Ask the Right Questions to Qualify Your Business Niche
So you've decided on your business's niche. And
you're ready to go out and create products and services just for your
target market.
Wait! Don't move so fast. Are you sure this target
market will be profitable? To be sure, do your due diligence and find
out the answers to these four questions:
1. Is the target market big enough to sustain profitability?
If your target market is too small, there won't be enough buyers of
your product or service. You can usually find this out by finding an
organization, association or other group that your target market might
belong to and find out (at least in ball park) how big the membership
is.
2. Is your target market hungry?
If you've chosen an apathetic market that doesn't care enough about
the problem or desire you've uncovered to do something about it, they
aren't going to buy your product or service. This one is more
subjective, however a good rule of thumb is to find out if there are
currently products and services available to this market. If so, then
you can be reasonably assured that the market is hungry.
3. Is your target market willing to pay enough for your product or service?
If it costs you $5 to produce your product, but your target market
is only willing to pay $4 for it, you don't have a viable product.
Since you found some products and services when answer question 2, how
much are they charging? Do you see any pricing trends?
4. Do you have access to your target market?
Is there a place where members of your target market congregate? If
not, it might be difficult to get your message to them. If you were
able to find an organization, association or other group that your
target market belongs to, will they let you contact their membership?
Is there a publication that your target market reads that you could
advertise in? Is there a list of members of your target market that you
can rent or purchase?
If the answers to these questions turned up
a big dud, be thankful that you didn't put a lot of work into a product
or service for that market. It cost you a lot less to do this research
before development, than it would if you had a product you couldn't
move.
- Article Word Count: 364
- |
- Total Views: 1
- |
- permalink