How to Research Your Business Idea – Entrepreneur.com.

taking some notes from this article – here are my thoughts

lots of ideas are cool, but only a few of them will actually fly. By conducting some very simple research it will be easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Gather:

marketing research is about determining who will use the product or service that you are building, determining how many of those people are out there, and figuring out a way to get in front of them. Ultimately, what we are trying to do is determine if there are enough people in the world that you can reach who will pay you for your product or service. To find that number we need to define them very carefully and cross section all of that data to put together an estimate for a potential market.
right here the article goes a bit blurry, and says that your should research based on what your product or service is. For my type of work I want to form some general assumptions about my customer and then find the number of people who fit that assumption. For instance, the last business idea i wrote out was for the digital business card link (Jiminie, i need a new name for that). After familiarizing yourself with the idea we can come to some general conclusions about the people who might use that. I would assume that they use business cards to make contacts (owners, marketers, salespeople, freelancers to start), want to be reached in multiple ways (digital – chat, url, email, blog  and IRL- phone, fax, mail), have additional information to share (links of interest, resume’s, business reviews, portfolios/samples),  and are too pressed for time,  not technically competent enough or do not have the authority to set up some form of this on their own (brand blog, company blog, whatever). so i need to find out the number of salesmen and women, business owners, marketers, and freelancers who do not have an easy to find public page on a public facing website or who want to present some additional information that is important for a new contact. Now i need to determine how many of those people are early adopters and would be willing to use the service – and how many of those are willing to add something onto their cards instead of the information they currently present. As you can see while i think the idea is cool, it’s going to be a few special people that would use it. Is that set of people large enough for me to make a profit? if the answer is yes, move on to:

Analyze:

There are 4 major vantage points that you should see your product from:

1. company: think of how the product/service will be presented to the end user. this includes features/promises, the ‘personality’ of your brand, and the promises that you intend to fulfill.
2. customer: there are three different customers that you will have to think about, if they are all the same person – you are really lucky OR you’re not doing it right.
   • purchaser – the one writing the check for your product/service
   • influencer – the one who will influence the decision to purchase
   • end user – the actual person who will be using the product or service.
3. competition: again, three types.
   • direct- these people are doing the same thing that you are doing, sign up for their service and see what they do. particularly what they are doing better, write that down and top it. as for what they are doing worse, improve on that immediately. For their marketing, look at any public data they have provided: public talks the ceo has given, associations they belong to, data about their intended customer base that they list on their site, and public postings (blog or whatever) that could lead you to understand who they think their market is – and therefore help you understand who your market is.
   • secondary – these people are doing something similar or could take customers away, take notes as to what they would have to do to compete directly with you and reevaluate that every week/month/quarter, whatever. also watch your customers and see if they are using the product or service as well as yours. if so, ask why and consider incorporating that into your offering.
   • tertiary – they slightly resemble your offering – just keep an eye on them and move them into a secondary position if you start seeing a trend in marketing or customer base that resembles yours
4. collaborators: associations, media and other organizations that do not compete with you or make a profit when you do, but are going after the same customers. Watch what they do and how they market and take cues from the more successful ones. Often you may be able to purchase lists of data about their customers. In the least – look at who they are marketing to and how to determine whether or not there are techniques that seem more successful or data that can help you better estimate your market.