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If you are starting a new business or a new product, or if you are a long time business owner – Market Research is essential for your success.

Launching a product to a new market – you need to know where that market is, and why they want your product. Only then can you effectively market to them.

Benefits of Market Research

For current business owners you can increase your communication with customers – The public can see you are taking an active part in finding out their needs and wants. Show them you are aiming to fulfill these needs and wants. They are more likely to remember you in future and buy from you again.

Both new businesses and established businesses can identify opportunities – By speaking with the public in regards to their wants and needs, you will find other areas that you had not thought of, that you could fulfill.

Minimize risk - By researching before you start your business, you can see if your product/service will sell. If it is obvious from the research that no one would buy your product/service, then you can change direction before you start, and thus save yourself a lot of time and money.

Measure your progress – By conducting Market Research at the start of your business, and then following this up again at a later point, you will be able to see from the responses how successful you are, and if you could afford to branch out into new areas.

Getting Started
Before starting Market Research, it is important to understand what you want out of this research. Do you want to know if your product will sell? Do you want to see how many other products are out there? Do you want to know if people are planning to continue buying this product/service, or if the market is moving in a new direction? There is nothing more annoying for potential customers to be harassed by people with no real reason in mind.
People are generally happy to help others. If you explain that you are trying to find out how people would react to a new product on the market, or simply if they would like it, most people would be more than happy to give you their opinion.

How to do it?
There are many different ways to conduct Market Research. If you are running an online business naturally you would use online resources. One of the best ways of doing market research is to create a survey and have people fill it in for you. A popular online survey website is Survey Monkey. You can create a free survey, and then forward the URL to people, which will take them to the website to allow them to participate in the survey.

There are many arguments as to whether you should request people to fill in the survey, or request people to fill in the survey and offer a free gift. You can offer a free e-book, article or product in order to entice people to fill in the survey. It depends on your personal preference (obviously if you do not offer a free incentive the numbers may not be as great completing the survey, but then the persons completing the survey may be more ‘real’)

Promote your Research
When you have a survey, you can get your family and friends to fill this in, but you can also promote the survey on social media websites. Promote this on Facebook, Twitter, and various other social media websites. This will give you a wide range of opinions from a wide range of people – ideal for Market Research. You could also used paid campaigns such as google Adwords.

Analyze, Analyze, Analyze!
Once you have the information, it is essential that you do something with it. Firstly sort the information into categories. The easiest way is to do this is in a spreadsheet. You can filter people by demographic, or by the responses people gave you. Create a graph of the results. It is an easy way to see the density of the answers.
Finally, use this information to adjust your product/service, rethink the product/service all together, or charge ahead with promotion.

Market Research is essential for every business. Always take the opportunity to ask your customers opinions and use the feedback to your best advantage.

Internet marketing is an ever-changing field and the approach which fits best now may be obsolete in next six months. As an internet marketer, you should always be aware of the latest market trends as and when they surface and use them to your advantage.
Market trends are actually very closely associated with the consumer trends so the impact is almost immediate. Let’s have a look at the internet marketing top market trends for 2010:

SEO
Search Engine Optimization, as always, is still the top market trend to be followed. Websites that put the effort into optimization get the benefit of being ranked higher and thus accessed more by interested visitors. You must remember that at all times, content is the king. Highly relevant and targeted content is always preferred and attracts huge traffic.

Email marketing
Email marketing is one field that is bound to help your business grow. Email service providers are continuously improving their lists through the integration of social media, search engines and other services. The low cost of email marketing is also a great and cheap way to attract new customers and reinvigorate old customers. Email marketing is a top market trend for 2010 to watch!

Content nesting

A new and emerging trend, content nesting means that the visitor does not have to click a number of links to reach individual websites; the content is presented through a single web page.
If you have videos on your site and they are not present on YouTube, people won’t try and look for your website – they would rather see you in the list on YouTube.

Video marketing
One of the number one top market trends for 2010. It is the next big thing in the world of internet marketing. People like to watch videos rather than just read content and the rising popularity of video streaming sites is live proof. Video marketing is cheap, widely accessible, interactive and can be shared easily all around.

Paid searches
Since search engines are the primary means of locating information – paid searches are as relevant in 2010 as they were in the previous years. The options are not limited to a few vendors – although you should choose wisely. Paid searches will get you highly qualified leads.

There are many market trends waiting to unfold in the coming years but always remember to test new ideas before making any major investments. Knowing what the Internet Marketing top market trends for 2010 are, is a crucial move for your business.

