Posts Tagged ‘market research’
For Small Businesses, It’s The Small Things That Count
Friday, May 9th, 2008
Dell, one of the biggest names in computers today, has started going into the streets asking people what they think about their computers. They are asking customers what they like and don’t like and what they would like them to add.
This helps when it comes to making future computers, because they are finding out what people want and therefore what will sell.
There are several places on the Internet that take surveys like this to find out what people like and don’t like about certain products.
Give ‘Em What They Want
As a small business owner of a product-based company, it is your job to give the people what they want. If yours is like many small businesses, you don’t have the funds needed to have a market research department.
Instead, you can go to some of these survey websites that are free or low cost and see what people are saying about the products that you are selling. Even big companies have steered away from the high cost of market research departments and are using these types of websites.
This saves them money; and in the long run, saves their customers money as well.
Survey Options
Some of the websites that are free or low cost are: Survey Gizmo, and IContact.
These surveys are a way to go out and talk to your customers to find out what they think about your products. What do they like about them? What do they not like about them? How would they recommend improving them?
Once you have the answers to these questions, then you can take all of your findings back to your office and move ahead from there.
Time is Money….
In a small business where every dollar counts, you have to make decision about what areas in your company will get the most money. Most of the time, the market research department gets the least amount of money. That is why it is so good that those websites are available.
Market research is important to the success of any small business. Thankfully, there are cheaper ways of getting the job done without breaking the bank. When you have other things to worry about, like just getting back and forth to work with the price of gas these days, you’re glad to save as many pennies as you can.
I’m not saying you have to be cheap in running your business, but you do have to know how to delegate your money.
You can choose to be like to big companies and go to these websites and get the information you need, or you can go out and talk with your customers about your products and what they think of them.
The most important thing to remember is that in a small business you have to keep moving forward. You cannot stay the same and expect your customers to stick around.
In order to move forward, you have to make changes - and who better to tell you what to do than the people that are actually using your products?
Tags: icontact, Leeia Ladipoh, market research, small business, survey gizmo, surveys
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5 Free Online Marketing and Research Sources
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Business is always about being ahead of the curve. If you can figure out the next trend, fad or niche before it hits, you have the chance to make unlimited profits.
In order to do this, you need to know where to find the hints to the "next best thing". Here are a few sites that you should regularly visit to get a feel for what’s hot and what’s not:
In the Tech World
CNet is a website dedicated to everything high-tech. From reviewing new computers and electronic products to hitting industry trade shows and taking notes of what companies are working on, CNet talks about all the news that relates to technical products and gadgetry.
There are also forums where users can talk about the articles and reviews on the site. By watching what users buzz about, you can get a good idea of which items will be the next big tech hits.
New Products
http://amazon.com/gp/new-releases
Amazon keeps an updated list of new products that are about to launch on the market. You can regularly check the site to see what is about to hit the market. You will also be able to find some research about new products to understand what makes them important and what will make them popular in today’s world.
In many cases, your gut instinct will let you know what products are potential hits and which ones are misses.
What Are They Talking About?
http://rankings.big-boards.com/?p=all
Big Boards keeps an eye on all the discussion boards out there and ranks the busiest and most popular topics.
The things people are talking about in these forums are going to give you pointers as to which types of items will be popular on the sales market.
Watching High Bids
http://www.ebay.com
While you may think eBay is just a place to sell your old collectible baseball cards, this Internet auction site is also a great place to get a good idea of what will sell in any market.
By looking at eBay sale trends, you will see the most popular items and their sales figures, day by day. You can also search to see what people who frequent the site are looking for, and find out what potential customers are trying to get their hands on.
What Are They Watching?
http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/boxoffice
If you watched the box office returns for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies and thought to immediately stock anything with a pirate theme, you would have made a fortune!
What people are watching at the movie theater often dictates the fashions and trends for the next season. Keep an eye on the chart toppers and what the actors in those movies are wearing to get a head start on new trends in clothing, toys and video games.
