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Effective Market Research
In order to get targeted traffic you have to know who your audience is, and what they want.
You have to know where they are active and how to communicate with them effectively.
Almost every client and student i’ve ever had has been either slightly unsure of, or completely clueless about how to do market research properly, as well as understanding the reasons they should do it in the first place.
In this lesson you are going to learn: How to map out a picture of your market to gain tremendous insight, gain the advantage of awareness, and identify key websites and businesses online that you can work with to catapult your brand exposure, audience development, and online growth.
Whether you are an established brand, or a passionate content creator, market research is important because you want to know who’s out there, what they’re doing, and then use that data for all kinds of purposes.
From reaching out to others in your space or niche, starting relationships with other people who are also doing cool stuff, to learning where your audience spends most of their time, figuring out what questions and solutions they are seeking answers to, how they are behaving, what they are interested in, etc.
Market Research is high leverage stuff, and crazy-important to know how to do.
So many people and businesses miss the power of this.
You’re not going to be one of those people.
The great news is that everything is here, nicely consolidated, and easily found if we know how and where to look... We can gather intel and analysis to our hearts content...
Let’s first look at the costly mistakes many of our peers have made, and will continue to make.
Market Research Mistakes
ASSumptions - This is going to work out! I can just FEEL it......!
Lack of data collection altogether - This is too much work, all this stuff... Who needs it?
Incomplete or irrelevant research procedures - But i checked out a keyword using the google adwords keyword tool? What more do you want from me?
Not testing on a small level before scaling - Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here! Test first, scale later!
Trying to force demand and reinvent the wheel - THIS is the product YOU MUST buy, because I know that you need it!!! You gotta find people who are ready to give you money first.
Focused on wrong metrics - Well, there must be a market because... There’s a huge amount of traffic for people searching that keyword!??
No monetization strategy - Not focused on an endgame that will pay-off for the time and effort you’ll invest.
All of these are no go’s. Guys. No excuses. Gotta do your homework.
Alright. Let’s move on!
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Effective Market Research Online
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No other form of market research can really compare to online market research because there is so much freely available data.
Market research is where we are going to start to identify key players, customers, communities, potential JV partners, research buying patterns, etc. It is the foundation that will help us gain a perspective, and obtain valuable consumer insight to begin to establish our brand and UVP.
Before we dive into more specific and detailed competitive research, let’s look at our market from a bird’s eye view.
Now, understand that you’re not going to construct the whole picture in one day... Over time you will gain a more comprehensive and focused perspective, we’re just going to start by doing the most important stuff first, so don’t get overwhelmed or freaked out.
Most of the stuff you are going to be doing... even the basics, is a lot better than most of your competitors are doing... So keep that in mind.
Incremental, progressive steps is how you’ll win... Just follow the plan, and follow through with the work.
So this week we are going to start mapping out the marketplace.
What are you looking for?
Is there a Market?
What is the Industry?
Who are your Competitors?
What Communities exist, and why?
Who are your Customers?
Who are your Prospects?
Who are the Influencers/Guru’s/Experts?
How are you going to keep track of, and organize all this stuff?
Bookmarks and Tags
You are going to simply search in the search engines for sites relative to your product, service, or offering... You are going to learn how to assess each site, label/categorize it effectively, and then save it - to construct a market profile consisting of the following...
Websites/Content: What is this website all about, and what do you need to tag/remember about them? (i.e. competitor, content, feed, forum, industry, market, news, profile, prospect, question, publication.)
People: who is this person and what do you need to remember about them? (i.e. blogger, competitor, industry, market, JV partner, writer.)
You want to label a site that is descriptive and so that you or someone else can come back later and take action on... You are building a profile of your market. Which gives you a perspective... But more importantly, you are building the habit of doing this. So that you will do this from now on. For every site you go to.
For example...
Authoritative content site, active forum attached, potential JV partner, high page rank.
The Goal is not for you to “follow my system,” the goal is for you to LEARN how to do this, and find a method that works for you to identify and begin to build a perspective on your market. Think long-term, just take little steps and allow relationships the time to develop. Just be proactive, and it’ll pay off later.
You are tagging and categorizing them by anything that is helpful for you to remember. Over time you will know what is relevant, and what you’ll want to tag sites with.
This is less about what classification of competitor they may be, (i.e. direct, partial, or potential collaborator) which we’ll be focusing on in competitive research, and more about gaining as much insight and perspective on your marketplace as possible.
Start by searching google for main authority sites, (and don’t forget youtube either) on your topic by searching for big, competitive (shorter) keywords/terms, such as “dog training,“ for example, and then go check out some of the sites that it links to, and just SURF your way as you follow your train of thought and get to know who’s out there, and what they’re doing.
