A difficult task for any business is conducting market research. This research can impact a business in many ways including how they brand their products and who they market to. Although market research can aide a lot with your businesses marketing efforts, it also plays a key role when your business is attempting to obtain financing.
The lenders or investors main objective when evaluating your business is to determine whether or not they will get their money back. Good market research will help set your potential lenders mind at ease, and you will be more apt to obtain the business capital you need. The lender also wants to know things about the market such as the competition and the demand for your product or services.
To begin the process of researching your market you can start by searching trade associations, trade show websites, and trade magazines. They exist in nearly every industry and can supply a wealth of information related to your market. The best part is that many of the trade related websites provide the information free of charge. The government also provides a number of valuable resources for market research. For example, the Economic Census, released every five years from the U.S. Census Bureau, provides an excellent glimpse at industrial activity including the Industry Series report that offers separate reports for many industries and shows the number of businesses within an industry, sales volume, number of employees, and more. Other good resources for market researching are corporate websites of your competition and press releases from your competition. White papers provide good market research data because they are well-researched documents.
Magazines and Newspapers are another inexpensive resource for market research. As part of their research for articles journalists often gain access to expensive market research reports which may be mentioned in an article. Additionally, expert sites such as Google Answers provide value in offering direction to someone who seeks information. They don't provide the hard numbers you may be looking for, but you may find the expert opinions useful when putting together your market research. Finally, another inexpensive resource for obtaining market data can be found at Academic Research Centers.
Market research companies and investment houses are expensive alternatives to market research. The information found with a market research company is generally well researched and contains extensive product/industry metrics and statistics, including forecasts and trend analysis. It is not uncommon to pay well into the thousands of dollars for a report that is only a hundred or so pages long. Since money is typically tight for a business starting out, it's best to go after your market research using the methods above for gathering free and inexpensive research data.
Although market research is extremely important to your business plan and your business capital search, it is only one piece of the puzzle. Before a lender even looks at your market research they will look at things such as your business management team's experience, your past business successes, and your "lending character" or your ability to repay a loan. It is vital that you not only have a good business plan, but you also need a good business financing plan as well.
Do you need to do some niche brainstorming, generate content ideas, or clarifying what niche you want to focus on? Then these nine online niche marketing research sites are perfect for you. By typing in the words in 'italics' into your search browser, you can get started today with your online niche marketing.
For brainstorming, generating content ideas, and clarifying what niche you want to focus on:
1. 'Magazines.com' lists their top 10 magazine titles in the upper left-hand corner of their homepage. This site will give you a birds-eye-view of what topics are hot right now.
2. 'eBay' is the largest online marketplace making it a great place to get ideas about what people are searching for and ready to buy. Click on "Sell", then "What's Hot" in the drop-down menu to see which products and services are in high demand and making money.
3. 'PayPal Shops' is useful for generating niche ideas. Click on one of the Shops Categories on the left-hand side of the page to see what other shops are selling. The number in parentheses after the shop name reveals the number of PayPal members who have paid this merchant.
4. 'Amazon', with its extensive, searchable database of books, is a great place to generate ideas for information products. Type in your broad topic, such as "Information Broker," and examine the books that have been written about your subject, looking for niche subcategories.
For more detailed research and determining consumer trends once you have a good idea of who your niche market is:
1. 'Google Zeitgeist' is the aggregation of millions of search queries Google receives each day. As such, Google offers the following four tools to give you insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. 'Google Trends' can give you a broad look at search query data as well as relative popularity over time. 'Trends for Websites' provides Google trends for website traffic data. Type in a website address to see visitors by region and related sites visited. 'Insights for Search' allows for a deeper dive into search query data for marketers and power users. Create your own lists of "most popular" and "fastest rising" queries for different geographic regions over time and by topic. 'Hot Trends' lists the top 100 fastest-rising search queries right now (U.S. only).
2. 'Google Keyword Metrics' is a tool that tells you what keywords people are paying for on Google Adwords (Google's pay-per-click ad service). It shows you what keywords people are bidding on, the estimated daily and monthly search volumes, and the market value of that keyword phrase.
3. 'WordTracker' shows you what people are searching for online by showing you exactly which keywords and phrases they're using. This is most useful when optimizing your website. It helps ensure that the keywords in your title tags, meta tags, and front page are the ones actually being used when people are looking for a product or service you provide.
4. 'comScore' maintains massive proprietary databases that provide insight into consumer behavior and attitudes. The information is based on a global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing.
5. 'Niche Inspector' is a software program ($127) that helps you perform effective and comprehensive niche market and niche keyword research quickly. The software does in-depth analysis of different markets to uncover niches that are in high demand but have low supply.
The key to your online business success is niche market research. By making use of a variety of research site options—some traditional, some new—you now have all the tools you need to do effective niche market research online.
Both Corey Pierce & Susan L Reid are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Corey Pierce has sinced written about articles on various topics from Finances, Internet Marketing and Business Credit Cards. Corey Pierce is the CEO of BusinessFinance.com a business capital search engine with the funding criteria of 4,000+ sources for business capital. Visit