Do extensive research to uncover the daily frustrations of your market. What everyday things aggravate them the most? What really drives them crazy? For businesspeople, quite often it’s employee problems. It could also be a lack of new customers. What about problems satisfying customers or problems finding good suppliers. Maybe they have worries about future trends or changes in the industry. Some issues are that large companies are luring business with low prices or small companies stealing customers with false promises. Find out what frustrates your potential customers the most. For golfers and other hobbyists, they want the pride of doing their hobby better.
Make sure you have accurate information about the market. How large is it? How many customers are there? Are there regional distributions? How many potential customers do you have in each state? How easy is it to contact this market? Are magazines already being sold to the market? Are there multiple magazines for a particular market? Are there specialties or sub niches, groups of people within the market that are interested in more specific programs and ideas? You need the answers to these questions before you can create a product that will sell. In addition, you might find out this market isn’t worth creating a product for!
Consider who else has tried to sell something to this market. Have other information marketers offered products to this market in the last two or three years? What products were they? Did they succeed? Are they still in business? Are established competitors aggressively selling to this market already? (While nobody likes a lot of competition, it can be a good sign that this market wants information products and services.) Don’t ignore vendors that are not marketing information products. For example, are there equipment manufacturers? How are they promoting themselves in the market? Which ones are the successful vendors in the industry, and who are the contact people? Are there ways to works with those individuals?
You need to carefully consider and extensively research your market before you jump into doing business as an info-marketer. This is not something you can short-circuit. Even if you already believe you’re an expert in the market, you must go through these steps, conduct this research, and find out more information. You’ll be glad you did. It can save you hours of time and thousands of wasted marketing dollars. You don’t want to market a product people don’t want or aren’t ready for. You don’t want to repeat the mistakes others have made. Find out what has worked and what hasn’t. Then you’ll be ready to create your product.