Research Books/Programs/Podcasts:
Check amazon for published books, programs. Follow back to author’s site, or use name and search on google for what comes up.
Search itunes for podcasts.
Research Blogs:
You can search for relevant blogs through google blog search.
blogsearch.google.com
find blogs-check blogroll, for people using exact keywords… tag them and tag the people for further research/to build a relationship with.
Bloggers can give links easily, may want guest posts/content.
Research Forums:
find forums (keyword) forums
jump over to quantcast.com
research sites, find similar/related sites
use google trends (trends.google.com)
find other sites that people who visited one site are going to, and check them out.
Research Writers: FInd and tag other writers in market by searching for keywords.
find where their content gets published. get their name and author links in the about box and google search on where they are showing up around the web.
ezinearticles.com
goarticles.com
buzzle.com
hubpages.com
squidoo.com
Todays mission may-not so surprisingly be an exercise in applying what you’ve just learned.
Makes sense don’t it!?
So go through this one, make sure you understand and implement it, and then be on the look out for the next lesson where we’ll be going into deeper levels of competitive research, as well as some of the little tweaks you can make to your website that can have a MASSIVE impact.
It’s a short one full of actionable tips and a lot of experienced improvements you’d generally pay someone a lot of money to do for you, or tell you over the phone. Cheers!
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Mission Brief
It’s important to understand that it is my job to get you results... Now, i’m going to be bringing this up any time i think it’s necessary, so you might as well get used to it.
Anyway, the name of the game here, with success online, as i’m sure you’ve found in other areas of your life, is commitment and follow through.
You don’t have to be doing 10 hours a day on this stuff, but you need to be doing something substantial every single day. This is a real investment, and the more tuned in and present you are with me through this, the better your future will be... and YOUR TRIBE will thank you later.
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Your mission for this week, is as follows:
Install SEOquake browser extension. (type in SEOquake into google and follow directions to install into your internet browser.. i.e. Chrome, Firefox, Internet explorer, Safari, etc.)
Create a ”new bookmarks folder“ in your browser tab, and name it “My Market.” Search, Identify, bookmark and tag 10-20 players in your market. (Objective = understand the offerings, your marketplace, and potential JV (joint venture) opportunities/promo partners, and form habit of doing this for every site you come across from now on.)
Identify 3-5 potential guest blogs, 1-3 forums/communities, and 3-5 industry hubs (any place that you could possibly publish your content on that would be beneficial to you)
Create promo partner list of 10-30 (companies, experts, affiliates, non-profits)
Sign up to newsletter and email lists
And, as usual, if and when you generate questions or problems you cannot solve on your own, write them down, and i can answer them via email, or next session.
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------>The purpose of the browser extension is to display a bar of useful data across the top of each web page you visit, and across the bottom of the search engine results page. This will show you a few things like page rank in the far left, the age of the page, and a few other statistics. The point is for you to start to see and correlate the trends of the sites and pages with high page rank, and those without any rank. It is also important to understand that the ones with higher page rank, are generally more valuable for you to partner with, write a guest blog for, etc.
You will start to understand more about this, and will inevitably become curious enough to ask more questions and form deeper understandings.
----> Guest blogs are sites that allow other people to submit and publish content on their site. It is one of the best things you can do online to gain more exposure, build high quality Links, and develop high value relationships with key players and bloggers in your niche. It is beneficial to the site owner of course because they get free content to share with their audience, and most of the time, as long as it’s relevant and of high value to their visitors, they love it.
It is VERY SMART for us to be identifying them now, because it will save you time, and will give you the opportunity to subscribe via email and rss to some of the best ones and see the kinds of content they publish, and how often.
----->Promo partners are other experts and businesses who have a similar audience you want to reach, and could strategically work with to compliment/promote each other to increase exposure and build a list, and then joint venture with for future product launches and offerings. Having a big, healthy list of potential promo partners, is INVALUABLE. These are critical to the success of your list building and your product launch campaigns. IDENTIFY ALL POTENTIAL PROMO PARTNERS DURING MARKET RESEARCH, NOW, AND FOREVER.
Use quantcast.com to gather more in depth research data like traffic volume and audience statistics.
*If in Doubt... Refer to This:
There is nothing crazy or overwhelming involved here. Just step-by-step actions. Overwhelm is a personal choice... Do not ALLOW yourself to be overwhelmed. Everything you need to know and do is right here on this page. :-)
P.S.
If you need some help with direction, focusing, or have some questions, you’ve still got your phone call, and i’m here to help support you.
We can have a loose conversation about it. The trick is to learn from someone who knows what they are talking about and who’s here to help. ;-)
Be Your Best,
Jamie
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