I think it’s important to add that whatever your “niche” or industry is, you also need to stay on top of current trends, changes in your market and the latest news that could affect your clients or customers as well.

For example, how many business owners were affected by the last postal rate increase? For many of my clients, it’s changed the way they’re sending direct mail. I spent some time looking for some alternative suggestions for my clients - ways they could still reach their target markets while saving money - or increasing their ROI.

So my suggestion for our readers is: Think about what issues, news or changes in the market is affecting or going to affect your clients? What kind of ripple effect will that have? And how can your product or service help them to overcome these obstacles and achieve their goals?

Excellent advice, as always. Seemingly obvious but few people bother to ask their customers or potential customers what they want. Every time I’ve conducted a survey for either myself or clients it’s always been well worthwhile.

Kevin Francis

Keywords - What keywords best describe your proposed product. Make a short list of terms related to the product.

Trends - Check what kind of search trends there are for your keywords at
http://www.google.com/trends .
If they flat line at zero, they are dead.

Competition - Do a Google search for each keyword. If you Google a multi word phrase use quotation marks to eliminate unrelated results. How many sponsored ads there?
Competition is GOOD.
Competition indicates money is there to be had.

You don’t have to do a full blown search engine optimization keyword evaluation. Just do a few of the main keywords to evaluate if that niche is worth spending marketing efforts on.

Just because you build something
doesn’t mean they’ll come.