By: Shreya Parmar
When you are planning for your own business no doubt you are going to be the boss of everybody. But being a boss, you still have to follow some people named “Customers”. Strange right! But true, Customers are the God when you are planning for a new business. A business is like opening an organization or enterprising entity which is going to engage in commercial, industrial, or professional activities with customers. For this to be successful, first of all you need to know what the demand of the product in customers’ section is. And if you want to know the secret in choosing the right product, the secret lies with product demand search. As in today’s hyper competitive world of business, the business that best understands their customer is the one who wins. I would say everything is marketing and marketing is everything.
Establishing a business is like fishing in a pond with tons of fish. And by following simple techniques of product demand research, you will end up with a million dollar business. This article will be helpful to those who are in the starting phase of establishing a business or who are currently researching product demand. There are millions of products out there in the world, by which customers are quite satisfied. You need to do something out of the box. And also during product demand research, you will notice one thing: the market is super-duper saturated and also there is no more demand out there, there are no more opportunities out there, and most likely we are going to fail in our product demand research and hence fail in your business.
Product demand research is important because, we might rather drink from a fire hose than just tons of traffic coming your way and all you need to do is find out a little bit for yourself; and in that way you are going to be able to fill the successful business. As nobody wants to be in a pond with no fish at all. It won’t matter what kind of bait you put in or what kind of rod you put in or how expensive that rod is, you are not going to fetch any fish. Hence Holy Grail and choosing the right product is product demand.
Well I know this is not one of the sexiest topics from the world of
marketing and also in
keyword analysis, but the word research in “Product demand research” itself
automatically makes the whole keyword product demand research a
demanding topic and also less boring. After all, we have to fish in a
pond full of thousands of fishes.
The true power of really understanding the customers lies in their
needs, their wants and their goals and everything. Hence, when you are
researching product demand; you are just making sure that people out
there are willing to spend their hard-earned money to buy what you are
going to sell. By product demand you are just ensuring yourself that
there are these many people and those kinds of people are looking out in
the market to purchase it.
A little bit diverting towards economics; we know that as the product demand increases, so does price increases due to high interests. And the reverse, when product demand decreases, the prices will go down and output will be to more purchases for that particular product. This is what we call a demand-supply chain. There are various factors associated with demand-supply chains, but after all we can determine this by observing how willing our consumers are to spend their penny on our product. That is quite obvious; nobody wants to firstly begin trying to sell something and as time passes the only thing you are left with is to realize that there is not an existing market for our product. Hence it is advisable to do proper product demand research before establishing a business.
Measuring product demand is a way more than just a calculation of
confirming people who would be interested in your product.
As the world is changing at a very high pace, consumption is deeply
involved. New profiles of consumers appear every day which invents new
behaviors and new values. And your aim is to keep up with this customer
evolution one should be reactive, have strong connections, and also have
emotional relationships with consumers so that they will engage. This is
where we need to calculate product demand, which is nothing more than a
litmus paper test. You just check whether or not your product or service
or idea or maybe concept will satisfy the needs of customers with the
help of effective product demand research.
With the help of this, you will get aware about economic shifts,
demographics of your target markets, insights about your competitors,
current market trends and lastly spending traits of your customers.
Data is the fundamental block of any market research project, hence
essential in product demand too. Good quality data can help a business
determine their target customers which also helps company’s spending and
marketing with maximum effectiveness. It can give you insights regarding
the evolution of your target market and how you need to evolve with
them. It will also give you insights about lineation with the correct
target market.
So in the world, the one "Survival of the fittest" is the mantra which
is given by Herbert Spencer product demand research will play a crucial
role. Product demand search will help improve a company's efficiency,
spur innovation, grow your brand and identify problems in your brand. A
bit heartbreaking but the truth is, your idea probably isn’t always
perfect.
Product demand can be determined by various factors which include some
questions like how many people are actively searching for a product like
yours, how much they’re willing to pay for it, and how much of your
product is available to consumers, both regarding your company and any
competitors.
In the market, there are many tools available for
Keyword research
and
Data analysis . Tools make things a bit easy because they automate our task. That is
the reason why
Marketing automation
is in craze. So in product demand search, it is totally possible to go
with in person interactions which will help you provide valuable
information, given the current global situation. But the data will be
more accurate if you use some tools. Using tools in product demand
research will be more efficient and tech savvy. There are basically two
main sides of the coin here for determining product demand:
1. SEO tools:
There are tons of free SEO tools available right now as we have seen in
the
Keyword research tools blog . These tools provide every single information one needs like you can
look for
search volumes , keyword suggestions, even what is the estimated organic traffic for
all ranked pages. And also one needs to focus on using 3 types of
metrics one should look out for product demand:
– Long Tail Keywords that comprise three or more words with a
longer word count
– High Search Volume by which one will better understand the
search intent of the product demand users
– Low Competition which implies that it is simpler to rank for
these keywords and less expensive to buy advertisements dependent on
these catchphrases.
I would say Google is not only our friend; it’s more like an advisor.
Google is the best search engine right now. Tons of people every day
generate thousands and lakhs of useful data by which only Google can
help us out because Google knows everything about
Google search . The two main tools are:
a) Google keyword planner- Check the search volumes of the keywords you
think would be most associated with the product you’re considering
selling.
b) Google trends- Gives insights regarding search history of certain
keywords and search terms.