Use the 5 free marketing resources above to get a jump on the market - and your competition.
Tags: advice, free business tools, Leeia Ladipoh, market research, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, research sources, tips
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Hedging Your Bets with Market Research
Friday, January 25th, 2008
Would you stake your financial life - and business - on something you know little to nothing about? Of course not! The smart and successful entrepreneur doesn’t jump into a business venture without knowing what they are jumping into first.
So the question becomes - how can you find the information to know what kind of products you should sell? In this article, we’ll help you find the answer to this all-important question.
Choosing your Products
There are two ways to choose products - choosing what you like, or choosing what you know sells. While choosing what you like may be fun in the beginning, it may not be a sustainable business - and you could end up losing everything in the end.
Instead, you need to make an educated decision on what will sell to your target audience.
Niche Markets
There are too many big companies that have a ‘do-it-all’ approach to business. You are not going to be able to compete with a Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy or other large retailer. Your best chance lies in niche markets. Niche markets are smaller, specific markets that have a higher demand for hard-to-find products.
One way to discover the demand for a product is to see what people are looking for online. Signing up for a keyword tool like WordTracker will let you see just that. But putting in keywords that describe the products you are looking at selling, you can see how popular those items are in the search engines. The more popular they are, the more potential customers will be waiting for you.
It’s important to note that you should not just use WordTracker for a few days or even a few weeks and think you have a business base. Searches can shift with quick trends, just like TV ads or celebrities wearing a particular item. Look at longer-term trends over a period of several months, to make sure it’s a sustainable business idea.
Competition
You will need to know what companies you will be up against. Use search engines such as Google or Yahoo! to look up the items you want to sell and see who else is selling them. The more companies that have the same items, the harder it will be to make a space for your business in the same market.
You will also need to have pricing that is competitive with what similar companies are offering. If there’s too much competition, you may want to look into another niche.
Marketing
Using the WordTracker system will be helpful when it comes to your marketing efforts. Just as you used it to see how many people are searching for the product you want to sell, you can also use WordTracker to see what words they are using to search for those items. These are words you need to make sure you scatter through the copy on your website.
That way, when future searchers are looking for the item, they will be pointed to your business.
Tags: advice, Generating More Sales, Leeia Ladipoh, market research, Marketing, Sales, tips, wordtracker
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Web Entrepreneur Tools And Resources - eBay Pulse
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Market Research
Knowing your market is an essential facet of online business. It may be true that the Internet offers the world’s largest customer base, but in order to take advantage of this webmasters and e-store owners need to do their research. As an e-commerce entrepreneur (as with any business owner) this includes researching market trends to find the most viable and profitable products.
What Is eBay Pulse?
eBay Pulse is a service offered by the eBay website. It provides figures and trends pertaining to the most popular and the most sought after items on eBay. Even if you do not intend to sell any items on the auction powerhouse itself, this tool can provide invaluable and insightful information into the most popular products.
Accessing The eBay Pulse Website
Access to the Pulse section of eBay is simple, although it is important that you work predominantly with the site specific to your country because trends do vary. To view the main Pulse site the address is www.pulse.eBay.com. For other countries simply replace the .com with the appropriate top level domain. For example, to view the latest trends for the UK you would visit www.pulse.eBay.co.uk.
Finger On The Pulse - Popular Searches
Popular Searches is a list of the items that have been searched for most frequently, and are calculated according to the number of searches conducted. This gives a good indication of the number of people looking for a particular item. If you are considering selling on eBay then you should conduct further research, including the kind of price that these items sell for, the most successful listing keywords, and more.
Finger On The Pulse - Category Selector
In order to dig deeper into the bowels of eBay searches there is a category selector at the top of the page. This drop down menu includes a substantial list of categories that you can research. Once you have found a category that is most closely related to your area of business, select it and wait for the page to update automatically.
