Best way to research your audience???

Thanks, how do I see there referrer traffic sources???

Rather than chasing after niches, I have always searched within broad networks or groups of people such as within associations, professions and specific demographics. This can span hundreds of highly profitable niches, and marketing to them is a matter of matching relevant products to an engaging funnel sysytem.

What I do is search for topics/subjects of high interest for my targeted demographics (age, profession, specialty, occupation, etc), then look for websites and publications providing suitable content. Generally, recurring ads found in special interest offline/online outlets and publications strongly indicate the type of products that are most likely to succeed. In researching new niche products of interest to my target demographics, I usually use several resources:


Magazine newstands

Trade association newsletters

Directoryofezines.com

Writers' Market

Magazines.com

Dummies.com

Pulse.Ebay.com

JupiterResearch.com

Amazon.com

Google.com/trends

Wordtracker.com

For example, the largest and wealthiest demographic is "baby boomers"; they own more than 70% of financial assets in the U.S., and control nearly half of all discretionary spending (Over $4.6 trillion in the last 6 years alone). In addition, they have a HUGE interest in dozens of very competitive niches and are the most stable and loyal customers you could ever find.

Good point. There are also keyword researchers available for $5. I've seen reports and they are very helpful-they find low competition keywords with decent search volumes. They predict the number of opt-ins you'd get.

Quite often this is the case, absolutely. People are not single-dimensional; they have a variety of interests. As each sales cycle progresses, subscribers are offered a selection of other niches to choose from, each of which has its respective autoresponder sequence. Most of my subscribers are getting multiple daily emails from several niche lists.

In many of the late sales stages, subscribers will also call in to my sales staff regarding product questions, which result in personalized marketing responses including telemarketing, direct marketing and even on-site sales. Much of my marketing and repeat sales continue offline; far beyond the email life cycle.

Actually, there are a number of Warriors that I know of here who are using demographics as a marketing criteria. And this is taught in Marketing 101 as standard practice. Some of the biggest companies target demographics for marketing multiple products in a wide variety of categories.

For example, certain ethnic groups are extremely lucrative, but are hesitant to buy from those who don't speak the language or reflect nuances of culture. In addition, conversions can be much higher by speaking the "language" or jargon of occupations ie medicine, law, skilled trade specialties, etc. Demonstrating intimate affinity beats the competition all-to-hell.

Companies spend millions of dollars in market research to get this information, and even they sometimes get it wrong. But to reduce chances of a product flop, you might want to look at JupiterResearch.com and dummies.com. They have done much of the heavy lifting in researching interests for a variety of demographics.

Also, an excellent book I have often recommended is "Branding Against the Machine, by John Morgan (Available on Amazon or at a fine bookstore near you). This book shows how to achieve prominence in even the toughest, most competitive arenas and provides a contrasted insight between the timid email marketer who seems afraid to offend and lose subscribers with those who blast away with frequent hard hitting promotions.

Perhaps the easiest way would be to identitfy a demographic of which you can readily relate, as suggested by Miguelito203 above. Chances are, there are ezines, websites, and offline magazines of interest to them. If not, that demographic is unlikely to be viable for commercial marketing. Look at ads within these outlets to get an idea of the type and variety of products being sold. You may find the same or similar products on Amazon.

No, not at all. Students do have discretionary income, and help from their parents is common. Consider also marketing to postgrad students or academia. And if you can attract the attention of university department chairpersons, they frequently buy products for their courses and labs using reimbursed personal funds.

You are right and only proper strategy can take us to reach our audience.

Although I operate on a much smaller scale than Paul (myob) does, my approach is very similar. Over the years, I've found a demographic that I have a particular affinity for, and I'm gradually reshaping my business to focus on that demographic.

Although the niches (as that term is used here) vary, they all have common characteristics which appeal to my chosen market.

Does that mean that every niche area will appeal to every segment of my market? Of course not. It does mean that there is a high likelihood that a given niche area will appeal to part of that market, though...