Many affiliate marketers use the power of Google Adwords to drive targeted traffic to their sales sites. For those who target the right market and keywords will get a lot of qualified buyers from Adwords. But this is not the topic we want to share in this post.
In this post, we will share with you how to use Google Adwords to perform a market research. Adwords is not only powerful as a tool to attract potential buyers, but it’s also powerful to use as a market research tool. You don’t need to spend any money to use the technique described here.
First, in order to use this technique effectively, we assume that you already have a niche that you want to target. If you want to learn the process of identifying your niche online, please read this article: “Online-Business-Journey: Market Research“.
Now, the idea of using Google Adwords as a market research tool is to find out the following important information…
1. How many competitors are currently promoting the niche online?
2. How do they promote the product? What is the sales process?
3. Do they use opt-in form to capture email addresses?
4. Are they a merchant or affiliate?
To find out and analyze the above information, just go to Google and type in a keyword phrase that you want to target in your niche. For example, if you type “back pain relief” (without the quotes), you will see there are many Adwords advertisers appear at top and down the right side of the page.
NOTE: Read this before continue…
When you click on those Adwords ads, the advertisers are paying Google for every click. So, if you’re doing a research, you should be ethical and have a proper moral conduct. Here is the way to click on a paid ad without costing the advertiser… Use RIGHT-clicking instead of left-clicking! Just move your mouse pointer to the title of the ad, RIGHT-click and select “Copy Link Location”. Now open a notepad, right-click and select paste. After you paste in the notepad, look for the website URL. Copy the URL and then paste it into your web browser to view the website. This is the same as clicking on the ad but this one doesn’t cost the owner. So please always exercise a correct moral conduct when doing your market research using other people ads.
Now, use the above method and find out your competitor’s marketing strategy or how they promote the product by visiting their sites. Pay close attention to the following…
* The words they use in their ads. Why do you click on a particular ad over the other? This is very important as one of the secrets of success in using Adwords is to achieve high CTR (click through rate). The higher the CTR, the less money you pay for your PPC ad. If all these sound alien to you, please check the related resources at the end of this page.
* Do they offer a free report in exchage of email address? This is also a very important marketing strategy. Most people don’t buy when they visit your website for the first time. So it’s a smart strategy to offer them something valuable (or something that’s closely related to what they’re looking for) for free. They need to give you their name & email if they want to obtain the free gift. So, you can follow-up with them by sending them email in the future. The email list is a very important asset in your online business. Perhaps you’ve heard of a phrase “the money is in the list”!
There are many things you should take note and analyze. I suggest you subscribe to a few email list and see how do they follow up with their potential customers. All these analyses take time but it’s part of the puzzle in doing a proper market research before jumping in. You will want to assess and understand your competition and learn how to play and compete in the market. This is how a proper market research is done!
Related Resources:
1. How to find hot markets or niches. An excellent site showing you step-by-step how to find and research hot niches.
2. Beating Adwords. A complete guide on how to use and profit from Google Adwords.
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