Do you know your market?

Importing and using...

Does something working out there in another country will work here too? You can't know until you do some test and research. In music, you can have a great success in one country and nothing just outside of there. You need to understand the people before you can start to market.

Do you know your market? Do you know enough to start a business tomorrow? Are you the kind of person to open a sandwich shop before you know how to make good sandwich?

Some people are using this research to keep pushing away the opening of their business. Don't be among those. Knowing your market is very good, but you should not spend too much time on it. You only need to know if there's people out there that would buy you product. That's it. Then you should start to offer your product to them.

You could do that job yourself, or you could hire someone to do it. It's all about you and how much you can spend on this research.

Every business have to start with the first customer.

What market?

Know your market...

Giant went down because they didn't understood their markets need. Seth gave a very good example of this in his post.

Do you know your market? Really?

What makes people ticks and buy? Will they buy from you or someone else? If you can't answer those questions, then you don't know your market.

You can have the best product in a field, but if the customer think that it's not needed they'll go for something cheaper.

There's also the need for something to be useful. Let's look at the pocket knife with the most tools on it.

Now, try to put it in your pocket...   This is a joke of $2000 dollars.

There's a lot of examples you can find all around you. Product that has find their way onto the market and aren't selling as the creator would have expected.

Before you start selling something, do your best to understand your market. Find something that is needed and fill that need.

Street sign advertising...

How to advertise?

Use the Street Signs concept. Mike has been talking about it in this post.

The principle are simple.

1. Be where your clients will look for you.
2. Deliver your message concisely and obviously.
3. Give a simple and obvious next step.

To use this, you need to know a little about your market. When you know how your new clients will look for your business, then you make yourself seen as they want. And then you give them the next step as simple as you can. The action button is what most will use on the web.

Using this effectively will bring more customers into your business with less expenses to advertise.

Riding the wave in your own term!

Do something others don't...

With today's fast information market, you need to be fast and a little in front of the pack. Having information first is great, but if you don't find a way to use it you'll end up behind as if you got the news later. What you need is to work on your creativity.

Instead of using the info as anybody else and ride the wave. You should find a way to ride the wave on your own term. Finding your own way to put a spin on it.

Look around you, the people that are doing great in your market are also the ones who are riding the wave in their own term.

It's better to invest a lot of time in the search of a great idea then to advertise like any others. Even if you are in the first to promote an opportunity, the ones who are having the best result are always people that did something special to promote it.

Don't make it good, make it better. Instead of doing a common ad, do something that has never been done. Or has never been done like what you're doing.

Don't be boring...     take more time to find good punch lines. Don't settle for the common buzz words.

Quality Traffic

This week, I got a very strange e-mail. A company I'm associated with told me to stop promoting them in Traffic Exchange. They said that it wasn't providing quality traffic.

I was wondering why I never eared about them before. They think like Amway were thinking 20 years ago. They think that you must do a qualifying check up before sending someone to them. I was in the work of making splash page to brand me and promoting the program. But in the first days, I didn't had my splash page done. I sent 50 000 hits to them within 3 days and they didn't liked it.

Usually, all the program want you to promote them. And the more people you send them, the better. Out of the 50 000 hits, I had a unique hits ratio of more then 60%. This means that I sent more then, 25 000 unique people to their website.

I know they're making money and doing great. So, I have some questions.

Do the people surfing Traffic Exchange are unworthy customer?

Amway is one of the biggest MLM program in the world. They changed and opened to the internet lately. And they're even promoting on TV. They're building their brand on a larger market then when I was with them.

This new program is great, maybe the best one I came across in the last 10 years.

Here is this new program:  Stiforp

Does branding to a large market help building the image of a company?

Are we about to take a step back in how to promote a business on the web?

Or is this a step ahead in making money on the web?