How many times have you thought of an idea and said to yourself “I need to start a business around this!”? But you start and stop, sit and stew, or just do nothing. A lot of time we focus on how we are going to execute the idea rather that WHAT the idea is. Or if its even a valid one.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the weeds of how you plan on implementing your idea. Where you’re going to sell. What website you need to make. What the logo is going to look like.

But you’re more than likely forgetting a key step: Is this something that people are willing to pay for?

Your Baby

You need to sit down and specify who you’re wanting to sell to. Specifically, your goal is to finish this sentence:

“Oh, me? I help __________ to __(single group of people)__ which saves them a lot of time and money.”

if you’re doing services or  

“I sell __________ to _(single group of people)_.”

If you’re selling products

You’re then going to fill in the blank of one thing you do to a single group of people that helps them save time and money.

As a business owner, you’re going to need clients and customers. These are the people who are going to buy your idea from you. There really isn’t any way around it. You can’t operate on zero sales. Who doesn’t like sales?

We need to shift our mindset and take a hard look at our own product and idea and scrutinize it. Are we holding onto that idea or product because its “MY BABY!”? Yes, it’s your idea, but let’s take the time to do a little research to see if its a valid idea. Don’t be shy to modify and adapt. We’re going to do a little Market Research.

Market Research is a tool that will guide you to identifying EXACTLY who is willing to buy what you’re selling. Market research will help you find that group of people that your product may be interesting to. I generally break market research (finding and researching your customers) into two sub tasks; finding customers and reaching customers.

You’re going to want to do what is called “market research” to help validate your idea

1. Who, specifically, are you going to be facing (niche, market, clients, customers)
2. What is the problem that you’re hearing the most often
3. What are they willing to pay
4. Is it sustainable
5. Where do they hang out

I talk with Patrick Selby about how he focused on the “What” with a few pointers and what he learned from his mistakes. Check out FHS 19: http://freelancerheadstart.com/fhs-19-market-research-building-product/

Finding your customers, what their pain-points are, and understanding the value of your services is going to give you that head start that you’re looking for. It’s going to help get you out of that feeling stuck mode.

Finding and researching your customers is a shortcut to having people pay for whatever you’re selling. You’re able to accurately know what your customers and clients are willing to buy.

Finding Customers/Clients

That “group of people” piece from up above is now your identified customers and clients. Now we’re going to start identifying where your market lives.

The main tools that I personally use is Reddit.com, Meetup.com, and LinkedIn.com. This is the first step to finding and researching your customers.

Now that you know where your customers are, you can then start to research what you’re trying to sell them. You want to validate what you THINK they want to buy to what they are REALLY willing to buy. This is the second part of finding and researching your customers.

http://www.Reddit.com

Reddit is a forum style website that has millions of users and thousands of communities. One of these communities are going to be exactly your client base. On Reddit’s homepage in the upper right corner, you can search for what’s called subreddits. These are the specific communities where your clients and customers live. Within a few days or hours of using Reddit, you’re be able to identify at least 3-5 subreddits that focus on your niche. This may be one of the easiest places you’ll use when finding and researching your customers.

http://www.meetup.com

Meetup.com is a site that lists communities that line up with who your customers are. You can even find people who have similar tastes, ideas, or industries. Let’s say you’re that web developer that wants to find non-profit animal shelters. You could search “animal adoption drives” or “animal lovers of Atlanta” to find people who have similar interests. Then you can hone in on where and when they congregate. There are dozens of topics or groups or industries that meet all over the world and the States.

http://www.LinkedIn.com

You can think of LinkedIn as a social network for professionals. You can join specific communities within LinkedIn, connect with similar professionals, or target specific people in specific companies. LinkedIn has a very extensive search option that lets you find almost exactly who you’re looking for. You can pay for their premium level account and open up even more options for finding that specific client or audience.

