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Five Minute Internet Market Research
by James D. Brausch
http://www.targetblaster.com
My Internet market research methodology takes about
five
minutes. Here~s the step-by-step plan:
1. Boil your idea down to a single word.
Everyone hates this, but it gets pretty easy after awhile.
With very few exceptions, any product/service can be
boiled down to a single word. I know it'll be too broad
for what you actually want to sell, but humor me for a
minute and do it. Can you only get down to two words?
I'll betcha one of those words is an adjective and the
other a noun. Just drop the adjective. The noun is your
single word for this exercise. If you already have a
successful site, boil it down to a single word too. It'll
be useful for comparison later in this process. That
might have used up your first minute. Let's get to the
next step.
2. Assign a number reflecting the demand for your word.
The goal of this five-minute exercise to come up with a
number that expresses the supply/demand characteristics of
the general market you are considering. This first number
is going to express the amount of "demand" there is for
the idea expressed by the word you picked. How do we
assign this number? What if we can find out how many
times a keyword has been searched on a major search
engine in the prior month? Well; of course we can do
just that. There are several PPC search engines that have
keyword suggestion tools. These tools tell you how many
times a particular word has been searched in the prior
month. Pick your favorite PPC search engine and go enter
the above word into the keyword suggestion tool. Write
down the number of searches for your word. Do the same
for the word you came up with to describe your successful
site. We'll call this the "demand" number. Only three
minutes to go... better hurry to the next step.
3. Assign a number reflecting the supply/profitability of
your word.
In step #2, we might have picked "joke" (the fifth most
popular keyword search on the Internet at times). Most of
us know that people searching for jokes aren't really
interested in buying anything. We need another number to
express the supply/profitability of keywords. Let's use
our favorite PPC engine for this step too. Go back to the
main page of your favorite PPC search engine and do a
search for your word. Most PPC search engines show the
"bid" for each site next to each paid listing. Scroll
down to about #10 or so and write that number down.
That's going to be your supply/profitability number. At
least 10 of your competitors think this word is worth more
than that amount. If there is no #10 bid, I move right
on. I try not to pay much attention to the bids above the
#10 bid, because every market deserves to have 5-10 fools
who are wasting their money because they see 5-10 other
fools doing the same thing. Enough said. Oops, we only
have two minutes left...
4. Multiply the number from step 2 with the number from
step 3.
No; this isn't a trick IRS form. By multiplying those two
numbers together, you have come up with a new number that
is completely meaningless all by itself, but it somehow
encompasses all the important marketing information for
your word. It has the supply, demand and profitability
indexes all rolled together in one number. Be sure to do
this for the word you came up with for your successful site
too. Did that take a full minute? Don't worry... I won't
tell.
5. Compare the meaningless numbers and find meaning.
The numbers you came up with have no meaning by
themselves, but you can use them to compare with other
meaningless numbers derived in the same way. Now you can
tell if "widgets" or "waggets" is a better market to
tackle. Let's say your successful site makes $100 profit
every day. Let's say it's magic number is 50. Let's say
you just evaluated a word that has a magic number of 100.
In general, you can expect that if you put the same kinds
of marketing efforts and time into promoting the new site
as you did the old site... that you may be making $200
profit every day after a similar amount of time.
The number does a lot more that it may appear to do on the
surface. You will find that it predicts the ease you can
find free content for your site, engage in link exchanges,
find topical ezines and discussion lists, etc... All while
balancing that with the ability to find profitable
affiliate relationships, sell advertising, find
complementary products, etc. Have a little faith and
give it a shot. After a couple of sites, you'll be a
believer once you start seeing things fall into place
just about where the magic number predicted.
We actually use this technique every single day to provide
quotes for targeted traffic. We also use this technique
to decide where to put our efforts with legacy sites.
It's a very loose estimate, but for five minutes of your
time, we believe it is an excellent exercise to get a
loose estimate of the value of the market you are
considering.
The author, James D. Brausch, is the Vice President of
Marketing for Target Blaster, Inc., an Internet Marketing
firm specializing in targeted traffic.
http://www.TargetBlaster.com
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