6 Types Of Market Research Tools To Determine Product Sellability
Market research could be one of most boring parts when comes to business. It seems that the process itself is lengthy and time consuming, right?
Probably so.
Why don’t I just skip this part and jump straight to launching my product for sales with my fingers crossed hoping many sales keep pouring in?
This is one of the biggest mistakes many entrepreneurs and business owners are making…
They’re merely making decisions based on their feelings or assumptions…
It’s going to be dangerous.
Here’s Big Why
If choosing the wrong product that don’t have enough market demand, it could have very little sales or not going to last long…
…which could hurt the business sustainability.
…not to mention that many time and money would be wasted in the process.
Imagine this, after spending so much efforts to run the business only to realize it is going to nowhere.
Time and money are the 2 most important resources one can have in any business.
When time is gone, it’s not possible travel back to the past.
As for money, it is critical to maintain positive cash flow for the business to stay sustainable.
Therefore, market research is one of the most initial steps you’ve should done right before launching a new business.
You’re going to save yourself from a lot of potential heartaches in the future if you start off on the right foot.
You’ll be thankful to yourself down the line when you see your business is flourishing because you’ve chosen the right products from your research effort.
A common perception about market research process would be that it’s going to be an uphill task.
Don’t worry, I’m going to outline in this blog post various easy-to-use free research tools that are powerful enough for you to identify the market demand and make the wise decision in your business.
Let’s jump in right now….
1) Google Trends
It is a research tool powered by Google – the largest search engine platform on this planet earth used by me and you in our daily life to look for information.
Just head over to Google Trends website, proceed to enter the topic or search term related to your business and products you intend to venture in.
You’ll be shown the results for your market analysis.
Interest over time
You can see from the graph if the topic you’re searching for is going uptrend or downtrend over the chosen time frame (such as Past 12 months, Past 30 Days, Past 90 Days and etc). You can always change the duration to further analyze how is the demand in short-term or long-term periods.
If you intend to sell trend-based products which having peak period in certain months, you could use Google Trends to identify which month the demand starts to pick up based on previous year history and start selling before anyone does in the current year.
You can also choose to display the results based on “Worldwide” demand or a specific country only.
Interest By Region
You’ll be able to see which regions (under your country selection) are having highest demand that is arranged from top to bottom.
Related Topic and Queries
The results show also other searches people are searching for related to the topic you’re analyzing.
You can use this information to consider other product offerings to fit in the market demand.
2) Google Keyword Planner
This is an another great market research tool provided by Google.
It is created with the main objective to help Google Adwords advertisers to analyze which keywords are having high demand by internet surfers so they can buy ads based on the results.
Keyword is the word of interest people are entering when searching for information in Google.
So, you can even leverage on this piece of information for market demand analysis even though you don’t run any ads.
To use this tool, you have to sign-in your account first.
Go to Google Keyword Planner website, login with your existing Gmail account details. If you don’t have one, you can create a new account for free.
After login, click on the “Gear” button on the top right corner and choose “Keyword Planner”.
Enter the words related to your business or product you’re selling.
From the results, you’ll see the keyword you entering plus those related to yours with how many people are searching for each of them in every month.
When you see a high volume in the “Avg. monthly searches”, it means a high demand for the keyword.
You’re going to see a bunch of other data. You can ignore them.
You just need to focus on 2 columns only: “Keyword (by relevance)” and “Avg. monthly searches”.
This is how to use Google Keyword Planner for market research purpose.
3) Amazon Best Sellers
Amazon is the largest US based E-Commerce marketplace that has close to 200 millions unique visitors per month.
Being a a big ecosystem comprises of huge collections of products and buyer lists, the data here is going to make a lot of sense when determining what kind of products are having high demand.
Access directly to Amazon Best Sellers page, you’ll be able to identify those products that are selling like hot cakes.
You can even choose to show the products based on the category.
The results are updated every hour.
So, you can be rest assured the information you’re seeing here going are relevant enough for you to determine if a certain product in your thoughts going to be a hit or not.
4) Magazine Subscription Website
How to ensure if your business niche going to have customers willing to fork their hard-earned money on your products?
One of the best way to validate this point is by going to this magazines subscription website.
This is the place where people are more than willing to spend money…
…just to get their favorite magazines which corresponds to their interest.
So if your business category is available in this website, there is a good chance people are going to buy your products…
…when it fits their interest.
After you’ve identify that your business niche passes the green light in this market research, you should then market it to the correct audience.
5) WatchCount
This is a powerful tool for you to check what is the most popular items in eBay with just a few clicks away.
eBay is another widely used online retail marketplace for shopping, so you should not ignore its data after all.
You just have to enter the keyword related to your product in WatchCount and press “Show Me!” button. The results would appear at the bottom of the page.
You can even choose different countries to filter the results to see the popularity in each country.
However, the selection lists are limited to US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Italia, Nederland, Belgie, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Malaysia, India, Singapore and Philippine.
So, if you’re selling to one of these countries, this tool going to be a great help for you.
It’s a fast way to do market research on eBay without having to browse through the site or doing the guesswork.
6) Clickbank Marketplace
It is the most popular marketplace started in year 1998 to buy and sell digital products – such as ebooks, video courses and audio courses.
It has experienced tremendous growth over the years and physical products has come into the platform as well lately.
Clickbank is now having close 200, 000, 000 customers around the world. YES! With 8 zeros behind.
What does that telling you?
It means this platform is going to reveal a lot about the consumer behaviors and interests.
So, you just simply cannot exclude this gigantic piece of cake when comes to market research.
From the results, you can identify types of products or niches that are selling well.
Go to Clickbank homepage, on the left side you can look through the categories available here.
Click on a specific category and choose “Sort by popularity” to further see what are the hot demand products.
Final Words On Market Research Tools
I’ve shown you how easy you can use these 6 powerful market research tools to gain a clear insight on what are the categories and products having hot demands.
You can now leverage on the knowledge you’ve learnt to your business advantage.
You don’t have to use all 6 tools altogether at any one time…
…just choose 2 to 3 of them and they are more than enough for your research purpose.
Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner are suitable for both physical products and digital products market analysis.
Amazon Best Seller and WatchCount would be a better fit for physical products.
Magazines Subscription Website and Clickbank Marketplace are giving a good indication for the digital products world.
If you enjoyed this post, please let me know in the comments below. Also feel free to share this post if you find it helpful.
Hi David. I only know how to use Google Keyword Planner for market research all these while. Never know that so many other different ways can do research. Awesome post.
Hi Barbara. You should try them out. If 2-3 tools giving the same indication, it would give you more confidence about the market.