Isn’t Market Research Just A Waste Of Time?

Market Research can be a massive time waste for you, only if you don’t understand the process and how to interpret the research.  I have seen many people who are new to Internet Marketing fail due to misinterpreting research data or spending too long in the research stage and not enough time implementing their idea.

With that said though you should never skip over Market Research as it can be the single most important activity you do before launching your Internet Business.

Let me tell you a quick story, I was Consulting to a client about 2 years ago and this client had just spent over $250,000.00 having a website built.  He had come to me as he was having trouble getting traffic to this brand new (expensive) website.  The first phase of my consulting with him was to see what kind of traffic was available in his chosen niche.  Upon conducting research I found there was minimal to no traffic available, you could imagine that when I conveyed this to him he was not very happy.  In fact, he was extremely frustrated that he had spent $250,000.00 on a website that had little to no chance of making money.
This whole disaster could have been avoided and $250,000.00 saved if this client had invested in doing Market Research upfront.

So as you can see, it’s important to do Market Research to not only check the viability of your idea but also to save time and money.

Over the coming weeks we will be teaching you some of the key ways to do market research and they include:

• Keyword Research – Keyword Research is finding out what keywords people are searching for on the major search engines and how many people are using those keywords per day.
• Second Hand Research – Utilising existing research data online which is related to your niche, for example market size, income potential, customer surveys etc
• Squidoo Testing – Setting up a free webpage aimed at your target market and testing the responsiveness of your potential customers.

Now this is just a quick overview of some of the key methods of market research and over the coming weeks we will show you each of these in more detail.  Today I will be focusing on Keyword Research…

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research is the process of finding out exactly what words and phrases people are using in the major search engines, and how many times a day those words are being used.  For example, in the Real Estate industry someone may type into the Search Engine “Property Development”, Keyword Research would show you how many times that word has been searched for and what other similar words have been searched for.  This allows us as a business owner to target our website and product to meet the demands on the customers.

What Are The Key Elements Of Keyword Research?

1. Search Volume – How many times a day a keyword is being searched on the major Search Engines.  This is an indication of market demand and potential traffic that your website could receive.
2. Search Engine Competition – How many other websites are competing for your keyword and how well those websites are optimised to rank for the keyword.  This is an indication on the competitiveness of your niche and your potential dominate that niche.
3. Pay Per Click Cost – How much people are paying per click to receive traffic on this keyword.  This is an indication of costs if you were to buy traffic but also an indication on quality of traffic.

Now that you have a basic understanding of Keyword Research, tomorrow we will show you one of the tools available to use in simplying the keyword research process.