So you are an entrepreneur looking to offer content, products, and services successfully? Well, the one thing you want to do before you do either is to make sure you do market research.
Why?
Because trying to create and offer products, services, and/or content based on what you think is a good idea is a recipe for disaster.
You want to make sure that you are only creating things your target audience has told you they want, not just based on what you feel is a good idea.
Within this article
You might be thinking . . .
What do you mean by market research?
What’s market research, you ask?
Well, market research is basically gathering information about your ideal target audience.
That’s all it is.
Gathering different information to help you make better choices to offer products, services, and/or content.
You want to offer what they want and need so that you don’t waste your time or theirs.
You want your business to succeed, right? Well, you have to offer product services and content your people want. Then when you offer those product services content, they take it. Whether it’s an offer, a service, or a freebie, whatever the case may be, you must know what the people want.
You can’t do that based on what you feel is a good idea because you will definitely run into a situation where you waste time, energy, and money.
It could have all been prevented had you just done the market research in the beginning.
What if I don’t have an audience or community yet?
That’s the great thing about doing market research (the right way). It doesn’t matter if you have no audience, a small audience, or a huge audience . . . You can use the effective methods I’ve listed below.
Why market research is important
Market research is going to do a lot of different things for you.
Market research will . . .
- Allow you to know what your customers actually want before they even ask for it. Before they even open their mouth to say, I . . . Then boom, already got it here. Boom. Oh, girl. How did you know I needed that? Cause girl, I got you.
- Give you insight into your customer’s pains, desires, goals, and buying objectives so that you know exactly what products, services, and or content you need to create for them. It would be best if you focused on solving their problems.
What is it that they have a problem with that you can solve?
- Help you better understand what motivates your customers to buy. That’s an essential element of having an audience. As a business owner, if this is a hobby and you’re doing it for fun, that’s one thing. If you want a successful business, you will have to sell something. You can’t sell any and everything, but you can definitely sell things that are of value to your customers/clients.
Well, how do you find that out?
With market research, of course.
- Use the data you collect to write your copy for your website, sales/product pages, your content, and all the things you use as a message for your ideal customers. . . .attracting the people that need what you’re selling.
- Helps you determine what’s working for you right now and what is not working. If you have a business but have yet to sell and don’t have an audience, that’s fine. Be mindful of it as you grow and go along. Suppose you have an audience and have been selling different things and creating content. In that case, market research will allow you to assess what you already have, build and create more content on what’s working and tweak or remove things that are not.
It just makes it so much easier.
Like life is all good. It’s easy peasy, right?
3 Costly Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Doing Market Research
I see so many new entrepreneurs, even businesses that are already making sales, that create and offer products, services, and/or content without doing market research. However, you have to remember to get what it is that you’re looking to create directly from the horse’s mouth (aka your target audience/ideal customer avatar).
There is no way around it. And if you try, you will cost yourself more time, energy, and money than you would have just by doing the market research upfront.
That’s an absolute must!
1 – Not Doing Market Research At All
When creating products, services, and/or content that your audience actually wants and buys, you need to be thorough when doing market research.
You want to avoid going in and looking at one question or asking one question.
Nope.
You want to obtain as much information as you need to do a better job creating the product, services, and content you need for your ideal target audience.
2 – Not gathering enough information to make informed decisions within your business
There are many different methods when doing market research. And there’s not a set number, but you definitely want to be able to obtain enough information. Say you’re looking to create a lead magnet but need to figure out what lead magnet to create.
You don’t wanna just come up with the lead magnet ideal out of the blue because you feel like it’s a good idea. No, you need to find out how your ideal customer and target audience will better consume the information.
Will it be . . .
- a PDF
- an online course
- a masterclass
- a challenge
- a webinar
The list goes on.
To determine what your audience wants or best needs, you have to get that information from them.
From the right people or not asking the right questions.
You basically need to focus on the following:
- who
- what
- when
- where
Honestly, you should already have a good idea of who your ideal customer avatar is – your target audience.
But you also wanna know the what, the when, the where, and the why. Those are the questions that are going to help you create and offer basically products and services, and content to your audience.
They don’t question it. They take it because that is what they want . . . with no hesitation.
3 – Creating Products, Services, and Content Without Doing Market Research
I’m not even going to lie … I was one of the ones who did it in the beginning. I’ve done it several times within my business, and it was such a waste . . . Every. Single. Time.
My Personal Story
Okay, I’m gonna tell you what happened to me.
When I started blogging, I was like, you know what? . . . I’ve learned so much up until this point.
Side note: I’ve always believed that anyone can teach someone else. Once you’ve learned something and you’ve done it for yourself, or you’ve done it for someone else, you can always teach someone else to do it.
So, I decided to create and sell an online blogging course.
This happened before I had kids because, after my kids, I’ve never had time to work on my business all day and all night. Just NOT an option. Ha!
I told my husband I was going to create this blogging course. I sat at my computer for two whole days.
It was an extended period of time. I woke up in the morning, worked on it all day, was up until three or four o’clock in the morning, and got it done.
