Note: This article has nothing to do with affiliate marketing and should not be applied to affiliate marketing. It is, however, very important if you are thinking about developing a product or business of your own.

We all come up with business ideas that we think are going to be big hits. Some of them go unexecuted while others are given a great deal of time and money, only to later realize that they weren’t such great ideas after all. Before spending any considerable amount of resources on a business project, it is usually wise to conduct at least some direct market research.

What I am talking about here is actually asking your target demographic what they want and/or what they think of your idea. Companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on market research because it provides very valuable information, but it can be difficult to communicate with a specific target market.

There is, however, an easy and efficient way to conduct market research through the use of the internet. Unless you have access to your audience (such as a convention or other gathering place), using the internet is probably you best chance at quickly surveying your market. In the remainder of this article, I will show you how to quickly, and properly, execute a marketing survey.

Step 1: Define Your Target Market

Before you can survey your target market, you need to define who exactly they are. In our case, we are going to be reaching them through PPC advertising, so you need to choose related keywords. If you were thinking about creating an instructional website, ebook, or DVD about wood carving, you would simply generate a handful of “wood carving” keywords.

The thinking behind this is that anyone searching for “wood carving instructions” or “wood carving tutorial” would be interested in your instructional product. You now have a way to access your target market.

Step 2: Provide Some Bait

A high response rate is essential for a successful market research campaign. The lower it is, the more money you have to spend. One of the best ways to increase your response rate is to provide an incentive for participation. It should be something that has little or no duplication cost to you (such as a digital product), but has perceived value among your participants.

Keep in mind that this incentive only needs to have perceived value. They won’t be paying for it and they won’t see it before they complete your survey.

A great way to quickly create an incentive is to simply search the web for articles, links, videos, audios, pictures, or anything else related and compile them into an organized PDF ebook. Anything with reprint rights can be used directly within your text, and anything else that you want to include can simply be linked with thumbnail images or something.

Another thing that works wonderfully as bait, and should be done in addition to the immediate incentive, is to promise free access to the product/service you are developing as soon as it becomes available (if you don’t continue with it, it never becomes available )

Step 3: Create A Survey

You need a way to get feedback from your users and one efficient method is to set up a simple survey. This can be done on your own with a simple HTML form, or you can use an online survey generation service.

The amount of information that you try to collect is entirely up to you, but keep in mind that more information will cost more money. If you ask visitors a simple yes/no question, you are likely to get a very high response rate. Conversely, if you ask for multiple essays and personal information, you probably won’t get any responses.

I like to make surveys with a couple yes/no questions and a suggestion box, everything optional. The benefit of this is that the visitors can give as much, or as little, information as they want. In addition to that, you will get valuable suggestions about what your market actually wants.

Step 4: Craft A Sales Pitch

Going along with the goal of achieving the highest response rate possible, you will want to spend a bit of time writing copy that “sells” the survey to visitors. Even though they are not buying anything, they are still spending time, and therefore, need to be convinced.

The art of copywriting is way beyond the scope of this article, but you basically need to include an attention-getting headline and some text or bullets that explain how they will benefit by filling out the form.

Step 5: Create Your AdWords Campaign

We don’t want to spend a lot of money here, and we want to get a sample that is as random as possible. Because of this, you should definitely set up a daily budget where clicks are spread out evenly throughout the day (the default setting in AdWords). Also, make sure you only advertise to countries that you will actively targeting, or at the very least, English speaking countries.

As for actually putting the campaign together, if you don’t have much experience with AdWords, you should read my article on how to properly structure your pay-per-click campaigns.

Step 6: Collect Responses & Analyze Results

When you built your survey/form, you should have made sure that you were actually collecting the data that is submitted. At this point, all you need to do is run your advertising campaign while monitoring your clicks and conversions. You should probably aim for a 20%-50% conversion rate depending on how in-depth your survey is.

If your response rate is unusually low, it could mean that they people just aren’t interested in your product. If they won’t take a simple survey to get it for free, they probably won’t hand over their credit cards for it either

If, on the other hand, you get a lot of responses, then you probably have a business idea that other people are interested in. Make sure you use the feedback that you gathered to improve your product or service and you will be giving the market exactly what they want.

Closing Thoughts

Have you ever watched the show American Inventor (or the equivalent in your country)? I don’t usually watch them, but it did catch my attention when I was flipping through the channels a couple weeks ago. In this particular episode, the contestants were narrowed down to about 6 or 7 “inventions” out of probably tens of thousands (if not millions). The premise of the episode was to hold small focus groups and see what the public thought about each invention.

The really funny thing about it was that only 2 inventions had gotten favorable comments, and I’m talking basic comments. With the other inventors, it seemed like they had never gotten any opinions other than their own and maybe their family’s. I couldn’t help but think how stupid these people were for spending 10 years and their life savings on an invention (that was the general story anyways) without having an intimate understanding of the public opinion about their product.

This same thing can be seen on self-help talk shows like Dr. Phil. I happened to watch an episode were one mother had exhausted all of her family’s savings and credit, and had spent countless years working on an invention that would not sell!

Don’t be like these people, if you have an idea that you think could be a big hit, take the time to ask the market what they really want. This article only showed one method of doing such research (online surveys and PPC advertising). However, depending on your market, there are many other “real life” ways to conduct similar research campaigns.