No matter how good your product or service is or how great your sales copy is, the key part of your marketing plan is finding the right crowd: a starving crowd.

Ask yourself what that means in your business. Think about the ways that you can locate and identify a starving crowd.

Now start to think about the ways you can create a feeding frenzy. This will become more defined as you go along. But start planting the seeds now. Ultimately this will be the most important question you ask yourself. Keep in mind that there might be more than one distinct crowd of people that would appreciate what you offer. This is great. However, each niche needs its own targeted marketing campaign.

Now, ask yourself these three questions:

1.Who is your target audience?

2.What do they want?

3.How can you motivate this target audience to act now?

Make a list of all of the benefits of your product or service. You will be doing this again at different stages of this process. However, it's a good idea to consistently rehash this. You will discover new benefits you had never thought of. Keep in mind that your product or service's benefits are different from the features. People don't respond to features. People respond to benefits, because it answers their first question: what's in it for me?

Once you begin to develop a list of benefits, you can start to think of what kind of person would benefit. Yes, there are probably obvious answers to this, and those are important. But push a little more and see if you can discover who else would fit the profile.

If you want to know what some wants, just ask. Do a search on the Internet for forums in your business niche and go visit them. These are forums where people discuss issues and ask questions about your field. If it's a popular forum, you will get a lot of answers. Make sure you browse through the different posts as well. You will begin to see not only what people want and what people like, but you will also hear what they hate. You will hear them tell horror stories. Take this to heart. This might be some of the most useful information you could ever get.