Market research involves finding out what products or services people are looking for. For a marketer, researching the market he or she plans to promote is absolutely essential. In order for their efforts at selling to pay off, he or she must make sure that the people want what they are selling otherwise their efforts will be wasted by visitors leaving the website without buying anything. To make sales you must drive targeted traffic to your website, targeted meaning referring visitors who you know will buy.
Making sales is the marketer’s ultimate goal so he or she needs to investigate the market, find out what products in that industry people are buying and how often they are buying. You will want to know this before you pick a product to promote. They also need to know how many other marketers are making sales and promoting products as this will be the competition. Here are some steps outlining methods of performing market research.
1. Set up an online survey or poll on your blog to get an idea of what your target audience is looking for.
2. Go over to Google Trends and do a search for popular topics.
3. Post a thread in community and niche forums asking a question in your chosen topic and record all the answers on a spreadsheet.
4. Utilize Google Analytics on your website or blog to find out where your traffic is coming from and what search terms they are using to find you.
5. Perform a keyword search on Wordtracker and Google’s External Keyword Tool to see how many searches come up in this topic.
6. Use the Google Suggest Tool to find out how many other websites are competing for your chosen keywords.
When you look at the results, do your keywords have a lot of searches? These numbers will tell you if people are using these search terms to find products.
You can also use social networking sites to research the popularity of your topic. Check the forums on the site for current conversations or start a thread of your own. If you’re running text messaging campaigns, then you should sign up for ways to track the campaigns. You can sign up for a sms advertising services through Tatango to monitor all of your texting campaigns. Facebook and Myspace sell advertising on their pages so if you see ads related to your topic then people are buying these products. Start a topic on Twitter by asking a related question and see how many responses you get back.
Success in marketing comes from knowing your audience and what they are looking for and these tips will help you accomplish that.
