After you have created a list of possible business opportunities, you need to verify that against market demands. Because if there is no market for your possible product, then your efforts would be entirely wasted. Market research can be done both online and offline. Though online method are fully sufficient to find you a profitable niche, offline methods too can provide you with new ideas and possible niches.
For offline research you can use newspaper, magazines, tv and radio. We want to use every possible method to know problems and desires people have. Whenever your business caters to already existing problem, you already have the hungry market.
Newspapers: Newspaper is a great resource for you research. It tells you about new trends and demands, it you wanted or situation vacant advertisement. It tells about the available courses and their outcome. It brings you the changes in government policies. It outlines the hot products.
Newspapers often conduct surveys on various topics. Study them and note down the trends. Also look for the list of bestsellers that they regularly publish. This will tell you what people are buying. Almost all newspapers run a question and answer column where people can ask the questions. Note down about the problems people have. Whatever your read, think whether you can fill any gap. See if you can compliment an existing business or create a new one to answer their problems.
Magazines : Magazines are more specific, more focused on a specific niche. They cater to lesser number of people but they are quite interested in the subject and contents of the magazine. They are quite targeted audience and if you could fill in a gap or provide an alternative, you are bound to succeed. For example if you look to start a business in health niche, you would need to have a look at health magazines. Note down the features of regularly published articles and the problem they address. Is it on weight loss, osteoarthritis or backpain or—– and so on.
Similar exercise can be done with the magazines in other niche sections.
Radio & TV: Both radio and tv are powerful media for studying the market. Listen and watch the commercials, announcement of new features. There are several interactive interviews and discussions. Focus on what people are asking.
In nutshell we want to know what people are asking!
We have used offline methods for this. Next we would use online methods.
Till Then.
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