your readers that your product will be available soon. Offer great discounts and bonuses for pre-ordering. Promote this sales page on social media sites, in forums, to your list and everywhere else. Assess the scope!

But this can backfire very badly if you don’t have a good product or idea. So be careful and implement this only if you’re very confident of what you’re offering them.

What Is Market Research…A CONCLUSION

There are many other great ideas that I’ll be bringing to you in the future. These strategies give you a very good idea as to where you customers are and if there are any. But market research is a continuous process and you should keep an eye on the market for changing buyer behaviors and the performance of your competition.

Do you actively conduct comprehensive market research? Can you answer the question, what is market research?