How to Find Your Niche Market

by Nicole Munoz

Here we get down to the nitty-gritty. You have an idea of what a niche market is but not such a clear picture of how to find it. That is the million dollar question. Keep reading and you will gain insight that will help you find as many niche markets as you have time for. They all might not lead to a pot of gold but useful information can be gleaned from a dud as well.

Market Research

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. The dumbest question is the one that never gets asked. If your website has a forum or blog attached, you can ask questions in your daily blog posts and evaluate the responses. People love to state their opinion of things and if you ask the right questions you will receive the right answers.

While you are at it, ask a few questions of yourself? You will have to sell this product that you believe in to a group of people you want to buy it. To do that, you must have an intimate knowledge of the product and what it can do for your customers. What market will the product satisfy? Is the product expensive or affordable? Do they need it or want it?

Use opt-ins to build niche lists. Ask visitors to register with your site. You can offer a discount or free item for doing so. Customers can leave the name and email address of family and friends in exchange for earning a referral fee.

There are several ways to gain this information without necessarily paying for it from a third party. Including a disclaimer statement about the use of the information will put visitors at ease. They won’t sign up if they are going to receive a boatload of SPAM in their Inbox every day.

Use the lists to separate potential customers into different markets. Depending on the target market for your idea, you will have someplace to start with your marketing campaign. Email marketing is more profitable when you know who is more likely to respond to your messages.

Keyword Research

For any product or service, people use search engines to compile the information for them. They type certain words, called keywords, into the search box and await the results. In the top right hand corner of the computer screen, the search engine lists how many results were returned. No one is going to wade through thousands of pages of results. They will look at the first two or three pages if you are lucky.

Discovering which keywords people are most likely to use has now become your job. There are keyword tools available on the Internet to assist you with this task. If you are selling lawnmowers, you want all possible combinations of keywords someone would use to find a lawnmower.

Some of these keywords will return millions of results. What you are looking for are keywords that have not been exploited by other lawnmower websites. Don’t just write down single keywords but also keyword phrases. It’s easier to rank well for phrases and they provide much more targeted traffic.

Long tail niche marketing is the use of longer three or four word phrases that can be used on your website to draw more traffic. People enter single words but just as many will use several words to narrow their search results. Matching these phrases can land you on the first page of the search results which is where you want to be.

Trial and Error – The Fun Begins

Now that you have polled your customers and found ways to zero in on your target market, it’s time to put your niche idea to the test. The first step here is setting up a website to advertise your product.

Resist showcasing more than one niche product on a website. Each product has a different target market. If you have two products for the same target group, it is acceptable to use one website. But, using one product in two different ways to appeal to more than one group will require more than one website.

Niche marketers have been known to set up mini sites. Each website is used to market to a different target audience. Weekend warriors might like a more active site to buy their mountain climbing gear. The items will be in the low to middle of the road price range.

For a higher class of clientele that are experienced mountain climbers, they will be looking for the best of the best at any price. Since they know what to buy, a more relaxed site might suit their tastes better. That’s why it’s so important to know your target and learn about your customers’ needs.

It was stated earlier in the report that all niches won’t be goldmines. Some will flop. Niche marketing is not an exact science but then neither is any other type of marketing. Doing your homework and using that knowledge to convince a group of people that they need your product is the way to increase sales. How many sales depend on the product and the audience.

If one niche doesn’t pan out, focus on the other ones that are doing well. When you have time, revisit the poorly performing niche and diagnose the problem. Maybe you need to cast the net just a little bit wider to find a more suitable audience for the product or service. Try to salvage the niche market before calling it quits.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with niche markets. The more you identify successfully, the greater your earning potential.

5 Steps to Plan and Develop Your Content Marketing Strategy

by Nicole Munoz

One thing that’s very important, if you plan to leverage the power of audio, video and text, is to have comprehensive content marketing plan. Here’s a little checklist that might help you do that.

