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4 Essentials Of Market Research For Online Business Owners
This post is Part 11 of my 12 Days of Consistent Content Content Challenge for 2019. Click here to check out Part 10: 5 Essential Social Media Platforms (To Grow Your Business Quickly)
Doing market research is critical to online business success, and especially to find success quickly.
Because you don’t have to have a massive following in order to grow a profitable business, even from day one.
When you do your research, you are going to find yourself on a much clearer path than you would if you just decide out of nowhere that you want to do what YOU want to do.
Remember, your online business may have your face to it, and it may even be in your name, but your business isn’t actually about you.
It’s about your ideal client.
You find out what your idea client needs, find out the problem that keeps them up at night, and then you go ahead and create the solution for them.
It’s that simple.
Find out what they need, and create that solution.
Because if you don’t, you’re going to create and create and create, but whether or not you actually get anyone to respond to the things you create is a question that you don’t have the time wasting to answer. Answer the questions first, get them excited, and grow faster than you can ever imagine.
Market Research For Online Business: You Find Out What Your Audience Wants
You can create the world’s greatest online course, spend months doing the work to create it, and have zero people buy it.
Even with an audience of thousands, if you’re creating something that they don’t actually want, then you’re going to be left with weeks or even months of hard work and no return on that investment.
And I don’t want that for you.
Before you dive into creating something as in depth of your magnum opus digital course, you need to create that free value that your audience can engage with, and let you know if they even want more of it.
In fact, in this 12 Days of Consistent Content series—check out Part 1 here—I structured it to cover a number of topics related to consistent content, and once I’m done, I’m going to ask (or will have asked, for those of you who are reading this in the future) my audience what they want to see more of.
I’m also going to ask (or will have asked) what they struggle with the most, and use that information to determine how I can help my audience further.
When you’re asking your audience what they want to see, you want to keep in mind that you have to feed them the answers a little bit. You don’t want to just ask, “Hey, what do you want to see?” Because they can want to see a LOT of things, and some of them might not be things you actually care to teach.
What you want to ask, is something along the lines of, “In a few words, what about X do you struggle with the most?” Or, “Do you want to see more of X, Y, or Z?”
Keep it simple, and don’t forget to guide your audience a bit.
Market Research For Online Business: You Engage With Your Audience
When you do your market research, it means you’re finding ways to engage with your audience.
And engagement is key.
You can have an audience of 10,000, but if they’re not an engaged audience, then you’re not going to get a lot of return on your investment.
But you can have an audience of 1,000, or even less, but if they’re engaged, responding to your emails and your questions, and giving you input that allows you to inform your free value, then you’re going to be able to grow all that much faster.
It’s the quality of your audience, rather than the quantity.
And when you engage, you’re opening up a line of dialogue with someone who could become a potential client, or even a potential purchaser of your paid products.
When you ask the questions I mention above, and someone replies, you want to take every advantage to get to know everything that makes those members of your audience tick.
If they reply to you, then yes, you want to take down their answers, but you also want to go deeper. Ask them more questions based off their responses.
And ultimately, ask them if you can hop on a video call to pick their brain, pitch free, of course.
Because when you give your audience the opportunity to give you massive amounts of input, they feel like whatever you go forward to create was made exactly for them. It gives them a sense of pride. It allows them to say, “That thing is in that course, because I talked about it with them!”
Market Research For Online Business: It Gets Your Audience Excited
As I mentioned at the end of the last point, when you. Give your audience the opportunity to give you input, it makes them feel like they are part of the content creation process.
And that’s a great feeling that you should capitalize on.
You can allow your audience to give their opinions on what type of product to create, what to call the product, and even allow them to beta-test the product before you launch it (remember to make it a paid beta, because it means your potential students/users have some skin in the game and are more likely to give you an honest testimonial.)
Speaking of testimonials, people LOVE to give testimonials, because it means they’re going to be featured on someone else’ website, recommending a product or other offering that they love. That gives someone a massive sense of pride.
They get to say, “I helped develop that. Not only did it change my life, but it’s also going to change yours.”
When you allow your audience to put their input into what you create, you’re going to give them something that they know is tailored to exactly what they want, what they need, and is drums up the excitement that allows you to have much more successful launches.
Remember to focus on that pride.
Market Research For Online Business: You Engage With Fellow Online Business Owners
Don’t have a massive audience yet?
That’s okay!
There are still other places where you can do the market research you need in order to put forth a product that is tailored to your ideal client.
And that’s by engaging with your fellow online business owners.
Ask people who are also in your niche if you can pick their brain for a bit. Ask them about what they struggled with back when they were just starting out, and what would have helped them both the most, and helped them the fastest.
You can also ask these people to be your beta testers and provide testimonials, which will not only allow you to get high quality testimonials for your product, but will garner you testimonials from online business owners who have been established in their businesses and are recognizable names.
And not only are you engaging with other people in your niche—remember, these people are your collaborators, not your competition—you’re going to connect with people who have done what you’re doing, who are in it for the same or similar reasons you are, and are the network of people who can support you in your online business journey.
What is your favorite way to validate your future product and service offerings? Join my free Facebook community, Consistent Content Creators, and share your answer!
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