Top 5 Tips for Better Product Marketing Research

In this video I’m talking about product marketing research, which means how to figure out and understand what your community is talking about.  Here are five ways. The first way is through an offline tactic – The bookstore.

Go to the Bookstore. Find the shelves with your niche or topic on it.  See what’s on the shelves.  Bottom line, Barnes and Noble and Borders don’t order books that aren’t that aren’t selling. Go to the bookstore, look on the magazine rack, look on the shelves, and make sure that your product is consistent with what is currently selling in the marketplace.

Use Google Trends. Google has a certain tool in the labs section called Trends and which gives you a sense of what is increasing in search volume and what is decreasing in search volume…all absolutely free.  Go to Google, go to Google Trends and you can figure out what the ebbs and flows are of the conversation around your niche or around your topic.

Use the Ebay Marketplace. Another place you can go is eBay.  eBay is not only an online marketplace, it is an auction!   That means that the products on this site are going to the highest bidder.  What’s getting the highest bids?  What is most valuable to your marketplace?  eBay can give you the absolute answer.

Dig into Amazon. Amazon is a great place for product marketing research.  Not only is it a place where a lot of products are sold, but it is also a place with a lot of customer reviews.   People go to Amazon to give their opinion and rate things.  They give texture around why they feel what they feel, which gives you more information to understand the conversation around what’s going on in your marketplace.

Use the many Affiliate Networks. There are a number of affiliate networks.  Commission Junction and Click Bank are two big examples.  These are places where you can go to see what is already selling well through affiliates.  You can search around in any affiliate network you like.  Choose your network, rank by most sold, and measure your product against the ones you see.

Now, the best part about all five of these ideas is that they’re all absolutely free. You don’t have to pay a consulting firm.  You can do these things yourself. You can do them in a matter of minutes and you can get infinitely, exponentially smarter about your marketplace is discussing. So again, these are or five ways you can go about getting smarter about your product marketing research.