Google trends
also gives you the option to filter by time period, country, and even
city, letting you be extremely specific with your brand insights into
where you should focus marketing efforts should you decide to move
forward.
2. Ecommerce sites:
Amazon, one of the biggest ecommerce sites in the market. Amazon sorts
every product in their database that has made at least one sale with its
Best seller ranking hierarchy which is quite the best way to observe
product demand. All you need to do is select your marketplace and
category, plugin the BSR from the extension, and voila! You now have a
head start on your competition and at last a better idea of product
demand.
3. Social Media:
In this addictive world, social media has great interactive users with
huge networks. Social media can help us by providing a wealth of data
for reaching our product demand and also which we can utilize on
products and brands. It even allows us to filter conversations, target
specific geographic locations, and pull summarized reports to be used in
combination with other data sets. You can search for trending hashtags
which in turn will connect you with people with the same interests.
Which in turn will help you to determine whether they are your
competitors or potential customers.
Twitter- Twitter is no doubt a social media platform but it is designed
for marketing purposes only. It generates very useful information with
the help of tweets. And also the best social media platform for the data
and information one needs for product demand research.
Research actually means that you are looking out for something. Like
every research, product demand also follows a simple old strategy. We
started with choosing our niche, which is what we are researching about.
Secondly we have gone through various tools which are sources of our
research for product demand. And the thing which is left is the
methodology. Methodology of product demand or I would probably say not
only product demand but any research follows simple steps:
1. Study
2. Experimentation
3. Observation
4. Measurement
Social media networks are also excellent places to post surveys about products, industries and services you may be able to offer. This allows you to find out what route is the best one to take based upon public feedback. The greater scope you can create, the better the market research will be.
Planning, building and executing experiments is time consuming and expensive. Start with offering a new product at a discounted price for a limited time to determine the overall product demand for it as well as the feedback you can receive from those who buy it. Well this will require a lot of customer interaction and a commitment to tracking results over time.
Observing both in the physical and the digital world will help inform product demand. Observing trending topics and products on sites like Twitter and Pinterest can provide insight into almost every industry. By combining all of these approaches together, while incorporating technology at every opportunity, you can help find and forecast the proper product demand analysis you need to make key decisions regarding your eCommerce operations.
◉ Lookout for past records because one of the best indicators of
current demand is related to the past demand. Look at the records of
past sales and come up with some factors affecting the sales, whether it
is because of seasonal change or is there any other reason. Sum up the
total units sold over the past year and pay attention to factors by
which there is a dip in the amount of product sold. Tiny difficulty with
this method is, it doesn't tell us for changes in the marketplace,
competitors' products or a change in your marketing strategy.
◉ Observe the search trends related to your product. You can use
Google keyword tools
and
Google trends
for ease. Google always tells us how many monthly searches are performed
for various related keywords you will enter. Do a search for a product
idea and then view the search volume for that keyword throughout the
past few years.
◉ Identify your competitors and some information regarding do your
competitors have a strong social media following or not; are you able to
find many reviews of your competitors' products online; how long have
your competitors been in business- are they early or they are from very
much beginning etc.
◉ Use a competitor's sales data. This is useful for small
businesses that plan to roll out a competitive pricing strategy for a
similar product or for those releasing a new product that they have not
yet experienced selling.
◉ Perform a test Google Adwords campaign. Here, you can use Google
Adwords to run PPC ads and send traffic to your sales page. Rather than
actually collecting payments, however, when someone tries to buy the
product you can simply collect their email address instead. By this you
will get an idea of the percentage of people that visited your sales
page who would likely purchase the product if you were actually selling
it.
◉ Estimate sales on recent performance. This is helpful for new
products that do not yet have a history. When a product first comes out,
chances are if the marketing efforts are working, it will sell well.
This will gradually begin to taper off as the newness of the product
wears off. Pay attention to declining sales numbers and adjust your
inventory expectations accordingly.
◉ Another thing you can do is you can take pre orders for your
product. By taking pre-orders, you can set up a website and drive
traffic to it to test the viability of a product before you ever spend a
dime on the manufacturing. This step is not just an expectation, it's
more like demonstrating your demand.
◉ Lastly you can personally look for online forums and other
services where your potential customers might hang out and discuss
problems and solutions related to what you’re doing. This type of
research will give you some small indicator of the scale of your
potential audience as well. The data is just an approximation of your
potential market, but it’ll tell you at least if there are just hundreds
or perhaps thousands of potential customers out there.
You should look out for factors affecting your product demand. Few of
them are:
1. Composition and size of population
2. Customer's taste or preference
3. Price of other related products
4. Income of customer
5. Government policy
6. Price of commodity
Now it’s time to change your product idea to hard money. When wrapping
up the results of researching trending products to sell after watching
product demand, keep these five characteristics in focus:
◉ The product should be unique.
◉ It should offer a healthy markup.
◉ It shouldn’t be available in brick and mortar stores.
◉ It should be difficult to find anywhere else.
◉ It should have a value – usefulness.
Tiny Mantra for a moneyfull business by following product demand
strategies:
Low competition + High Demand = High Success.