Whether you want to set up a new business or simply want to update yourself about an industry, it is imperative that you research the firms in that industry to understand past trends, future prospects and the prevalent norms. Here’s a step by step guide to understanding any industry.

1. Identify the Industry:
This may sound very obvious, but before researching an industry it is important to know exactly which industry you are searching for. This can get a little complicated owing to the overlap between industries in modern times. For instance, banks overlap with financial firms, the computers industry overlaps with electronics, and gaming overlaps with computers and so on. First, define which industry you want to find and use keywords specific to that industry when searching industry databases.

2. Use Surveys and Reports for Industry Statistics:
There are multiple resources for industry research available on the internet alone. In addition, there are various publications of industry surveys and statistics purely for the purpose of research. For instance, Hoover’s Online publishes profiles of more than 200 different industries. Standard & Poor’s Industry Surveys are detailed surveys of more than 50 US industries.

3. Search for News Reports and Magazine Articles About the Industry:
These are excellent resources for gaining a deeper understanding of the industry and the trends related to it. While statistics can be misinterpreted, or not give you the true picture, articles and expert opinions will generally show you the industry as it is. Plus, hearing lots of different opinions can help you decide whether or not to set up a business in the industry, and your chances of success.

4. Visit Industry Websites:
Websites of individual firms as well as searchable online databases and there websites belonging to the industry as a whole can be an excellent resource for information about the industry, and industry research. For instance, IndustryLink.com has lots of links to industry websites. Business.com can also help you search and identify helpful industry websites.

5. Learn About Leading Firms in the Industry:
Identify the leaders in the industry and study their financial position, their customer base, market share etc. to understand fully exactly what it is that makes them successful, and if you are thinking of setting up a business, this would help you see exactly what kind of competition you are up against.

6. Use Business-to-Business Marketplaces:
Finally, use this one great resource that has recently come into being. B2B market places are basically online business communities that keep their members and visitors updated on all aspects of their industry, with the purpose of facilitating e-commerce. These will usually give you basic, understandable and relevant information about the industry.

Industry research is essential before starting any business. Take the time to check out your industry and find new information that you can use in your business.

Market research surveys are immensely important for every business. Most business decisions are made after careful market research. Market research surveys are important if you are trying to determine:
• which marketing approach to use
• whether or not to launch a product/service
• how much trust your buyers put into your products/services, and,
• the wisdom of virtually any decision that affects your primary market in any way.

What are the Main Approaches to Conducting Market Research Surveys?

Market Research Surveys

• Quantitative Approach: this deals with measurable quantities. For instance, questionnaires asking how many units of a certain product you consume per week, how much you would be willing to pay for a new product, how many people use a certain service and so on are all examples of quantitative surveys.

• Qualitative Approach: this deals with the analysis of things that cannot be associated with numbers, for instance the level of satisfaction of a customer, what improvements should be made to a product or service, or the best features of your business in customers’ view. Such questions require either verbal interviews or long answers in written questionnaires.

Sampling

Since you cannot interview all the members of your target market, you try to select a sample that is highly representative of the general views of the wider market segment that you are aiming at. There are two things to keep in mind while choosing your sample:
• Sample Size: The larger the size of your sample, the more valid your research results will be. Interviewing a very small sample would lead to too many variables in your research and hence affect its validity.
• Cost/Effort involved in reaching a representative sample: Since very large samples are difficult and expensive to reach, you often have to restrict yourself to smaller samples.

As the choice of the right sample is based on both these factors, this becomes something of a tradeoff. A larger sample size will give you greater accuracy, but will increase the cost and effort involved.

Some Tips to Carry Out Good Market Research Surveys

For Questionnaires:
• Keep the questionnaire anonymous, short and relevant to ensure that people give complete and truthful responses.
• Do not ask personal questions or anything that could offend the respondent.

For Interviews:
• Be careful of interviewer bias – do not introduce your own ideas. Let the interview openly state his/her views
• Do not ask leading questions. Make sure that your questions are completely neutral and you give no indication of what answer you want. This will ensure that the interviewee states his own true views.

Market Research Surveys are essential for every business. Take the time to do it correctly and your business will thank you for it.

What is Social Research?

Social Research has thousands of outlets!

In the context of businesses and the internet, social research is a method of learning about your target market. Social research uses social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, or a blog to ask questions, to find out customer preferences, and to generally learn your target customers’ opinions about any aspect of your current or future business.

