| The question of how to find your target market is of vital importance if you want to run a successful internet business. That often comes as a surprise to a lot of people. You see, they assume that the internet covers the entire planet, and therefore, the entire planet is now their market. To put it bluntly: that is a recipe for failure.
While it is true that an internet business has the potential of reaching a large portion of people around the world, there is simply no way that you can write your sales copy in a way that appeals to all of those people. On the other hand, you could write a basic description of your product or service and stay relatively vague in your copy. However, the message would be so watered down that it wouldn't resonate with anybody. Figuring out your target market is the key to connecting with people and having them become customers.
You need to determine how big the potential market it is and how desperate they are to solve their particular problem, no matter how much it costs. A big market isn't enough. For example, there are a lot of people looking for free stuff, but that doesn't make them a good market. Such markets have a hard time parting with their money and that will make it harder to sell to them (though not impossible if you position your offer properly).
Another way to look at all of this is that your best bet is to sell to an already existing market. Sure, there is the rare product that is so novel that the market doesn't exist, but trying to go that route is risky. When starting out it's best to find an existing market, and then fill a need within that market.
That leads to the question of how to tell whether or not a market exists. This is where it becomes important to know how to find your target market. There are two simple ways that will get you on the right track.
1. Search engines - If enough people are searching for information on a topic then it's a good sign that there is a market there. However, you also need to be careful about which keywords (the terms people enter into the search engine) you are gathering data on. Remember, you are looking for a "hungry" market, so give some thought as to what terms desperate people would be entering into the search engine.
2. Publications - There are thousands of magazines currently being published, and that's an excellent sign that there is a large market interested in the topic. In effect, you re relying on the publisher's research to tell you that there is an existing market for that topic. If you have an offer that can fit into any of those topics, then you can be confident that you are tapping into a good market.
These are two simple methods for how to find your target market, but they are only the beginning. Investing time up front researching the market will pay off in a big way in the future. |