The biggest mistake I have made is jumping into a market before researching and mapping out the niche. Without any strategy, you can end up just like me and wast hundred of hours building a website or business without seeing Significant Results. I get it, we all have a moment when an idea sparks our brain and we instantly want to act on it.
Whoever, if there is anything I have learnt in this past year, that have made the biggest impact on my online business, it these.
Doing Extensive Research And Mapping Out Your Strategy is absolutely vital to your success online.
In this article, we are going to discuss the step by step strategy to pinpoint the needs of your niche market so you can feed your audience the exact information they need.
With this information on hand, you can avoid wasting hundred of ours producing content that nobody sees or want, and instead create a straight impact on your goal.
If you don't have time for all the process that am about to show, you can then outsource to Virtual Assistant for about $4 per hour using a website such as upwork.com.
Hire a Virtual Assistant from upwork and send them this article link to read and act on. This will save your ridiculous amount of time.
Let Get Started
Step 1
* Create an excel or google spreadsheet and label it Market Map
* Create 3 sheet tap at the button and label them Places, People, and Products. As seen below
* The first thing we want to discover are the area where audiences hang out.
But Let Start With Blog
Lebel 1. Places
Go to google.com and type in blog: "your keyword" for example, blog: "affiliate marketing"
This will bring up a list of blog that contains the specific keyword you search for. Go down the list and copy the URL to your spreadsheet in the tap level places. Create a column for the name of the blog, the URL, the search you made, the search engine you use, and an additional note. As seen below
Do this for as many domains and the keyword you like, I suggest getting at least 60 different URL on your spreadsheet.
Repeat the same process as before, but this time type Forum: "Affiliate Marketing"
This will bring up the tons of relevant forum within your niche. Copy and past relevant forum URL into your spreadsheet under the places tap.
Social Media There is a uncountable amount of groups already forms on social media platforms. There are hundreds of social media platforms, but we would start with Facebook and Linkedin.
Let Start With FaceBook
Got to www.facebook.com and type in a keyword in the Facebook search feature and click the group tap at the top of the result.
This will bring up all relevant group that contain the keyword for your title. Quickly checks out how many members the group has, as well as how many posts.
Click through if the group has a significant amount of members and post. Check the date of the last post, and make sure the group is having an actual conversation, rather than just being spam by marketers.
Copy the URL of the group to your spreadsheet if it looks like a good fit. Repeat this for as many groups and the keyword you desired. The more, the better.
Now Linkedin
Got to www.linkedin.com, most people assume LinkedIn is for getting a job, however, there is also a fair act of group on LinkedIn that you can add to your list.
Once again type in your keyword and click the group tap, and add as many of group to your list.
Lebel 2. People
The next thing you want to find is people. Now we want to find out who are the influencers within your niche. Once again, there is no better way than using social media.
Twitter provides one of the better platforms for finding people within your niche. Go to https://twitter.com/search-advanced?lang=en&lang=en which will bring you to Twitter advanced search feature
type in your keyword to All of these words tap, set the date range to previous two months to make sure the personal account is still active.
Click the people option tap. Twitter will rank this account by size and how active the account is. So you can be sure that the account at the top are better choices.
Click each account to make sure there in line with your niche, if so, add this account to your list, added their blog to the place's tap as well, if there is a link under their profile picture.
I would suggest repeating the process for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn Pinterest, etc.
Beyond social media, there is also some Seach Engine that people don't normally think of when it comes to market research.
Youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world, second to Google and actually owned by Google. Type in your keyword to the search bar of youtube, and you should get a list of people/channels in your brand.
click to each channel and add each channel/person to your list if they are within your niche and have a decent amount of subscribers. Check to see if they have a blog, by looking at the right corner of their cover photo, if they have a blog, added it also to your list.
A powerful tool you can use to find viral content, as well as influencers in your feed, is a tool call Buzzumo
Buzzumo gives you statics on content that has a higher amount of social shares, you can type in your keyword to see what content performing the best.
This tool cost some money, you can follow this link if you are interested in checking out the tool.
Next Step
Sign up for many newsletters as possible within your niche. I suggest you creating a new throwaway email address for this, as your inbox would full up very fast. Visit the blog of the influences you found and subscribe to their email list.
Waite for a few weeks to scam through this emails to understand
* What your competition is promoting
* How are they doing it
* Content they are Producing
* Who are the big players in their niche
* Who has a relationship with one another
3. Products
Let Start With Amazon
Now, let make a list of products that our audience is talking about and already buying so we know what to promote. The first place to check is Amazon. Go to google.com and type amazon bestsellers
This will bring you to the part amazon that shows you what is selling the best. Dig down to the categories on the left side, until you get a broad niche related to your own.
