Market Research: Know Your Potential Customers
Step #8
Before you go to the trouble of doing keyword research and starting writing, you need to know, “What is the market willing to buy?” There has to be a reason for them to pull out their wallet and go for that credit card. In general it is fairly well accepted around the internet marketing community that subscribers are willing to pay for information for pain or pleasure. Either they have a problem and want a solution (weight loss) or they spend a lot of money for pleasure (golf).
I think it is only fair to assume that your motivation in being involved in internet marketing is the money. It may be a hobby for some but I have not met any of them. Ask any marketer if they would continue to do all of the work if there was no prospect of making money.
Most beginning marketers fail in completing this step adequately. You have to dig really deep into your market with the critical last questions being, “What does your market want bad enough to pay for it?”
Take a quick look at your list created in the last lesson. These are the general topics you are going to be considering as you do this market research.
Since we are looking for problems that people need to solve, it is important to go to places where people are asking questions – How to fix, how to avoid, how to do it better, how to do it cheaper – problems that need a solution. An excellent place to look for questions is a forum on the topic. Search Google for “keyword + forum” or go to Board Tracker (www.boardtracker.com) where you can search for discussion groups in almost every imaginable field.
In the next lessons we will look at some of the other methods and do some experimenting.