For instance, if you choose the Crafts category, you’ll see the most popularly searched items on eBay that fall within that category. Clicking the Category selector again gives potential subcategories related to Crafts items. This enables you to further delve into the popularity of items that are being listed on eBay.
Finger On The Pulse - Largest Stores
On the right of the Pulse screen is a pane that displays the largest stores. Again, when you first log on to the Pulse site this list will be populated with the most popular stores over the entire eBay site. Once you choose a category, the list will then be populated with the largest stores within that category, or subcategory.
The Largest Stores figures are determined by the number of active listings, and do not account for sales or any other figure. While these can be used as a guide to the kind of item that others believe will sell, they may not provide an accurate assessment of the actual items that will sell.
Finger On The Pulse - Most Watched Items
One final, and potentially useful, section of the Pulse website is the “Most Watched Items”. When you first visit the Pulse page and no category has been selected it is more than likely that this will be filled with cars. Cars and other vehicles are typically the most watched items, barring any major events or news coverage for specific items.
As with the other sections of Pulse, though, once you have selected a category or subcategory the information becomes more precise and more beneficial. This can help track down more expensive or rarer items that fewer people search for, but still generates a lot of interest from those that view the item.
Combining Pulse With Other Research Information
The information contained in Pulse is obviously limited but it does have its uses. If you intend to sell any of your own items on eBay then it can provide an excellent pool for research. Even if you have no intention of eBay selling it can still provide an insight into the items that people are currently searching for within your given industry. Never use Pulse trends alone to determine a sales plan, or any other business orientated plan. Instead, combine it with other market research you have managed to gather and create a much more powerful campaign.
Tags: ebay, market research, pulse.ebay.co.uk, pulse.ebay.com, resources, tools, web entrepreneur
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Conducting Market Research on a Budget
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Effective market research can be one of the number one tools that helps you to take your small business to the next level. Understanding your customers means being able to effectively reach them with the message about the kinds of products you sell and presenting those products in such a way that the market will be inclined to buy.
Obviously, this kind of approach means using some sophisticated approaches and targeting a particular group of people.
The problem is that in many cases, it can be difficult to come up with angles which will allow you to conduct this type of research all on your own. At the highest levels, market research means getting cooperation from individuals who understand demographics, psychology, competition, and of course the product that you want to sell.
Market research can also be very labor intensive, with hundreds of different documents prepared and sent out and then analyzed after they have been filled out. The result is that many market research campaigns cost many thousands of dollars - so how are small businesses supposed to compete without that kind of capital to invest?
Start Off on the Right Foot
The good news is that you don’t just have to rely on companies which specialize in market research to do the work for you. With a little bit of know-how, you can do your own market research using resources that are right at your fingertips - on the Internet.
Some companies will publish portions of the results of some of their market research, so you can look at those which sell products or who are looking to reach a customer base similar to your own. Don’t count on too much here, though, because for good reason, many companies want to keep their results secret.
Still, there are many different surveys conducted with results that are published, particularly by different levels of government. They won’t tell you about what a potential customer may specifically find appealing, but they are enough to tell you where your likely customers are and other vital information such as income and so on. Census results can also be extremely effective, so start your market research off online.
Another option is to buy market research that has already been compiled. Companies like MarketResearch.com have databases of ready-made research on a variety of industries. Depending on what kind of research you want, the prices can vary; however, it can still be much less expensive than hiring a firm to conduct custom market research for you.
Once you have an idea of what customers you need to reach, use your intuition to discover what the best way is to reach them. Those commercials you hear on the radio or see on television, even the ads on websites, can be great clues as to the market research that has been conducted by other companies; try to think about what they are saying and how they are encouraging customers to buy - then figure out how you can fit these techniques into your own marketing campaigns.
Finally, you can put together your own market research plan and do all the legwork and analyzing yourself, but it will take a lot of work. Still, if you know the right questions to ask and how to go about getting an answer, it will definitely pay off in the long run!
Tags: advice, Leeia Ladpoh, market research, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, marketresearch.com, saving money, tips
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