by Phil Donaldson
Before the Internet, you had to spend a lot of time and money to find out if people would buy your product.
Traditional Methods Require Traditional Investment
You didn't want to learn your product was not quite what people wanted after you had gone to the expense of developing it.
So you had to survey people on the street, run telemarketing campaigns or hold focus group discussions.
But now, with the help of the Internet, you can understand how people think when they search for your product.
Understanding without the Expense
Imagine typing in a few keywords and finding out how many people are searching for those keywords. You could quickly get an accurate idea of how popular your product would be.
If you knew there were 11 searches for "diesel radio control boat" in the major search engines every month then you would also know that people are trying to find information about them.
So they probably want to buy them.
Now image this place could look up a thesaurus and give you hundreds of variations on your keywords and tell you how many people are searching for each variation. You could easily understand exactly what people think of when they search for your type of product. You might discover that while there are 11 searches for "diesel radio control boat", there are also 184 searches for "gas rc boat".
Do you still want to sell diesel radio control boats?
Carve Out Your Competition
What if there are already 15 websites selling diesel radio control boats and only 3 websites selling gas radio control boats?
You would know that demand is high and competition is low for "gas rc boat". So carve out your niche market in gas radio control boats and suddenly you are no longer competing with the diesel, sail or electric radio control boat markets.
And now that you are focussed on gas radio control boats, your message is not diluted by diesel, sail or electric radio control boats. It's much easier to become known as the first place to look for gas rc boats.
Vote The Name You Know...
Tacky political campaigns aside, now you know the words your prospects think of when they look for your products. So if you can, use them in the name of your product. When you choose between 10 products and the name of one of them contains the words you're thinking of, which product would you look at first?
Wordtracker
You probably guessed that you don't have to imagine this place. It's called Wordtracker, and it's one of the most useful tools I've ever seen. You can try it for free, or get a paid subscription.
As with all free services, the free version of Wordtracker doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the paid service. But unlike most paid subscriptions, Wordtracker is available for as little as US$6 for a one day subscription.
So throw out your surveys, telemarketing campaigns and focus groups and give Wordtracker a try: http://www.guerrillaretail.co.nz/wordtracker.html
You won't get the detailed analysis of traditional market research, but you will get a very good understanding of what your customers are looking for. And you can do it in a few hours or less.
What's Next?
Get more detail: understand who your customers are and what they really want:
http://www.guerrillaretail.co.nz/startinginternetbusiness.html#step2
© Phil Donaldson
http://www.GuerrillaRetail.co.nz Increase sales using your brain not your wallet
For more articles like this or to subscribe to "Guerrilla Retail Tips", please visit: http://www.GuerrillaRetail.co.nz/grarticles.htm