In Part 1, we talked about how a lot of businesses ignore step zero and start running their business prior the research phase. How the step zero is critical to formulate in developing a business and lead to success, and how so many businesses still ignore it despite knowing the importance. Probably their mindset is created by social disturbance and pressure that forces them to push starts their business without thinking much.
Let’s talk more about the topic and what things you can incorporate in the step zero.
Before the internet, companies used different ways to do their market research and to understand the ground reality before launching the product. It was tough then because a company would need a large team going in the market and connecting with the people interested in their offering category.
Google Trends
Nowadays, we have Google that displays results as per our content. Google has developed Google Trends that display the hot topic and searches going in different categories. The tool deliberately tells about the changes in different interests and categories – and that will help you to collect different ideas and data to forlaying certain key ingredients to use when the time comes.
Shifting to the Social Media Channels to Understanding Human Psychology
It’s a noticeable factor that a lot of content consuming audiences have shifted to social media channels; hence, giving a bigger platform for companies to track the rivals’ business accounts on social media and critically analyze their post content, audience reaction and what they are asking for more often. This data is a life saver for companies that are developing the product which audience doesn’t really need or have rejected already. Instead, those companies can use their time in developing the product that offers solutions to the audience’s problems.
Following Social Trends
Nearly every big social media channel offers trending topics on its platform. Yahoo trends and Twitter Trends are the most followed by companies, digital agencies, digital marketers, and audience etc. to see what the country or the world is actually about the most. Moreover, Hashtags on Twitter, Instagram etc. can actually help you to discover the real time data about the problems or things people are talking about. There are many free and paid tools that help you to discover the most used hashtags in your product category to reach the most potential and vulnerable audience that needs someone to understand their basic needs.
Question Your Targeted Audience about Your Product
As discussed in the last post, a lot of filmmakers, especially successful filmmakers show the rough footage to the cast and crew, studio heads, and their trusted sources to review the product. They take notes based on the viewers’ reaction and make changes in accordance to the general audience’s psychology. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it helps them miles in developing and bettering their product and to taste the box office success.
If you have defined your targeted audience group, ask them about your product. Connect with them so they can freely give you their two-cents on your offering and can also help you to see what things you can do to actually change for a better response from the people that are going to buy from you. In layman’s term, even if you earn some constructive criticism for your product, you know what you need to change to be successful. It’s better to get the criticism than to launching the product and spoiling the company’s image altogether and resulting in huge loss of resources.
What if there’s the demand, but you don’t have the product?
It’s perfectly normal that you don’t have a product to suit the demand of your audience. their reasons can be many like you don’t have sufficient funds to support your ideas, you can lack to developing product based on the strict industry guidelines that underline quality over quantity, or you never found real PR team to eventually give you a detailed plan to market the product before you began developing the alternative product.
Planning the sales strategy
When the market research is done, it’s time to buckle-up and start making plans for the future. It’s time to outlines the sales strategy and elaborate it to produce the required output for your business without any setback. There are many things on the internet that can teach you how to do it. We at Kinex Media think content marketing the best form of current digital marketing scenario and start with developing an addictive series of content that interests people and brings their attention to the product.
A lot of companies are doing this and this is why they are performing so well in their market because they first created an emotional touch with their audience without shoveling their products in their throats. They actually offered them the value that could make their lives better. The Furrow Magazine by John Deere is the best example and a case study to read.
Start with a blog
Running blog doesn’t mean you start typing anything there and people will buy it. In the age of information when the internet is filled with millions of blogs, you need to be consistent in providing value and, for it, you have to generate good quality content that’s enriched with information and offers different key insights to the people trying to make the maximum of the time vested increasing what are offering.
Content marketing can never be done without having any content. It doesn’t matter if the content is textual, videos or images; as long as it is worth shareable and engaging, the audience is going to love it, share it, and talk about it.