One of the best information marketers in the world, Brett Mcfall of the World Internet Summit, once gave me the #1 best marketing tip ever. It is essential that before you start producing an information product that you absorb this information, as it could be the difference between a few sales and a massive sales wave!
“DON’T THINK OF A PRODUCT AND THEN TRY TO SELL IT. FIND THE MARKET FIRST AND SELL WHAT YOU WANT!”
Sounds like common sense, right? But you wouldn’t believe the power that statement can have. If you toss a cabbage to a pack of hungry wolves, they’ll probably take a bite, but what if you toss them a juicy steak? They would devour it and enjoy devouring it and the next time you have something to go through they will remember that you are the person with the delicious and juicy steaks and therefore they will be ready to eat what you have. You have to sell people what they want, not what you want to sell them.
If you have gone bankrupt or gone out of business in a certain industry that you have experience in or have lost your job in an industry that you are passionate about, then chances are other people are passionate about it and will want the information you have. And with the knowledge of your industry and the problems that customers or docks were having, then you are well on your way to creating your first information product.
The popular markets that people are always “hungry” to learn more about are;
- Diet
- Sex
- cars
- hobbies
- Golf
- animals
- Business growth and development
- Marketing
- teamwork
- Inventory
- personal finance
- Sports
- Health & Fitness
I know you must be thinking these markets need to be closed, buy competitors now and there’s no way in (unless you’ve already had a breakthrough idea, in which case I take that statement back!) There are many smaller subcategories. which will be excellent niches to follow. People are “starving” for practical information on an UNLIMITED number of specialized topics. For example
If you are a “golfer” you want to produce a product on how to shave 2 strokes off your golf game. That is a topic that thousands of people would potentially be interested in and might want to buy that information! Or let’s say for example that you are an expert in selling to large corporations. Do you know how many people would want to get their hands on your particular strategy and tips? Much.
You need to stop looking for the hot product and start looking for the hot market!
Buyer markets are also known as “niches” meaning car lovers, horse lovers, DIY, fitness and even dog food recipes. The niche you decide to target doesn’t need to be huge for you to make a great income. There just needs to be some regular, dedicated searches done on the “keyword” niches.
A keyword or keyword phrase is the word or phrases entered into a search engine in order for the search engine to index pages on websites that include the word or phrase. You need to find out what keywords are the most searched for in your niche and there are some fantastic free tools on the internet that you can use to find them.
My favorite is the “google keyword tool”. Type in a keyword or phrase and the tool will tell you exactly how many searches are being done on that word, how much the “pay per click” value is, how many searches are being done globally and how many are being done locally, how competitive the one bid is and it also gives you suggestions and examples of other popular keywords in that niche that may have less competition from rivals and may be more useful to you. There are others you may want to try, such as Wordtracker.com
If the niche you decide to target is competitive (which most online or offline markets unfortunately are), then you’ll want to look for keywords that have enough searches but don’t have a huge CPC (cost per click). . This can be tricky, but the great thing about this industry is that testing and tweaking is commonplace and it’s easy to experiment with the keywords that work for your site.
So the best advice I can give you is to research your market. Go to forums and chat rooms on the subject. What problems do people need solutions for? What frustrates them? Can you give them what they want? If you can and do follow the next 6 steps in this series of blog posts, then you have a winning product that you can greatly benefit from.