Don’t be downhearted if you think you’re taking a while finding and researching your customers. What you’re actually doing is refining your niche and zeroing in on your customers and clients. I would honestly spend about 40-60 hours of effort to find and research your customers, and in turn, your product. If you can understand what your audience is thinking, what their pains are, and a way to help, you’re ready to position yourself as the expert!

Set Your Milestones

You may have a vague idea of what you’d like to accomplish with your product or service. And count that as good enough. But, each goal needs a plan, or it’s just a wish.

Once you’ve settled on WHAT you are going to be selling and to WHO, you can then slowly look at the vehicle to make it happen. It should be easier now because you know where your customers live, play, work, etc. You’ve gotten over one of the more difficult parts; now focus on getting your things in the hands of your customers/clients.

Create goals and milestones for yourself that can help you gauge if your idea and delivery methods are working. Don’t be afraid to change course when you realize something isn’t working. Your goals should have a something that is measurable behind it.

Say you want to sell T-shirts to concert attendees to a specific band. With your market research, you should have an idea on where those fans hang out (online, offline, conferences, etc) and you’ll be able to target them. Keep track of the performance of your sales when you sell in person, online, through 3rd party, etc. From those metrics, you’ll be able to refine HOW you are going to sell your products.

Now, this is a basic example but you can essentially track everything about your product and its performance. The HOW part. Eventually, you’ll find out a rhythm to what you’re doing and find that sweet spot.

Don’t forget, each goal needs to have a plan on how you’re going to achieve the goal and what ‘success’ will look like. One method in creating and achieving goals is the S.M.A.R.T. method.   

Focus on WHAT then HOW

Your product or service may go through many revisions before you will find if have an audience. Focusing on getting a product created and delivered before you even know if people will care will lose you a lot of time and money. Focus on the WHAT first; will people actually care about what i am offering?

If you find that the answer is “Yes”, THEN focus on How to deliver.

The post FHS 21 Figuring out the “WHAT” appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

As a business owner, you’re going to need clients and customers. There really isn’t any way around it. You can’t operate a business on zero sales. Market research is a tool that will guide you to identifying EXACTLY who is willing to buy what you’re selling. The difficulty for most people is actually finding that group of people. I generally break market research (finding and researching your customers) into two sub tasks; finding customers and reaching customers.

You’re going to want to do what is called “market research”

1. Who, specifically, are you going to be facing (niche, market, clients, customers)
2. What is the problem that you’re hearing the most often
3. What are they willing to pay
4. Is it sustainable
5. Where do they hang out

Finding your customers, what their pain-points, and understanding the value of your services is going to give you that head start that you’re looking for.

Finding and researching your customers is a shortcut to having people pay for whatever you’re selling. You’re able to accurately know what your customers and clients are willing to buy.

Finding Customers/Clients

If you’ve already identified your industry where you’re wanting to plant your flag, then you’ve already made an awesome head start. If not, then you need to sit down and specify who you’re wanting to sell to. Specifically, you want to finish this sentence: “Oh, me? I help __________ to _________ which saves them a lot of time and money.” You’re then going to fill in the blank of one thing you do to a single group of people that helps them save time and money.

That “group of people” piece is now your identified customers and clients. Now we’re going to start identifying where your market lives.

The main tools that I personally use is Reddit.com, Meetup.com, and LinkedIn.com. This is the first step to finding and researching your customers.

http://www.Reddit.com

Reddit is a forum style website that has millions of users and thousands of communities. One of these communities are going to be exactly your client base. On Reddit’s homepage in the upper right corner, you can search for what’s called subreddits. These are the specific communities where your clients and customers live. For example, if you were a web developer who works with non-profit animal shelters, you would want to more than likely search for the ‘animal shelter’ subreddit. Within a few days or hours of using Reddit, you’re be able to identify at least 3-5 subreddits that focus on your niche. This may be one of the easiest places you’ll use when finding and researching your customers.