Benefits of Social Research:
Why go for social research as opposed to more conventional forms of research? Here are its advantages:

• It is easier, quicker and hardly costs you a cent: Most blogs and social media sites are free to join, and once you join them, you can search the groups or fan pages where your target market is most likely to be found. As a member, you will be allowed to post your own content free of cost. This is infinitely easier and much cheaper than designing and printing out questionnaires or forms and going out in the marketplace or door to door to get them filled.
• It helps you identify the target market and build a reputation before even launching your business: This is why carrying out social research before launching a business can be a great idea. The people on social networking sites get to know your idea, and if you present it in the right way, you can make it appear intriguing enough that they will want to buy from you when you actually do start. You get to know which people are most interested in your ideas, and you can with their permission use them as leads in marketing later on.

How to Carry Out Social Research:
There are several ways to do this. Here are some of the quickest and easiest ones:

• Use your Blog:
Simply post your questions on your blog, if you have one, and let people answer. If you don’t already have a business blog, this is a great reason to create one. This way your business can develop an online following, popularizing you among your target customers.
• LinkedIn:
LinkedIn has a separate section where you can ask questions and get responses. Sometimes the number of responses can go up in hundreds. Thus you learn a lot from different people’s opinions.
• Yahoo Answers:
As this is a website dedicating to posting and answering questions, you can not only ask people questions about upcoming business ventures, but also reply to existing questions by introducing your business idea or existing business websites.

Social research is one of the easiest and most effective ways of discovering the market for your product or service.

Market Analysis has two distinct definitions, but as far as a business’s marketing is concerned, the relevant idea is a thorough analysis of your target market, and a plan of the steps to take for optimum sales and profitability.  The underlying purpose of market analysis is either to plan the best way to enter a new market, or, for an existing market, to increase the market share or make it more profitable. Hence market analysis is a highly relevant concept for business owners and managers.

Let us now look at the two major categories of this type of market analysis:
Market analysis for a new product line/business:
In this case, analysis of the target market involves studying the needs of your potential customers, predicting which products are likely to be successful among them, and in how much quantity you should produce the product. Logic analysis, for instance, involves studying the target customers to identify an unsatisfied need, and launching your product accordingly, to fulfill that need. Also, the incomes and lifestyles of the customers are studied, based on which you decide the price, packaging and distribution of your products, or the corresponding aspects of any services you are providing. Finally, the competition is analyzed. For this, you basically look at other firms that are catering to your target market already, and look at their market shares, their brand image, pricing strategy and other things, and this helps you generate your own ideas on how to best enter the market.
Market analysis for an existing business/product line:
Some of these techniques overlap with the market analysis for a new business or product line, but the major difference is that instead of studying targeted customers, you are interested in your existing customers. You study brand loyalty and brand perception of your product among your customers, and also predict their response to any changes you might bring in your product, packaging or pricing strategy. Also, you study the competition, and devise strategies that might give you a competitive edge, increase your profitability, sales or ROI.

Market analysis tools:
There are a myriad market analysis software tools available on the internet, some free, some not. They usually take the form of spreadsheets with several fields that input a wide range of data, and then manipulate it and present a general analysis using graphical representation, or by listing data in a specific order (such as sales by week or time of day) depending on the data that is input. Also, marketing firms usually provide market analysis services along with their other services.

To be an effective marketer, it is important to understand your targeted customers and their buying behaviors. Many internet startups fail because of a sheer lack of research and ignoring the importance of market intelligence.

It is simply crucial to have knowledge about your market and this is known as market intelligence (sometimes it is also known as competitive intelligence), by knowledge I mean:
•    Your target market – who they are, what demographics they belong to
•    Nature of your market  – buying behaviors
•    Needs of your consumers – what specific needs and gaps are you addressing
•    Locations – where is your targeted audience most likely present – what sites do they frequent
•    Your competitors – who else is offering similar or alternate products and services to your targeted customers
On the basis of this information, you should devise your marketing plan and your website. Now the question is how to uncover this information? Thankfully there are various tools and websites available online that can help you in conducting your research. Some of the main sources for marketing intelligence are:
•    Sites like eBay Marketplace, SitePoint Markeetplace, or Yahoo Shopping are good place to do market research
•    Audience panels like Nielsen NetRatings or Comscore
•    Large scale surveys
•    Industry analysts and date aggregators
•    Software tools like Micro Niche Finder Review  or PPC Bully Review that allow users to find profitable keywords and micro niches
Market intelligence helps you in identifying business opportunities, better market selection and positioning and customer orientation. This will also help accessing your business performance in comparison to the overall development of the market and how to take actions that affects the outcome of your marketing campaign.

