Where is The Hungry Market?

By Alice Seba On June 6, 2005 Under FAQ, Target Market & USP Questions
Alice Seba


Q: Where do you find the hungry market? I have tried doing this for almost 6 months online and I still haven’t found it.

A: Well, my first question for you is – when you say you haven’t found it, have you actually started experimenting and try to reach that market? If you have an idea, you need to start throwing some stuff out there to see if you get any bites. You can analyze numbers all you want (using WordTracker) and hypothesizing (by checking what is selling in magazines targeting your market, etc), but until you actually start reaching that market and seeing if it really is viable, you won’t know.

A few ways to test your market:

There’s no need to go gung-ho and spend thousands of dollars developing products and websites before you know if your market is viable. Start slow…but do start testing. A few ways to test the waters:

Be an Affiliate First: Sell other people’s products to this market and see what they are interested in. You can start by building a mailing list and seeing what they respond to and what problems they need to have solved.

Spy on Your Market: Visit their message boards, email groups and see what problems they have. Study your potential competitors. Study their website marketing and sign up for their newsletter. Buy their products and observe their customer service and follow-up process. Learn everything you can about the people you want to sell to and the people that are selling to them.
Use Google Adwords or Overture for Further Research: What you’re going to do is a version of what Frank Kern & Ed Dale (Underachiever Mastery) call a “flycatcher” page. Frank & Ed can explain it best, but I’ll give you a little synopsis.
You set up a page that says something like, “I’m writing an ebook / course on XXXX. I would like to give you a free copy of this ebook / course when I’m finished if you would tell me what questions you would like answered in the ebook / course.”
Then you collect a bunch of questions and basically — you answer all the questions and you’ve created your product!
BUT…the important trick is how you drive traffic to the page. You want to know if people are WILLING to pay for this information…if there is indeed a market for this. So, you don’t want to tell people, “Come to my page, submit a question and I’ll give you a free copy of my ebook.” Then you’ll attract freebie seekers.
What you can do is set up an AdWords campaign with ads that are written just as though you are selling a product on your topic. If you have good clickthroughs on those ads, that will tell you there is potentially a market.

Does that make sense? If you could spend like $50-$100 for product research, you’ll know better if it’s a viable idea or not.

Overall, I think waiting for that “perfect” market will keep you from getting anything done. The most important thing you can do is start taking action and learn from your experiences.

Further Resources

To learn more about online marketing, sign up for my Internet Marketing Sweetie course.

About: Alice Seba

Alice Seba earns a full-time online income as an entrepreneur and loves to help others achieve the same. With a focus on using content to create relationships, loyalty and results from the written word, she co-owns both a ghostwriting service and a private label content business. To get more tips for your content marketing, visit Contentrix.com - your free resource with plenty of tips and strategies.

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