Traffic Formula 2 – Market Research

The topic for the second webinar was Market Research. If you do not know what your competitors are doing you will most likely not be able to compete against them in a profitable manner. They are doing the research also so why would not want to know all that you can about your market or sub-market before you start marketing.

Make sure you document everything you are doing because competitors change and it is important to know who has staying power week after week and what their ad say and what their products are.

The ultimate goal is to determine the motivation of the customer so you can create marketing ads that they will be moved by to take action and purchase your product.

The high level steps of how to do your market research.

Create a list of the top product and solution that your product offers
Break these down to sub-markets
Research words in Google for each of the sub-markets
Study the paid ads and top-5 sites that are found in the searches
Use Alexa to determine the traffic ranking for each of the sites
Note the products that they are marketing
Check the top-5 organic ads in the same way as the paid ads.
Research the products you found in the earlier steps using Amazon and see how the products ranks by volume and by customer surveys of how they like the product.
Reach the top forums and posts for your market and read what people are saying about the market to see if there is a highly sought after solution.
Di-sect the web sites of the competition and look for weaknesses in their site.
Look at magazines in the market and see what is on the cover or lead articles.
Look to see if they have self liquidating offers
Do they offer affiliate programs
What are the prices of the products
What products they offer
Do they have upsells
What didn’t you find? Are there products missing?
What questions did not get answered
What did like or dislike about the product from the forums or reviews
Traffic sources
Advertising gaps