We live in age of information overload – where it is rapidly increasing in scope and complexity. Regardless of the industry, having access to the right information and trends is crucial for planning, building and influencing decisions.

Market research companies caters to this need by providing systematic gathering and analysis of information related to marketing products or services. A lot of companies don’t have time or resources to invest into building their own research teams, and hence prefer to avail the services of professional market research companies and organizations.

The need for market research companies

Given the competitive marketing environment, market research companies are growing rapidly all over the world. The job of a market research company is to point out potential opportunities, target market selection, implementation of marketing programs, identify alternatives, evaluation of decisions and decision making factors. In US alone, there are hundreds of market research companies available in every state. Globally, these companies are noted for their excellent services and quality results.
Many organizations and firms hire research companies to conduct surveys. Besides surveys, market research companies also offer services in recruitment, survey design and development, B2B marketing as well. Standard services that market research companies offer are:
•    Customized services where each project is considered unique
•    Coding and data entry services
•    Analytical services
•    Brand marketing research products
•    Data analysis services

Key points to look when hiring Market Research Company
It is always best to go for those market research companies that suit your needs best. Here are a few additional points to consider when hiring a market research company:
•    Provides quality services
•    Deep understanding of customer behavior and how to extract relevant trends
•    Consists of highly qualified researchers and consultants
•    Precise methodology and ability to produce reliable results

There are so many online marketing strategies you could use to be successful online however regardless of the strategy you use, you have to set a great foundation and that starts with finding a profitable niche or market.

This is one of the hardest decisions a newbie internet marketer faces particularly without the experience behind them to know what will work and what won’t work. So let’s go into a few simple steps of finding a profitable niche.

5 Simple Market Research Steps to Finding a Profitable Niche

Step 1 – What is your passion

Firstly your need to find your passion – what are you interested in? This is one of the MOST important steps you need to think about. Say for example you are starting a blog or website, designed to sell affiliate products and you base the blog on a topic you have absolutely NO IDEA about just because you know there are affiliate products that earn good commission. This is the biggest mistake you can make when starting out as ultimately you are not going to have an interest in the topic and you will be less inclined to stay the distance and regularly update your blog. Plus it will be very obvious to the reader that you are not passionate about your topic or niche.

Let’s put that into context. Bob, who is 58, is new to internet marketing and discovers that there are a stack of beauty products he could sell as an affiliate. He asks his wife and daughter a little about the topic and does his best to write about female beauty products and the latest mascara available….he fails miserably! I mean would you buy the latest mascara from Bob who can’t even explain what mascara is and where it is used? More than likely not.

Bob would be better off talking about one of his hobbies that he is passionate about. He has dabbled in the stock market for years and knows quite a bit about it. In fact it’s probably the first thing he talks to the other ‘blokes’ about when they have BBQ’s. AND there are stacks of affiliate product surrounding share trading software and education programs that pay far more money than any mascara EVER would.

So now, think about what you love to do. What do you get excited about talking to your friends? What is it you do of a weekend? What is it you would LOVE to do every weekend given the choice?

Step 2 – Write down 5 topics

Now, write down 5 topics that you could use. For example sport, music, health, fitness, travel, yoga….

Step 3 – Are other people interested in your topic

Then determine whether other people have an interest in this topic. You can do this by doing a google search and seeing how many other sites are out there. The more sites, the more popular your topic is.

The other way to determine this is by doing some keyword research. And see how many people are searching on your particular topic.  There are quite a few keyword research tools available which you can use for free eg Google Keyword Research Tool

You can also have more advanced Keyword Research Tools such as Market Samurai. You can use this link to get a free 12 day trial

Step 4 – Offline Market Research

Let’s look at a way you can find a profitable niche by looking offline. Visit your local newsagent – check out the magazine section. Is there a magazine dedicated to your topic or that at least covers your topic within the magazine. If so then you have a market. (if your local newsagent is just too far away, check out Magazines.com)

Step 5 – Can you make money from it?

Check out if there are affiliate products to sell and the quality of the affiliate products. Two really good sites on this are Clickbank and also Commission monster.
Clickbank is for digital products whereas commission monster has all types of products. Here you can browse around and check out the product (based on your site and your passion) versus what type of affiliate commissions they payout.

Follow these 5 simple steps and you are on your way to making your niche profitable…