http://www.meetup.com

Meetup.com is a site that lists communities that line up with who your customers are. You can even find people who have similar tastes, ideas, or industries. Let’s say you’re that web developer that wants to find non-profit animal shelters. You could search “animal adoption drives” or “animal lovers of Atlanta” to find people who have similar interests. Then you can hone in on where and when they congregate. There are dozens of topics or groups or industries that meet all over the world and the States.

http://www.LinkedIn.com

You can think of LinkedIn as a social network for professionals. You can join specific communities within LinkedIn, connect with similar professionals, or target specific people in specific companies. LinkedIn has a very extensive search option that lets you find almost exactly who you’re looking for. You can pay for their premium level account and open up even more options for finding that specific client or audience. 

Other locations where you’re going to find customers include…

• http://www.hunter.io Hunter.io is a researching site that lets you know emails of companies. If you already have a name of someone in a company, you can grab their email address.
• http://www.slack.com – You can join a Slack channel specific to your targeted industry and jump in on the conversation
• Referrals – If you’ve already worked for/with (including professors) someone TELL them that you’d love for them to refer you in the future. Be specific about what type of client you’d like to be referred to.
• Networking Face-to-Face – Go to free trade shows or join an organization that has your target clients. It’s gonna take some practice doing face-to-face conversations, so don’t feel like you’ve failed your first time out.
• Guest Posts – Contact blogs that you follow and offer to guest post. It’s a win-win for both as you get to show what you can do and they get additional content. Finding and researching your customers may become easier after guest posting because they will start coming to you.
• Contact people/organizations/business direct – Use LinkedIn to search for people in a particular field or matches your criteria. Use your local Chamber of Commerce to find companies in your area or demographics. Heck, even looking at Google search results for contact information may work.

Researching Customers/Clients

Now that you know where your customers are, you can then start to research what you’re trying to sell them. You want to validate what you THINK they want to buy to what they are REALLY willing to buy. This is the second part of finding and researching your customers.

http://www.surveymonkey.com

Send out a quick survey to people that you’ve met or collected. Its a lot more effective if you have a phone conversation and talk to your person you are surveying. You can have notes, follow up questions, and get on a personal level with your audience. This does take a lot more time, but you’re able to have a more effective outcome.

https://trends.google.com/trends/

Want to see what is trending right now on Google and compare that with other things? You can use Google Trends to find keywords that are popular within your country/region. You can also see how long that trend word has been popular. Remember “Snuggies”? You can now know what the trend for that search term would be.

Social Media

Get onto Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to search for what you’re attempting to offer. Pay attention to what people are talking about and don’t be afraid to jump in! You can always ask questions about specific topics. After a while, you’ll be able to read between the lines.

Other places you can go to research include…

• http://www.reddit.com Sub-Reddits specific to your industry
• https://stackexchange.com/ – A list of communities where people ask specific questions. Perfect for collecting common, popular, and hot problems.
• https://feedly.com/i/welcome – Feedly is an aggregator of websites that funnels everything into a single dashboard. You can subscribe to a bunch of websites that give you up to date content that you can consume in a single location. You will get a better understanding of what is commonly being said across your industry.
• Mailing list – Create or join a mailing list to collectively gather people who will be your potential clients/customers. You can then interact with this gold mine to get ideas or questions answered.
• Conferences/Tradeshows – You can’t beat the ‘heard it from the horse’s mouth’ effect. Hit the pavement and attend shows or conferences that are specific to your niche. You’ll be able to rub elbows with your clients and get a direct quote of what their problems may be.

Conclusion

Don’t be downhearted if you think you’re taking a while finding and researching your customers. What you’re actually doing is refining your niche and zeroing in on your customers and clients. I would honestly spend about 40-60 hours of effort to find and research your  customers. If you can understand what your audience is thinking, what their pains are, and a way to help, you’re ready to position yourself as the expert! The next step is to then register yourself to make sure you’re legally covered.

The post FHS 2: Finding and Researching Your Customers appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.