And guess what? I never did anything with that course. Once I created it and started doing more research, I realized that my audience (at the time) needed more than just another course.
They actually needed hands-on help showing them how to start and grow a successful blog.
That’s when I also realized a lot of new entrepreneurs don’t have an extremely large budget to pay someone to do what they need (aka done-for-you services). They need to learn how to do it themselves.
It ended up working out because I also realized that I wanted to avoid a course on blogging because there were so many moving parts, and the method that I used and the route that I took is different from something that I wanted to teach.
Still, I spent so much time creating that freaking online course, and I could have prevented all of that had I just done the market research beforehand.
Don’t do what I did. . . . Please!
5 Effective Types of Market Research
How to Do Market Research
There are several ways to do market research. These five super-effective market research methods will give you everything you need to save so much time, energy, and money.
1 – Facebook Groups and Online Forums
These are an amazing way if you have little or no audience because you might be thinking . . .
I just started my business and I don’t have an audience.
Well, Facebook groups and online forums (like Quora) are perfect for you.
Whether you have an audience or you don’t have an audience, you can use Facebook groups. Go into relevant active Facebook groups. The ones where the members are already engaged. You see that they’re posting questions, answering questions, and having conversations around the topics that you fit within your niche.
There’s usually a search feature on each platform. You go in and search and look at the questions and comments that they leave and questions that they have. It’s, it’s a gold mine, literally.
2 – Interviews
Interviews can be done with anyone that is an ideal customer. Your ideal avatar, customer avatar. You do not wanna interview anyone. That defeats the purpose.
If you’re feeling nervous about it. start with friends and family. But only if have friends and family that fit within your target ideal (aka your ideal target audience).
You can do an interview via phone, direct message, email, etc.
Honestly, you can see someone in one of the Facebook groups or any online space and ask them a few questions to obtain the data that you need.
3 – Check Out the Comments and Reviews
This would be social media posts, YouTube, Amazon, Pinterest and AnswerThePublic.com. You will look for posts relevant to your business and your topics. And you’re gonna look to see . . .
- What questions are they asking?
- What are they saying?
- How do they feel about certain things?
You wanna make sure you write all of this stuff down and use the information to create and offer products, services, and content.
4 – Survey Your Audience
This can be a questionnaire, poll, or this could be a quiz. . . . I love quizzes. Quizzes are super fun. You can create a quiz or a poll and then post it in Facebook groups, on your social media, or even with emails.
You can find different ways to get information, but it must be from your ideal customer avatar.
5 – Use Google Analytics
When starting and running a business, you must pay close attention to all the data you obtain.
That means you look at . . .
- How many people are visiting your website?
- How are people finding your website? Is it direct traffic?
- Is it social media?
- Is it Pinterest?
Whatever the case may be.
You want to pay close attention to those things because it will help you determine what’s working currently and what’s not. If you’re starting out and don’t have that information, keep track of it as your business grows.
Now you might be thinking, do I really need to do market research?
Absolutely!
Market Research Questions
What information do you need to obtain?
When it comes to the questions you want to ask your ideal customer avatar, it will vary however you want to get to know your ideal customer avatar (I mean in a stalkerish kinda way).
The information that you collect about your ideal customer avatar will be used in different ways (ie. creating products/services, writing copy, running ads, etc). Some of the MOST important questions you can ask is . . .
- What are your struggles?
- What are your dreams?
- What is it that they would like to achieve?
There are mainly 3 types of data you want to collect from your ideal target audience:
Demographics
- age
- income
- occupation
- education
- race
- martial status
Psychographic
- activities
- hobbies
- stage of life
- values
- attitudes
- what motivates them
Behavioral
- social media habits
- online behavior
- shopping habits
- what motivates them to buy
- how do they like to consume their content
How do you conduct market research with little time?
Now, if you are anything like me, you probably have a lot going on. It’s tough sometimes . . . I’m a mom, a business owner, and a wife. I have very little time.
If you don’t have a lot of time and you’re thinking like, oh my God, I have another job, I have kids . . . I can’t!
Honestly, I really want to start my business today and make $10,000 tomorrow.
Okay, well, I’m sorry, that’s not realistic.
However, suppose you’re up to doing the work (aka market research) in as little time as possible. In that case, you can choose either one of the options listed above.
You could set up an email, or a text message campaign set it up and get feedback and information data from your existing audience.
If you don’t have an existing audience, the easiest thing would be to go into Facebook groups and search for different topics related to your business.
You might do it in the mornings, when you’re resting, or whatever the case.
It doesn’t take much because, you know, we’re always on our phones anyway.
Final Thoughts
Market research is something many entrepreneurs need to pay more attention to. I don’t want you to be one of those to basically lose a lot of time, energy, and money because it’s not necessary.
You can like hit the ground running in the beginning if you do the market research. Now granted, there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to starting and growing a business, especially when it comes to marketing. However, doing market research is AT. THE. TOP. of the list.
Until next time, ciao.