Once you have gone far down to the categories as you can, you would see a page of product in that particular category. This are listed from best selling to what's selling.
Look for products that may fit your niche, this can be books, gadget, whatever, make sure they have a high rating and a decent amount of reviews. If you don't see any product that does fit your niche, just type in your keyword in the search bar at the top of Amazon.
Click the each button that looks relevant, check the rating, number of comment. Add any good product to your list.
Now Let Use Google
Goto google.com and type in site: copy and past one of your forum domain" product review". For example, site:http://www.dogforum.com/ "product review"
Your product phrase can be some like "have you tried", "have you bought", "I purchase" etc.
This will bring up discussion and reviews of products as well as people asking questions about people experience with using that product. Save this URL to your places tap and to your product list.
Type in just your keyword this time to google search and see if any advertisement is visible. for example, http://www.dogforum.com, Take note of what product they are selling.
Head over to some of the major blog in your list, check their resource or product page if they have it.
Also look for banner ads on the website to find out what product they're selling. You can also go to Clickbank, jvzoo, and warriorforum. These are some affiliate marketplaces that allow you to find a product within your niche that you can promote for affiliate commission.
The commission on those sites is generally much more than commission giving out by Amazon, for that reason it might be an extreme opinion for you. Look through those platforms and use their search feature and selling history metrics, to get a good sense of what is selling well.
Each platform has its own metrics, so you just gonna have to do a little bit digging to see what means what.
Step 2
Problem. Language. Needs
Now, we want to speak the language of our customer. Create a spreadsheet with the following tap Problem, Language, Needs.
Use your Places, People, and Product spreadsheet, to reach out and discover the problem your audience is currently experiencing in the giving niche.
You would want to start some conversation with the people in your niche, you can do this pretty easily in the forum or facebook group, for about a week, try to figure out and record their answer to the following questions.
* What's something about___Topic___ that frustrates you?
* If you had a magic wand and could change anything related to ____Topic__ what would it be?
* What problems are costing you the most money right now?
* What's the most important activity related to ________ that you do? is there any frustration associated with that?
* What related to _______ takes up the most time?
* Do you use anything to help you with ________ already? What do you like about it? What do you wish was better?
* What's something related to ___Topic__ that you have to keep doing over and over again?
If possible try to get these people on a phone call, add them on skype or add them as a friend on facebook. This way you can have a real-time conversation and it builds a strong relationship, which gonna help you moving forward.
Now, let try to understand the Questions, Complaints, and Keywords our Target Audience uses.
This's an essential for creating optimized content that would rank in search engine,
Go back to google.com and type in forum: copy and past of one your forum domain/ "why is it". For example, site:http://www.affiliatefix.com/ "why is it" This question term can be
* "when can i"
* "what are the"
* "what is the"
* "need help"
* "please help"
All this search operated will bring up question being asked in the giving forum, and I highly suggest copying down any that make sense into your spreadsheet.
We can also Search FAQ Pages,
FAQ Pages
* Website/blogs in your niche have probably already heard all the questions
* Some website will have FAG pages specifically to answer those questions
Use a list of blog you already found into google, for example, site:http://blog.hubspot.com/ "FAQ"
Repeat this for as many blogs as you like, and add the questions to your list.
Next. We Have "Complain"
Complain are super useful for pinpoint the need of your target audience. If you can solve the complaint of this niche, you will read the reward.
Now, go to google and type in your forum domain, for example, site:http://www.affilorama.com/forum/ " I hate"
Add any of this to your list, as well as the URL for that forum.
My Up Coming Content. Keyword Research
Keyword research is really just a way for you to understand the language that your audience is using online. This will be my next article. Do enter your email address below to subscribe.
Now. We Have "Needs"
This part should be very easy and wouldn't require for the research. Look through the Problem column of your spreadsheet and try to match a need to that problem
This are just "Needs" that you think of, on your own, this could be a guide, video guide, e-book guide, a product. Basically just a solution to the problem they have.
Congratulation For Getting Through The Entire Process
You have already done
1. Much more than most people on your niche
2. Way ahead of the game
3. You now should have a list of Problem and a potential solution to now help guide the content of your online business.
4. You also have a complete list of People to connect with
5. Forums to post to
6. Blogs to reverse engine to promote your content
Like I said, you can hire someone on upwork to do this for you. Just send them this link to read and follow through.
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