All Successful Business Starts With A Market Research

On an isolated island of Jamaica, lives a young boy. His name is Bruce. One day, he went for fishing. He planned to catch a few fishes for dinner that night. He wanted to prove to his parents that he is as capable as his father in fishing. So he went to the beach. After 3 hours of waiting, he didn’t catch a single fish. He started to struggle. Finally, after waiting for 6 hours for nothing, he returned home with empty hands. When he arrived home, he asked his father about his failure in fishing. His father was smiling while picking up his fishing equipment. He asked Bruce to follow him to the beach and see what a real fisherman does. On the beach, Bruce looked what his father is doing. He then realized that he made simple yet fatal mistakes. He now understands that to catch a fish, he should fish out in the ocean and night, and not fish at the side of the beach in the afternoon.

From this short story we may learn how important is to do a market research. Many people do just like what Bruce did. They often ignore where and when to enter a market. In order to build a prosperous online business, you have to know exactly what market, who are you targeting, where and when to influence the market.

Do not be misled! You might find a very profitable market out there yet you still cannot ignore other fundamentals you need before establishing a business upon a niche. There are 3 critical questions you have to answer before you decide your niche market:

• Have you any interest or affinity in the said market?

  Affinity/interest is ‘the key’ which determines how far you are going to succeed in your industry. Without any interest in the industry you are working on, you will eventually find out that the job becomes boring and soon you lose motivation to go on. If you have no interest in a particular market, do not enter it! Otherwise, you might not have the creativity in order to gain a breakthrough in your industry.

• Is the market profitable?

  It is sad thing when someone fails to achieve his goal. It is more sad when someone who achieves his goal just to find out his goal is useless or simply a big waste of time. Well, you have to keep in mind as every entrepreneur does, that our focus in doing online business is to make profits! If you spend much a lot of time and money conquering a unprofitable market, you would have just been wasting your time and money when you could have otherwise entered into a profitable market and have start earning some serious cash. I cannot stress the importance and usefulness of doing a careful research on the market you intend to enter before you enter it and then find out that the ‘goldmine’ is empty. By then it would have been too late.

• Can you dominate the market?

  If you have found a profitable market, please do not get too excited and count your eggs before they have hatched. Remember, where there is sugar, there will be ants! Once you have determined a profitable market, you then have to check on your competition in that market. The third step determines whether your business can grow or not, and not simply ‘survive’. Make assumptions and calculations whether or not you are able to penetrate the market within a period of time. You can do these by typing the keywords of your market on search engine and check websites or blogs which appear as a result of your search.

  Sometimes you might find a market which has ‘zero’ competition. Well it means there are 2 assumptions: it is a ‘newfound’ goldmine or it is an ‘empty’ goldmine. If it is a competitive one, you need to prepare yourself to be able to penetrate the market under a certain period of time. Set the time, if you fail to do so within the time limit, then you may want to reconsider your choice and choose a different market.

Market research is something extremely important that has to be done before you start any of your projects or your new business as after doing market research, you can determine whether it is worth it to go into a particular market. If the market is profitable, by doing market research you would also be better able to devise a strategy to dominate said market.

Related entries:

No related posts.