5 Ways to Conduct Market Research on a Shoestring Budget

Whether you are a big business or small business, market research is always important. Without it, all of your carefully made plans and hours spent creating your service or product will be wasted.

There’s no point in trying to sell a product that no one wants.

And honestly, you don’t need a huge budget to conduct market research. If you wanted to, you could purchase reports from market research agencies; they spend a lot of time and money creating reports that will tell you if it’s worth trying to sell your products in a certain market to a certain kind of person. If you can afford it, that’s great.

But for those of us who don’t have the start-up capital to pay out thousands of dollars to these firms, we have to conduct out own market research.

So here are 5 ways a small business can conduct market research on a budget:

1. Search Amazon.com or Other Retail Store Sites

If you want to sell an ebook or information product, conduct a search on Amazon.com for competition. If the market is already flooded and you can’t provide an add-on or improvement to what you find there, move on. What books are selling and what is buried at the bottom of the list? Why buy from you and not the guy with the Engineering degree or Ph.D?  If you still think you can out-sell the others that you find use all of this information to build a compelling case for your own product.

2. Search Google for News & Blogs

Are thousands of people already selling your product or service? Are their websites new and up to date? Is the first page full of abandoned blogs and old news? If so, these people may have found out the hard way that there was no market for what they were selling. If you can improve what they tried to sell, then great. But just be ready for a tough road ahead.

3. Watch Your Competition

The best way to determine if there is a market for your product is to watch the competition, closely. Not just their website, but their blog, social networks, friends’ websites and other sites linking back to their site. Where is their advertising? What are they doing and how are they delivering it? How are they interacting with people and what’s being said? Have they added or removed anything from their website? What are they missing?

4. Talk to the People

Real people are a valuable resource when it comes to market research. Not just your mom and your best friend, but people that you connect with at networking events, in the grocery store, or even at the off-leash dog park. Find unbiased people – preferably not relatives – who are attending events where you think your product will have the most impact or will be the most valuable to the people who attend. You don’t have to tell people every detail about your product, but ask them what they would be interested in buying.

5. Use Social Media to Conduct a Survey

It may be as simple as asking a question on Twitter or creating a survey page. Either way, some people would be willing to give their opinion about what they like or don’t like about your specific industry or product. Or even suggest improvements to something that they absolutely love. If you put some thought into your survey and present it in a way that adds value to your research, you can collect highly relevant and almost immediate feedback.

Bonus: 6. Use Your Mailing List

If you have a mailing list with active subscribers, ask them what they need and if they would respond to a product that filled that need. You can ask them about price points, features, gaps they see in the market. They are on your list because they like something that you are doing, so ask their opinions and take into account all the good and bad things they say about your ideas.

We all have great ideas, but before you spend a lot of time and energy creating a product that you think the world needs, take some time to connect with the world you want to sell it to. Make sure you think of every aspect and understand your prospects concerns and perception within the market you are trying to reach.

One last thing, it’s hard to compete with free. If you find a market that is saturated with free information, free reports, free articles, and free products, really take the time to consider if you have a chance selling something to people who are used to having everything offered at no charge. Unless you are providing above and beyond value, free is a hard competitor.

Even if you don’t think these methods are right for you, at least do something in the way of research.

What do you think?  Have a missed something?

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