Step 1: Set Your Goals

All your content creation should have a purpose and that purpose should not only benefit your readers, but benefit your business as well. Some purposes might be:

Search engine traffic
Word of mouth and viral effect
Pre-selling and warming up the audience to a product
Establishing credibility and authority
Reader satisfaction
Boosting your opt in list subscribers
Boosting customer relationships
Selling your products

Just remember, the goal or purpose of each content piece is aligned with your overall marketing strategy. This may also help you decide whether content should be in audio, video or text format. For example, if your goal is to boost customer relationships, you might choose a video of yourself to do that. Make sure your content includes a call to action that supports your goal. For example, “For more information about how to manage debt, grab our free report 12 Steps to Eliminate Debt in 12 Months.” – tell them what you want them to do next.

Step 2: Research

Carving out time for research is very important. From brainstorming topic ideas to finding supporting information for those topics, there is plenty to be done. You also want to research potential places to distribute your content as well. Here are some things that will make your research easier:

Keep a list of content ideas throughout the month.

Use the following to generate content ideas/topics:

Social networking
Keyword research tools
Blog comments
FAQs
Client interaction
Brainstorming

Review the analytics and results of last month’s content and evaluate which pieces generated the most interest or results. Know which pieces your audience responded to and are use that information to create content topic ideas for this month.

While you’re researching topics, take note of interesting articles, statistics and other items you might reference later as you’re creating your content.

Keep your eye out for places where you might publish your content. Connect with other website owners who might publish for you. Connect with them by subscribing to their sites, on Facebook, Twitter and more.

Step 3: Creation and Distribution

Here are some things to plan and keep in mind, so your content gets out there to your audience.

How much content will you need? Will you write it all yourself, hire a writer or use PLR? If you’re using a writer, ensure they have all the information they need well ahead of time, so they can meet your deadline.

Have you created your content publishing schedule? Plan ahead, so that you can match content topics with products you’ll be promoting. Decide where each piece will be published and which pieces will be published in multiple places. For example:

Autoresponder
Blog
Guest blog
Website
Social networking page
Video sharing website (ex. YouTube)
Audio sharing website (ex. iTunes)
Other

Part 4: Repurposing

The best way to make the most of your monthly content is to find ways to reuse it and repurpose it. However, when creating your repurposing strategy make sure that you’re still focusing on your goals. Each repurposed or reused piece of content still needs to serve a purpose and support a goal.

You’ve created a plan to reuse or repurpose some or all of your content. For example, an article published on your blog can be rewritten and published on an article marketing site. Or an article that resonated with your readers, could be made more visual and viral by turning it into a video.

Each piece of content that is repurposed or reused content has a goal/purpose. You should always keep benefiting your business (and your audience, of course) in mind.

It may seem overwhelming to have to plan all this content in a variety of mediums, but over time you’ll learn what your audience responds to and where you should focus your efforts. And remember, quality is more important than volume, so focus on delivering the best content you can to your audience.

4 Proven Methods to Find Popular eBook Topics

by Nicole Munoz

If there’s one thing that’s clear from more than a decade of eBook publishing, topics tend to go in trends. One moment motivational topics might be all the rage, then a year or so later it completely dies down. Then eBooks about online options trading take off. That might die down a little, then all of a sudden a whole slew of “How to Start an E-commerce Website” eBooks hit the market and make millions.

Finding popular eBook topics is a great way to jump in front of an emerging trend. Instead of trying to come up with an idea that people might like, you can figure out what people do like right now instead.

So how do you find popular eBook topics? Here are a few different tactics you can use.

Using CB Engine for Clickbank Products

Clickbank is the largest eBook repository on the internet, second only to eReader bookstores (like the Kindle store.) It’s a great place to look for eBook ideas. It’s also a great place to feel out potential new trends.

Unfortunately, Clickbank’s marketplace is quite a poor research tool. You can sort by popularity or gravity – And that’s it. It doesn’t give you much data.

