Which Came First...The Product or the Prospect
- Terry Dean -
You have a killer product which you know
everyone wants to buy. You had one of the top copywriting experts write you a winning ad.
You have built an incredible site and you accept every major credit through secure
ordering online.
You have all this, and only have one problem. You just can't seem to get enough traffic to
your site.
I hear this kind of story all the time. Someone "knows" they have a winning
promotion, but they just can't get enough leads.
You may even be thinking the same thing right now. You have an awesome product, but it
seems hard to get traffic to your site and to get really qualified prospects.
Well, I can tell you where you messed up at. Over 97% of marketers have made the exact
same mistake you did...and it is killing their businesses. They focused on the product
before finding the prospect.
It is common practice to first find or develop a product and then find people to sell it
to, but common practices don't always work.
The quickest and easiest method of finding a successful business is not to take a product
and go searching for prospects. The quickest and easiest method of finding success in
business is to target a market and then find out what it is that they want.
Take the focus in your mind away from the product and place it onto the prospect. Instead
of saying, "How can I find someone to buy my product?" Start asking
yourself, "What would these people like to buy?"
Instead of following this higher road to success, people seem to prefer trudging through
the wilderness begging someone to help them find more leads...
If you are truly serious about becoming successful online, you are going to need to switch
roads sooner or later...so why don't you choose today.
There are really only three simple steps to succeeding from an Internet business if you
are following this path.
Number 1: Find and Focus on a specific targeted market.
Don't focus on the entire world. Focus on a niche group. While major corporations try to
focus on everyone as a whole, the small businesses who become successful are focusing on
one group of people with similar interests and goals.
Many of the niches might even be rather large. For example: business opportunity seekers,
small Internet businesses, dog lovers, cat lovers, work at home mothers, bodybuilders,
martial artists, and more. All of these are considered niche groups and have millions of
participants.
You can even go into more specific groups such as commodity traders, real estate agents,
RC car hobbyists, and more.
The key to knowing if you have chosen a good niche group is if you can specifically target
your market consistently online. Can you find one member after another in this market for
little or no cost. Do you know where to look? If you don't, that isn't the market
for you.
If you are considering offline advertising for your web site (which by the way can often
beat online advertising by leaps and bounds), then a place to look to come up with ideas
for niche markets is at the magazine rack of your local bookstore. Generally, most of the
magazines are created for specific niche markets. If you choose to market in that niche,
then this is a good place to get ideas on products and to use for advertising.
Number 2: Find Out What They Want.
Once you pick a targeted market, you need to take time to find out what it is that they
want. Do they want a product? Do they want software? Do they want an informative video?
What is it that they are looking for?
The way to do this type of market research for Free is to learn how to network online in
discussion groups, mailing lists, and newsgroups.
As matter of fact, you won't even have to be involved in the discussion to find out things
like this. Just pay attention to the posts people make on what types of things they want.
Then, when you see that something keeps coming up time and time again, mention it or begin
asking some questions. Find out how much they are willing to pay for something like that.
What color would they like it in? What brand would they like? In other words, ask your
future customers exactly what it is that they want.
To find the places to do this, use these search engines:
Newsgroups: http://www.dejanews.com
Forums: http://www.forumone.com
Mailing Lists: http://www.liszt.com
Write down 3 to 5 keywords of what types of things you are interested in and then search
through each of these databases to find groups which specialize in those subjects.
Join them or mark them in your favorite places. Then, make it your job to sit down and at
least read a few of them every day for customer research. What is it they want?
If you can answer that question, you are well on your way to developing an extremely
successful Internet concept. If you would prefer to just do your own thing and assume what
people want, then you are starting your business on very shaky ground.
Number 3: Give them what they want by developing it or Joint Venturing.
Once you have found a market and determined what it is that they want, give it to them. If
you have to develop the product yourself, do it.
An easier way of providing your first product to this market would be to Joint Venture
with an established business which has the product those customers are looking for. Start
doing some investigative research and look for the types of products those future
customers are asking for.
Then, once you find the right product, make a deal on a 50/50 profit split or whatever is
necessary to make the deal...then begin endorsing that product to your prospects.
Here is how you could apply this process even greater to your web site.
Several web sites I know of right now have very successfully applied the principle of
finding your prospects before finding your products.
They would built a site focused on content, participate in networking online, trade links
with other sites, and place high in search engines. They would begin building up a large
number of visitors and repeat visitors who would keep coming back for the content.
They would do this for months or even years all at the same time building loyal visitors
and building an Opt-In mailing list. Then, when the time was right and they found out what
their visitors were seeking after, they either developed the perfect product for them or
they made a Joint Venture deal and endorsed someone else's product to their
site and their Opt-In list.
Many of the major sites which are extremely profitable online right this minute followed
this exact same strategy of success.
What about you?
Terry Dean is the webmaster at
http://www.bizpromo.com Visit today for turn-key web site solutions, turn-key products you can sell, and answers to all of your Internet marketing questions. For "115 Internet marketing tips" please send an email to..
115tips@aweber.com
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