Which Came First...The Product or the Prospect

By Terry Dean

You have a killer product which you know everyone wants to buy. You had one of the top copywriting experts write you a winning ad. You have built an incredible site and you accept every major credit through secure ordering online.

You have all this, and only have one problem. You just can't seem to get enough traffic to your site.

I hear this kind of story all the time. Someone "knows" they have a winning promotion, but they just can't get enough leads.

You may even be thinking the same thing right now. You have an awesome product, but it seems hard to get traffic to your site and to get really qualified prospects.

Well, I can tell you where you messed up at. Over 97% of marketers have made the exact same mistake you did...and it is killing their businesses. They focused on the product before finding the prospect.

It is common practice to first find or develop a product and then find people to sell it to, but common practices don't always work.

The quickest and easiest method of finding a successful business is not to take a product and go searching for prospects. The quickest and easiest method of finding success in business is to target a market and then find out what it is that they want.

Take the focus in your mind away from the product and place it onto the prospect. Instead of saying, "How can I find someone to buy my product?" Start asking yourself, "What would these people like to buy?"

Instead of following this higher road to success, people seem to prefer trudging through the wilderness begging someone to help them find more leads...

If you are truly serious about becoming successful online, you are going to need to switch roads sooner or later...so why don't you choose today.

There are really only three simple steps to succeeding from an Internet business if you are following this path.

Number 1: Find and Focus on a specific targeted market.

Don't focus on the entire world. Focus on a niche group. While major corporations try to focus on everyone as a whole, the small businesses who become successful are focusing on one group of people with similar interests and goals.

Many of the niches might even be rather large. For example: business opportunity seekers, small Internet businesses, dog lovers, cat lovers, work at home mothers, bodybuilders, martial artists, and more. All of these are considered niche groups and have millions of participants.

You can even go into more specific groups such as commodity traders, real estate agents, RC car hobbyists, and more.

The key to knowing if you have chosen a good niche group is if you can specifically target your market consistently online. Can you find one member after another in this market for little or no cost. Do you know where to look? If you don't, that isn't the market for you.

If you are considering offline advertising for your web site (which by the way can often beat online advertising by leaps and bounds), then a place to look to come up with ideas for niche markets is at the magazine rack of your local bookstore. Generally, most of the magazines are created for specific niche markets. If you choose to market in that niche, then this is a good place to get ideas on products and to use for advertising.

Number 2: Find Out What They Want.

Once you pick a targeted market, you need to take time to find out what it is that they want. Do they want a product? Do they want software? Do they want an informative video? What is it that they are looking for?

The way to do this type of market research for Free is to learn how to network online in discussion groups, mailing lists, and newsgroups.

As matter of fact, you won't even have to be involved in the discussion to find out things like this. Just pay attention to the posts people make on what types of things they want.

Then, when you see that something keeps coming up time and time again, mention it or begin asking some questions. Find out how much they are willing to pay for something like that. What color would they like it in? What brand would they like? In other words, ask your future customers exactly what it is that they want.

To find the places to do this, use these search engines:

Newsgroups: http://www.dejanews.com
Forums: http://www.forumone.com
Mailing Lists: http://www.liszt.com

Write down 3 to 5 keywords of what types of things you are interested in and then search through each of these databases to find groups which specialize in those subjects.

Join them or mark them in your favorite places. Then, make it your job to sit down and at least read a few of them every day for customer research. What is it they want?

If you can answer that question, you are well on your way to developing an extremely successful Internet concept. If you would prefer to just do your own thing and assume what people want, then you are starting your business on very shaky ground.

Number 3: Give them what they want by developing it or Joint Venturing.

Once you have found a market and determined what it is that they want, give it to them. If you have to develop the product yourself, do it.

An easier way of providing your first product to this market would be to Joint Venture with an established business which has the product those customers are looking for. Start doing some investigative research and look for the types of products those future customers are asking for.

Then, once you find the right product, make a deal on a 50/50 profit split or whatever is necessary to make the deal...then begin endorsing that product to your prospects.

Here is how you could apply this process even greater to your web site.

Several web sites I know of right now have very successfully applied the principle of finding your prospects before finding your products.

They would built a site focused on content, participate in networking online, trade links with other sites, and place high in search engines. They would begin building up a large number of visitors and repeat visitors who would keep coming back for the content.

They would do this for months or even years all at the same time building loyal visitors and building an Opt-In mailing list. Then, when the time was right and they found out what their visitors were seeking after, they either developed the perfect product for them or they made a Joint Venture deal and endorsed someone else's product to their site and their Opt-In list.

Many of the major sites which are extremely profitable online right this minute followed this exact same strategy of success.

What about you?