Market Research Made Easy

Imagine for a moment that you're planning a trip to an exotic destination. You've never been there before; all you know is that it takes a long time to get there by plane.

How would you prepare for your trip? Where would you go for information about how to get there, where to stay or what to pack?

It's the same kind of thing with your business. You need to pick a destination (your niche), figure out how to find your customers and learn as much as possible about the terrain and climate (i.e., other marketers competing for the customers' business).

And the key to both planning a vacation and planning a business? Research.

If you skip the research step, you run the risk of ending up somewhere you'd rather not be, like knee deep in a snow drift with a suitcase full of summer clothes.

Fortunately for tourists and self-employed coaches, this is the Age of Information, and getting the scoop on just about any topic is easier than ever. Thanks to the Internet, you don't even have to leave the comfort of your home to do the research.

Here are ten tips for doing market research:

1) Gather information on three types of competitors:

   
• Head-to-head competitors: Other coaches who are serving the same market as you and helping them with the same types of issues.
   
• One-off competitors: Other businesses (which may or may not be coaches) who are serving the same market, but helping with a different issue OR who are helping with the same issue, but serving a different market segment.
   
• Networks, communities & resource sites: Professional organizations, discussion forums, membership sites, and social and professional networking communities that generally support your chosen target market.

2) Use a market research form to capture the same info for each competitor (you'll find a market research form in the Get With the Program JumpStart Workbook). Use this information to assess who your strongest competitors are and to find gaps that you might be able to leverage. For example, if most of your competitors are focusing on one particular market segment, look for a group of customers who might be on the fringes of that segment who aren't being served.

3) Sign up for newsletters and freebies such as ecourses or special reports. Consider using a generic email address (get a free account through Yahoo, GoogleMail or MSN) so that you don't end up with a flood of email in your regular inbox and so that you can gather information anonymously.

4) Pay attention to the market-specific words and phrases that show up consistently on your competitors' web site pages, especially in headlines. These are often great sources for keywords.

5) A good way to find online forums and communities is to search for your target market with "vBulletin" or "PhpBB" as part of the search phrase, because those are two of the most common forum platforms. For example, when I Googled "Coaching PhpBB", I got over 500K listings of sites that mentioned both "coaching" and "PhpBB" including a number of useful coaching forums.

6) Don't forget to search Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups.

7) When searching for info about your topic using keywords, add phrases like "how to", "basics", "resources", "FAQs", etc. For example, if want to target work-at-home moms, you might try searching "work-at-home mom resources",  work-at-home mom FAQs".

8) When you find a good forum or discussion group, don't forget to search within the site (most sites have a site search tool these days). Use the same keywords and phrases that you would use in a search engine--you'll probably dig up a couple of strong competitors that way, because they'll be posting on the same topics in the forum.

9) Set up Google Alerts for your keywords and phrases and for the names of your competitors. Google Alerts will search the Web as often as you like and alert you by email any time something new is posted about your chosen topics or by your competitors.

10) Set up a Google Alert on your own name, business name, tagline and URL so you can keep tabs on who's talking about and linking to you.

A little bit of research up front can save you considerable time, money and headaches, whether you're planning the vacation of a lifetime or a business to support your lifestyle. Either way, it's an investment that pays off, big time!

Comments

[Meg H.]

Thanks for the info- very helpful!