subject: Increasing Sales With Sales Checklist And Market Research [print this page] Market research is arguably the most important step to take before launching your product. What demographic is your primary audience? How old are they? Is the primary sex male or female? What income level are they generally at?
What are their biggest complaints? What are the problems they face on a daily basis? What emotions might they be feeling?
Think like your prospect. What search terms do they look for? You can find forums on virtually any topic. So get on those forums and try to glean whatever information you can.
See what products they talk about and review. Check any web pages they have. Find out what site they like to spend time on. Figure out what publications they read.
Visit the site of your competitors, and go through their entire sales process. See if there are any gaps in their process.
See if there is anything they are lacking that you can provide. If they do not have any low-end products, maybe you can start there.
Use Amazon. Not only can you use it to see which books are selling particularly well, but you can read reviews of existing books to find out where they might fall short. Find out where the gaps are in that particular market.
Magazines are also helpful. They spend lots of money researching their subscribers and what they want, and you can leverage that research by simply looking at a magazine rack.
You can model your selling process to the particular persona that you are trying to sell to. You can use tracking tools like Google Analytics to predict the behavior of your buyer.
This allows you to empathize with them and figure out what questions they are going to have before they ask them.
Do not let your ego trick you into thinking that you know more about your the needs of your customers than they do. Always be conscious of what they are telling you.
You can check this via emails, support tickets and forum posts, to name a few. Find out what they want more of.
Recognize Weaknesses: If you think you have done everything right, but you are not having success, search for the weak link.
Start with the copy and go from there to the traffic source, then to the conversion process.
Set Goals: Setting a goal is what will drive you to success. It will keep you motivated when things get tough.
They can be monetary goals, goals for completing projects or parts of projects, whatever makes sense depending on your business. Have a clear vision of where you want to be throughout the process.
Get Help: No one does everything themselves. We all start somewhere and are particularly strong in certain areas, but no one is equally great at everything.
Get help in your weak areas; whether it is advertising, SEO, copyrighting or any aspect of your business, look at competitors as potential partners.
How can your products and services fill gaps in their sales funnel? How can you create a win-win partnership between you where you are able to monetize your sales systems and processes? This allows you to leverage the things they do well and vice versa.
