So you know analysis is necessary, but you do know how to do market research? No need to fear. This article will take you step by step through the process of doing some basic market research.

Before going into the each step though, let’s identify what market research is and its intended purpose.

Put simply, market research is the act of finding a product or service to sell, determining who your buyers are, and learning about your competition. Its purpose is to help identify the key information that will help make your campaign a rousing money making success. Because let’s face it… the making money is the goal. And spending the time to build and promote a campaign that turns out to be a dud would be extremely disappointing. Your market research is your best chance at avoiding that kind of flop.

So what steps are involved in the process of how to do market research? We’ll cover the 3 basic steps you need to complete. They are as follows:

Find a product- This typically stems from performing keyword research. To do this market research simply go to the Google Keyword Tool and type in a generic term of a product or service you are interested in checking out. Take a look at the information that tool presents in terms of related phrases, search volume, and competition level. Search for a phrase that peaks your interest and meets your specified number of searches per month and has a low to medium level of competition. The search volume is strictly based on your personal comfort level. For me however, I’m good with a monthly search volume of about 3,500 to 5,000 searches per month. When you find the phrase that captures your interest, it time to move on to step two in how to do market research.

Develop a customer profile – This is action step two in learning how to do market research. This stage identifies the demographics of your buyers. If you don’t know who your customers are, it will be like asking a basketball player to buy a new pair of high heels and saying it will help improve his game. (Doesn’t make much sense does it? And do you think he’ll be pulling out his wallet?) – A couple of good sites you can go to in order to learn about your product’s or service’s consumers is Google Analytics and Quantcast. Here you’ll learn the most common gender of your buyer, their age, their occupation, how much money they make, what they want, and a myriad of other facts. You can build your ad copy, articles, landing page, and appealing to the customers who fit the identified buying criteria.

Learn about your competitors – In teaching the final step of doing market research, let me ask you one question. How many professional sports teams be it basketball, football, baseball, or what have you, prepare for their next game without studying their competition? I’d venture not a one. I’d also venture that they would be lacking a lot of games in the win category if they attempted that route. Well here, in this scenario, you are the professional marketer. In order to get some “wins” under your belt you’ll want to check out your competition as well. You do that by looking at a number of things.

check their website to see if it’s optimized
take a look at reviews
find out who is linking to their site
learn what types and brands of product he offers
etc.
Upon uncovering this information, build upon your competitor’s weaknesses, but also learn from his strengths. Find out what is working for him and see if it is something you can use in your business.

Implement these steps in your next campaign and expect great results. Because this is how to do market research and this is how you can build a money making campaign.