In many ways, market research is the same as it has ever been – and people are still getting it wrong.  For one thing, they’re confusing “market research” with “keyword research”… and skipping the whole market research stage.  Then they wonder why their keywords bring piddly results.

Here’s the secret:  You can’t do effective keyword research until you’ve invested the time in thorough market research.

That means using offline methods, as well as online.

It means checking out:

Where your market hangs out

What they spend money on – and are not only willing but eager to pay for

Who your competition is

There’s simply no shortcut to getting to know your potential customer better than you know your best friend.  But fortunately, there are ways to get to that stage without having to invest 30 years into a relationship.

Here’s the true paradox of the sort of market research needed to dominate a niche… You’ve probably heard people tell you that you need to focus on the individual, and not on a group:  But most marketers find they don’t truly understand that individual until they have gained a large enough amount of market research data to start easily picking out:

• Patterns
• Trends
• Statistics

What these group demographics do is help you gain a quick overview of your target market. But the danger rushing demographic data, or relying solely on it, is… it can be wrong.

Yes, you should absolutely use it in your market research… but don’t stop there. Use it as a jump-off point.  Use surveys, questions, forum discussion and contests to double-check the accuracy of any “suspect” figures.

Client Attraction Tip:  What problem does my customer have?  What complaint?  (Use keywords plus the word “complaint” in WordTracker or Google’s search engine).

What is your biggest challenge with keyword research?

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