The 4 Killer Questions that Reduce Keyword Research to 30 Minutes or Less

Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 3:50 pm

I have written really complicated documents describing the difference between market research and keyword research. But it never fails to “blow my mind” that the following four Market Research questions seem to be the most helpful and the most controversial guidelines that I keep coming back to with my students.

These are the four questions you must ask if you are to determine well a niche market or niche product within your vertical market will succeed. If you can say “yes” four times than you might as well consider yourself rich. If you can only say yes two times or less, then you will be doing a lot of branding and indirect marketing as you climb you vertical market competition.

Question 1.: Is Your Product or Service Niche a “Painkiller?“

Your product or service is either a painkiller or a vitamin. If something is a vitamin, it is merely “nice to have.” When it is a painkiller, it is more like “I gotta have it now.A “painkiller” is more direct and will result in more direct (now!) sales while vitamins can be discussed and talked about and researched for weeks before a buying decision is made.

Question 2: Is There An “Irrational Passion” that drives this Niche? Yes or No?

This is a great question given to me by my mentor Even Pagan who is one of the best lifestyle psychology marketers in the world. The purpose of this question is to get you to discover if there are existing “fanatics” and “addicts” in your market. These “niche enthusiasts” need to be obsessed with socializing and gossiping about your topic, product, service or theme. If you get a “yes” on this question you are in an excellent niche. An example of an irrational passion can be connected to collector’s items like Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch dolls, but it is not limited to trends or fads. It may also be a group of “raving fans” such as the Apple computer user or Mother’s against drunk drivers. If there is a “cult” or a group of people who spend any part of their spare time discussing a topic, niche, or product, there is likely some sort of irrational passion driving the market.

Question 3: Are they actively searching for this product, service or keyword on the internet?

This question drove me to create a software application that would provide an answer based on knowledge of the other three questions. We created Theme Zoom in order to reveal the number of searches around a topic, theme or keyword. More importantly I did not want the same old basic information provided by any old keyword tool- such as the number of queries and adwords clicks around a keyword. I also wanted the application to reveal the relevance of dozens of long tail keyword related to the larger market segment around a niche or keyword. This requires the use of “natural language processing” and inspired me to design a completely unique keyword tool. In order to adequately answer question number three, you need to look as several factors and keywords around a given topic in order to understand how popular and profitable a niche is.

Question 4: Are there only a few product choices available around the topic or niche market in question?

You know you have hit an opportunistic niche when you see a huge demand or passionate cult-like interest around a topic, but very few products and purchasing options are available. This may seem obvious, but many entrepreneurs forget to look for competing products and services around a given niche, topic or theme.

This is done by simply typing the keyword (or keyword clusters) into the search engines or into applications such as Theme Zoom Krakken in order to look at the competing websites. It is a good idea to look at the products sold by these competing websites in order to make a better product.

If too many companies are offering products and services similar to the ones you are planning, then you need to take measures to improve and distinguish your unique selling proposition. If you are in the affiliate market, you may want to choose another niche or a unique angle. This will be especially true if you do not have superior SEO skills or online affiliate marketing skills than the bulk of the competition.

Asking these 4 million dollar marketing questions can save you hundreds of hours of wasted time and energy that come from barking up the wrong tree, or diving into a low-demand overpopulated niche market segment.

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Russell Wright is the co-creator of http://www.themezoom.com which is a natural language processing keyword research application.

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