Instead of using Clickbank’s native marketplace, many internet marketers choose to use websites that aggregate data from Clickbank instead. There are a few of them around. CB Engine is one of the most popular ones, with most of its features available for free.

Begin by going to “CB Best Gain” in the left hand side column. This shows you the Clickbank products that have improved in rankings the fastest recently. This is a much more useful statistic than gravity or popularity, because you want to look for new ideas that are catching on rather than products that have already been popular for months.

Here’s what the screen looks like:

You can change the criteria you’re searching by along the top. You can look at high momentum products, products moving up, products that are gaining steadily, products that are getting more popular and have big payouts and so on.

If you click on a product, you’ll be taken to that product’s data page. Here you’ll see all the vital stats you need to know about the product.

Click “Graph” along the top to see a visual representation of the product’s gravity trend, as well as its previous gravity stats by date.

This technique can help you find new eBooks as they’re taking off, but before the market gets saturated. Look for trends, look for big jumpers, look for multiple eBooks on the same topic that are taking off at the same time. Look for things that seem to indicate a new opportunity.

Doing Keyword Research

Another way to look for potential popular topics is to do keyword research.

Begin by jotting down a bunch of different potential ideas for your book. For instance, let’s say you’re in the weight loss industry. You might jot down ideas like:

Weight loss for people who’ve just had a baby
Weight loss for video gamers who don’t get exercise
Weight loss for vegetarians
Weight loss for people who love chocolate
Etc

Come up with as many ideas as you can. Then head over to the Google Keyword Tool, then type in some of the ideas you’re thinking of using, one at a time.

Google will tell you about how many people search for your keyword every month. Below the keyword you typed in, Google will also tell you the search volume for a number of related keywords.

In this case, you can see that the general topic gets about 40,000 searches a month. Smaller sub-topics get quite a few searches a month as well. So you might put a check mark next to that idea as having strong potential.

Do the same with your next topic. For instance, let’s look at post pregnancy weight loss.

In this case, it seems that vegetarian weight loss is about three times as popular as post pregnancy weight loss.

One important thing to notice is that the keyword “pregnancy weight loss” does get 90,000 searches a month. But if you type it into Google, you’ll find that this search phrase encompasses people who want to lose weight during pregnancy, people who are losing weight during pregnancy and are worried, among a myriad of other topics, including weight loss after pregnancy.

It’s less clear cut because of that one keyword, but it still seems vegetarian weight loss generally has more demand than post-pregnancy weight loss, based on the numbers.

Rinse and repeat this process for all your ideas to get a sense for how many people are looking for the solution you’re thinking of providing.

Browsing Amazon

The Amazon bookstore can be another great way to come up with popular book ideas. Start by heading over to the Editor’s Picks section. You can choose other sections, too. Look through these different lists to see what kind of books are doing well.

You can also sort the category further by going to a more specific subcategory. That’ll really help you get a sense for what’s doing well in your specific niche.

Count Forum Questions

Another way you can find problems that people are eager to solve is to go to internet forums and look for common questions.

For example, if you’re in the fishing niche, you might head over to a fishing message board and spend some time looking around. What kinds of questions are people asking? Is there an abnormally high amount of questions around certain topics? Are there new questions you haven’t heard before? Are there questions being asked that seem to have no good answers?

You can also conduct a search for terms like “how to” or “how do I” or “question.”

This brings up exactly the kind of person you’re looking for: People who came to the forum looking for help. Again, look for patterns in the questions people are asking. The more people asking about it, the better your chances of success with an eBook on that topic.

These are four different ways you can find popular eBook topics. Do your research before you start writing and make sure you’re jumping into a market that’s positioned for success.

Competitive Keyword Research Process Guide for Beginners and Not Only

by Nicole Munoz

Doing competitive research is much more about having a good process than having the right tools. Having good tools can help you get the job done faster, but knowing how to use the tools is what’s really important.

