How to Find Market Demand - Online and Info Product Marketing

How to Find Market Demand

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How to Find Market Demand?  Why I Teach and Use 12-Product Surveys to Find Out What People Want to Buy Now!  (Warning — If you don't do this, you can flush 1-6 months of your life down the toilet and have diddly squat to show for it)

One of the critical things you do in your business is figure out how to find market demand

Today you'll discover why and how I use 12-product surveys to do this. But first a few quick announcements:

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Have you ever tried to market something and have almost no one buy?

Do you have a bunch of product ideas but don't know WHICH to focus on first?

Are you concerned about wasting a month or more of your life and having nothing to show for it?

Then you're in the right place reading the right thing.  Come closer and listen carefully….

Yesterday I had a meeting in Austin with Ross Jeffries, who is a long-time friend and famous marketer outside of the IM niche.  We had a great time swapping stories and a few marketing ideas.

I believe leaders are readers.  Charlie Tremendous Jones said that years ago.  On the way there and back I listened to a CD from a seminar for real estate agents on the marketing strategies they use.  The BIG takeaway I got is that the top agents are very attuned to what's happening RIGHT NOW in the marketplace.

What are people buying and selling right now?

If you want to find in-demand products and services to sell, whether they are ebooks, online training courses, membership sites, Amazon books or products, or virtually anything else, you need a SYSTEM for doing so.  And you need to use it on an ongoing basis BECAUSE the market changes.  Markets aren't static.  They change.

You have to change with them.  That means what you  put emphasis on selling today may not be what you emphasize tomorrow.

  If you were in Level One in the past, please re-read your modules as I've updated the information on processes and systems.

The short version is that a system is a sequence of steps.

That sounds like such a simple thing.  But when I was in Austin, I also attended the Internet Marketing Party.  (Internetmarketingparty.com).  The main speaker of the evening credited his turnaround in marketing to reading The Marketing Dairy.

One of the FIRST things I did in training Matt was taught him SEQUENCES.  Everything in business, everything in marketing, is a SEQUENCE of steps.  The whole premise of Level One is built on this.

Which brings me to how to find marketing demand for a product or service. You need a PROCESS for doing this.

The process I teach and uses is called the 12-product survey.  I have SOFTWARE to implement this process called Push Button Survey.  What I found out in 1978 when I bought one of my first direct response marketing books by Benjamin Suarez (my testimonial used to ship with it) was that only 1 out of 7 product is a winner.  Ben did 12 product tests to put the ODDS in his favor.  Now, he used a sophisticated focus group system. 

I took the core idea and created the 12-product survey.  This is what I taught in my very first seminar on the Tag Powell cruise back in 1996 or something like that.  E. Joseph Cossman, Ted Nicholas, Dan Poynter and other famous people were speakers.  I was so nervous I dropped all my slides on the floor (back then you used an overhead projector).

As SCARED to death as I was, I got that first speech out of the way.  Actually, Jonathan Mizel and I picked up a wonderful consulting client out of doing the gig.

What's relevant to YOU is this:  Most all of the greatest marketing ideas are EVERGREEN.  But the MARKET DEMAND changes constantly.  And THAT is the reason the secret to how to find market demand is the 12 product survey.

One thing most people don't understand about “gurus” and marketing is that everything is a pitch.  Everyone has an angle.  I've been teaching this concept for years.  And there's always some smart aleck that comes along and says surveys won't work because of X.  And what you SHOULD do is Y.  All it is is simple one-upmanship.  Stated differently, the message is “Your ideas suck and mine are better.”

What I have to say about that is Benjamin Suarez ran and STILL runs his massive company on 12-product surveys and focus groups.  Last I heard he has 650 employees.  I just needed to tell you that because as soon as I publish this within a week someone will be vomiting such misinformation on Facebook or a webinar.

Enough said.

There are a number of different techniques you can use in doing these surveys.  That's a whole training class or classes by itself.  What I want to show you NOW is the power of doing a survey and how it SAVES you from pouring your time, money, energy and effort down the toilet.

Here's  an example survey I did.  The actual product titles aren't particularly important.  What I want you to see is that a few have bars that extend significantly to the right showing they got a lot of votes.  One got NO VOTES!  And a few barely got any votes. Keep in mind I thought all of these were GREAT ideas!

Here's my question:  What If You Invested Your Time, Money and Energy Producing the Product that Got ZERO Votes?

how to find marketing demand

Can you now see the POWER of doing a 12-product survey?

There are several methods you can use to increase the accuracy and predictability of the surveys. I won't go into those here.  It's a whole separate training.  But if you've found yourself WASTING time on product ideas that flat out BOMB when you launch them, it could be that you simply bet your time, money and energy on a horse bound to lose from the GATE!

If you want to know how to find marketing demand, I highly recommend you investigate making 12-product surveys a staple of your marketing arsenal just as I do.

Marlon Sanders

online marketing blog | marlon sanders

ps:  If you're ready to take things to the next level, go here.

  • Great article Marlon and a reminder that the evergreen lasts forever and facebook, the internet, auto webinars etc are just new methods to distribute such concepts to the world. Two survey things I’d share that I’ve had great success with over the past 10 years. One is running PPC ads to surveys or split test product pages to find out exactly what interested customers want without them knowing they are taking part in a survey. You just change one element at a time to test. This way I’ve found the best URL, brand name, product name, cover designs etc all by just having one different ‘thing’ between each version being split test. And as it’s blind testing you get natural results. Often the most popular choice is not the one the ‘pros’ would choose. Second is the power of running an ongoing tracking study. I’ve run an eight page 20 questions tracking survey on niche marketing since 2007. Running it constantly with PPC and organic traffic show up the trends in people’s needs and interests and as you share spikes out the primary things to focus on. Even though I only offer a free annual membership in a drawing twice a year 87% of people who start the survey complete everything. So surveys are a powerful and ethical way to get inside your customers needs.

    • marlon says:

      Wow Collin,

      FANTASTIC comment and just what I’d expect from you. That’s really interesting you run it constantly with ppc and organic traffic. Just a wonderful post. Thank you.

  • Mike Darling says:

    Good stuff Marlon. Thanks for sharing and reminding us that we need to constantly be marketing, moving, adjusting, and realizing that MOST of what we sell won’t do very well, but the stuff that does – Whoa!

    Thanks again.

    Mike Darling
    Bend, Oregon

    • marlon says:

      Mike,

      Yes, sometimes I forget to point that part out. It’s the one winner that makes you forget the ones that don’t work out so great. Of course, when you have a list, most all your products will sell at least a modicum.

      Marlon

  • Bob says:

    One thing we can all count on here pretty much every week is brilliant advice! Thanks Marlon. What you’re saying makes perfect sense. It’s easy to guess wrong and waste lots of time. Been there and done that. No fun and no profit.

    My question is, can you do this while entering a new market without benefit of a mailing list?

    • marlon says:

      Hi Bob,

      Yes, one of my Level One members just ran a FB ad that went to a survey. Simple. Hopefully you’re making friends with list owners and you might have a pal do you a favor also.

      Marlon

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