The Five Keys To Understanding Your Market

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Making your business as successful as possible means getting to know as much as possible about what is on your customers' minds.

Let's look at five different ways to can get access to the information you need to find out what your market is really thinking.

The best source of information about your market will depend on how well established your business already is and whether you have a large number of customers.

1. Existing customers: If you have enough existing customers, carry out a survey and ask them about their problems. Note this isn't a survey to ask them what they want. You want to know what's on their mind. What keeps them awake at night?

2. Google searches: These days, the first place many people go for information about any topic is internet search engines such as Google. Just entering a few words related to the topic - known as 'keywords' - will give you access to a wealth of information about the market. Don't get too bogged down at this stage on thinking about the exact keywords - just think about what people would key in if they were looking for information on the topic and see what comes up. Try to be as specific as possible in the words that you use.

3. Social media: The massive growth in social media has provided easy access to information about a wide range of markets. This includes social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, micro-blogging services such as Twitter, online forums and social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.

4. Competitors: One of the best ways of finding out about your market is to check out your competition - what they are selling, how much they are charging and how they do their marketing. You'll find your competitors when you do an online search - both in the natural search and in the ads that come up along the top and down the right of the search page.

5. News - online and offline: Checking out what's in the news is an important way of keeping track of your market and current issues of concern. Offline media such as specialist newspapers and magazines, local newspapers and TV news can tell you a lot about current trends. You can set up a Google Alerts at www.google.com/alerts to receive regular email updates on your topic of interest.

All these sources of information will help you find out more about your market.

When you have a good understanding of the people in your market - and what they want - you are well positioned to help more people and make more money.

Robert Greenshields is a copywriter and marketing coach who helps consultants, coaches and other independent professionals attract more clients and make more profit by packaging and promoting their expertise as a high-value product. Download his free Productize Your Expertise report at www.mindpowermarketing.com

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