Here’s a proven keyword research process for finding keywords that are already working for your competitors. This will give you a serious shortcut in the whole testing curve. You’ll still have to do a bit of testing yourself, but you’ll know for certain that you’re starting with a base keyword list that’s working for other people already.

Step 1: Compile a Base Keyword List

Start by compiling a basic keyword list. These aren’t necessarily keywords you’ll actually bid on, but are keywords you’ll use to find all the competitors you want to spy on.

To come up with more ideas, use the Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that are related to yours. Also, try typing in your competitors’ URLs into the Google Keyword Tool to see what their base keywords are.

Make sure you get a wide range of different worded keywords.

Step 2: Compile a Competitor List

Go into Google and type in each of the keywords you found one by one. Copy and paste the top organic and AdWords results into a spreadsheet. Rinse and repeat this process for each and every keyword you compiled in Step 1. By the end of this process, you should have a spreadsheet with at least 20 to 40 domains of your main competitors.

Step 3: Enter Domains Into a Keyword Research Tool

Take the domain and type it into a competitive keyword research tool like SpyFu, Keyword Spy or SEM Rush.

Step 4: Record the Keywords

Take the keywords and enter them into a separate tab in your spreadsheet. Make sure you filter out any keywords that aren’t completely relevant for what you’re selling. Don’t just copy and paste your competitor’s keyword lists without thinking it through.

Step 5: Rinse and Repeat

Keep doing this process for every single one of the domains you recorded in the beginning. Enter all 20 to 40 of these domains into the keyword research tool and record the keywords in your spreadsheet. Once you’re done, you should have a keyword list of several hundred entries. Remove the duplicates and you have a good starting point. Also consider repeating the whole process with another keyword research tool to get different keywords. Different tools will generate different lists.

7 Competitive Keyword Research Tips

1. Repeat this Process Every 2 Months

Competitor change, as do keywords. Something that’s working this month might stop working the next. New keywords might be found that your competitors are making money on.

The best way to stay on top of the market is to repeat the keyword research process every 2 months or so.

2. Start with ROI, then Go for Volume

It’s much better to start with a handful of keywords that you think will convert, than to start with a huge keyword list.

Once you’ve discovered all the keywords that your competitors are using, pick just a handful to test with first.

Pick the keywords that are most relevant to your business and the keywords that signify someone is close to buying.

3. Use Exact & Phrase Match

Using exact match and phrase match allows you to get the highest possible ROI in the beginning. Again, this allows you to target specifically the people who are in the mindset you want to target.

The goal is to make sure that you actually have a profitable group of keywords and product before you spend a lot of money. Once you know you’re profitable, you can lower your standards so you get more volume at a lower ROI.

4. Notice What People Are Not Targeting

In addition to paying attention to what your competitors are targeting, pay attention to what they’re not targeting.

Chances are basic tools like the Google Keyword Tool are going to give you a whole bunch of keywords that in reality aren’t being used by your competitors. This is a great signal that these keywords probably aren’t profitable.

5. Think Outside the Box

Don’t just use keyword tools to come up with keywords. Also use your own knowledge of the market and your customer’s mentality.

Think up all the things that people might type into the search engines if they were in the right mindset to buy your product. Check to see if they have volume. If they do, run with it.

Going outside the box is often one of the best and most profitable ways to find keywords.

6. Pay Attention to Strange Keywords

If during your keyword research you come across strange keywords or keywords that you haven’t thought of yourself, pay attention.

Often time’s this can point to a kind of keyword, mindset or sub-market that you haven’t even thought about targeting yet. It can open a whole different dimension of keywords.

7. Don’t Forget Competitor Names as Keywords

Finally, remember that brand names and competitor names are often the best keywords you can target. You can’t use trademarked names in your ads, but you’re free to bid on them.
Using the information in this article, you’ll be able to compile a comprehensive list of all the keywords your competitors are using. From that list, you can pull the best keywords for your business to come up with a killer ad campaign.