February 4, 2009 by 3 Comments

Free Market Research Strategies – Know Your Customers’ Needs

If you don’t know your customers’ needs your sales and marketing efforts will be like throwing mud at a wall hoping it will stick. The more you know about your customers, the more profitable your business will be because you have a clear focus.

7 Strategies to Know Your Customer’s Needs

1. Know where your customers gather online

Find the forums, blogs, discussion groups they visit and participate in the conversation. Communicating with your customers will give you insights how they think.

2. Conduct a survey

Some forums allow you to run a survey or poll. Ask questions related to the product or service you wish to offer. If there is no interest choose one that people are excited about.

Use surveymonkey.com to create a survey to send to your subscribers.

3. Create a Google Adwords campaign

Set up different ads that contain keywords related to your niche. The beauty of this method is that you can receive feedback within a few days. You can also tweak your ads to see which one generates the most clicks.

Use the copy of your profitable ad in the content of your web site because you already know it will attract visitors.

Pick up a copy of: “The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords” to learn the fastest and correct way to set-up and run a Google AdWords Campaign

4. Research online stores

Visit the large online stores such as ebay, magazine.com, amazon.com to get an idea what products are big sellers. Visit the largest bookstore in your town to see what books are featured prominently in the store.

5. Subscribe to Google Alerts

Google Alerts provide email updates of the latest Google results based on the topic of your choice. It also allows you to keep current on a competitor.

6. Observe industry trends

Sign up for Google Trends to follow the trends in your market.

7. Research the cost per click of your main keywords

Enter your main keywords in SpyFu.com to view how much advertisers are willing to pay for a particular keyword. SpyFu shows how many advertisers there are, cost/click, clicks/day and the number of search results.

Conclusion

Knowing where your customers gather online, how they think and what they buy, will help you make a more informed decision what niche or topic to invest in for the long term.

For more information on how to conduct market search and write articles to start an online business please visit: Article Marketing Strategies.

Filed Under: Starting An Online Business Tagged With: ,
January 31, 2009 by 1 Comment

Free Market Research Strategies – 7 Strategies for Spying on Your Competitors

If your competitor is receiving tons of traffic, has 1000s of backlinks and is making lots of sales it would be wise to study them so you can use that information to your advantage.

1. Find the top 10 competing web sites in Google

Enter your main keyword in Google to view the top 10 web sites in your niche then dissect them to see why they rank well.

2. Find the main keywords they are using

Visit your competitor’s web site and do a view-source in your web browser to view the main keywords they are using in their meta tags. Observe where those keywords are repeated in the text.

You may want to use a few of the same keywords for your own web site.

3. Do a backlink check

Enter the URL of your competitor in Yahoo explorer to view how many links are pointing back to their website. The number and quality of backlinks determine rankings.

Contact the same web sites to get backlinks to your own site.

4. Check traffic levels at Alexa.com

Enter the URL of your competitor in Alexa.com. It will display a monthly traffic history graph for that site.

Offer to write an article or provide free software to this site in exchange for link to your own. A link on a high traffic site will boost your own traffic levels.

5. Study the content

Well written content has high conversion rates. By studying your competitor’s content can get an idea what to include in your own.

6. Subscribe to their newsletter

Subscribe to several competitors newsletters to see what they are offering to their customers and how they write their web copy.

If you’re going to sell products through your newsletter you need to write compelling content.

7. Visit and contribute to their blog or forum

Engaging in communication with your competitors will help you to keep up with recent news, articles and tap into the minds of their customers.

For more information on how to conduct market search and write articles to start an online business please visit: Article Marketing Strategies.

Filed Under: Starting An Online Business Tagged With: