Internet Marketing 101: The Telltale Signs of Profitable Markets

We were at a Super Bowl party yesterday (go, Saints!) and all of a sudden I realized something very peculiar: all the women were sitting in front of the TV and all the men were hanging out in the kitchen talking about their weight issues. (!!!)

If you are in the weight-loss business, would you have ever guessed where your target audience was that night? Not in a million years, I bet.

Which brings me to the point of how important it is to know your target market.

I know there are many an article written on the subject and I am not going to write yet another one on how to find your target market.

Rather, I want to address two keys to determining how PROFITABLE a particular target market will be.

Those two key internet marketing questions are:

1. How BIG is your audience? and

2. How HUNGRY are they for your product/service?

In other words, how many people are there in your market and how willing are they to buy?

Of course, there are many other factors that can influence your business success, things like having the right tools, skills, experience, how competitive your market is, and much, much more.

However, becoming as expert on finding just the right market that is hungry for what you have to offer is far more powerful.

The guys who know how to find markets tend to achieve far more, with far less effort, far less experience, and far fewer of the latest internet marketing tools.

So how do you find such markets?

There are two key factors you want to research:

1. Traffic Levels - How many potential customers are there in this market? and

2. Visitor Values - What is each one of these potential customers worth?

Together, these numbers will tell you the QUANTITY and the QUALITY of potential customers in that market.

Let’s take a closer look at those factors.

Traffic Levels

Traffic levels are simply the number of people searching online for a particular keyword.

The more people search for it, the stronger the market must be, and the stronger the market is, the more potential customers there are!

But traffic levels alone won’t give you a good enough picture of how good the potential market is.

For instance, many people look for “jokes”, or “quotes”, but they are not buyers. So despite the fact that the traffic levels will be high, it won’t be a profitable market to jump into.

We want markets full of BUYERS, not just BROWSERS.

Which brings us to the next factor:

Visitor Values

It makes sense to look for markets with a great buyers pool, and the bigger spenders the better.

But wait a minute: does it mean that we need to jump into “buy private jet” or “luxury yacht” markets?

Most likely, people who search for those things are there to buy and they can certainly afford it, but how much traffic will you get in those niches?

You see my point?

The trick is to use Goldilocks’ wisdom:

We need to find a market that is “just right” - with good traffic levels, and good visitor values.

I hear you say “It’s all good, Ana; now you told me what I need to do. But where on earth do I go from here?”

Aaah… I won’t leave you hanging, my faithful readers. Look for my next post that’s all about the “how”.

If you like what you’ve read, please post a comment and retweet - it will be much appreciated!

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