The Busy Marketer's Guide to Covert Niche Intelligence

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The Simple 4-Step Niche Research System For Getting Your Finger On Your Market's Pulse In 30 Minutes Or Less

by Chris Custer

The Busy Marketer's Guide to Covert Niche Intelligence

© 2011 Bighorn Marketing. All Rights Reserved. Page 2

Introduction There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who love to research niches. And those who don't.

Well no matter which group you fall into, it's gotta be done if you want to really connect with your market in an authentic way.

The good news is you can knock most of it out in about 30 minutes or less. If you follow a simple point-and-click system.

The goal of this brief report is to walk you through exactly what I do to understand a market fast.

I'm not interested at this stage in becoming an expert. I don't care about knowing everything there is to know about the market yet.

I just want to find out where the pulse is and get my finger on it. Deeper knowledge will come with time.

The cool thing about this system is it gets you exactly what you need to know right now so you can go ahead and start putting a marketing strategy together...

...without wasting hours or days floundering around trying to "find" the market.

But before we dive in, a couple of caveats...

First, this is a down and dirty guide showing you A system not THE system. There's no ONE way to do this stuff. This is just my way, and it works.

Second, I'm going to assume you understand some of the basics of IM such as using the Google Keyword Tool. So I won't waste your time coving super basic stuff.



If I talk about something or reference a tool that you don't understand, go find a tutorial on YouTube. I guarantee there's at least one.

Ok that's it. I'm going to keep this brief and ACTION-FOCUSED. And maybe even a little fun. :-)

Let's go...

Step 1 - Google Keyword Tool Head on over to the Google Keyword Tool and enter in your main phrase. This needs to be a one or two word phrase.

You want your keyword to be a "top level" keyword.

For instance, if you're going into the "model trains" niche, your top level keyword would be "model trains" NOT "trains" or "model train sets."

Ok so look at the results.

If you've ever played around with the Google Keyword Tool, then you know you can sort the columns by clicking on the column heading, such as "Competition" or "Monthly Searches."

Well for right now, don't sort. That's because the default sorting is based on relevance in Google's eyes.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal



In other words, if you were to build a site on "model trains" the first 10 or so keywords are the most relevant that Google would want to see on your site.

This is extremely insightful data. Make note of it.

So with our example, "model trains," you see some of the top terms are

model train stuff ho model trains walthers model trains model train stores

What you want to do is pick 3 terms out of the top 10 you think are most relevant. So for instance I might pick

model trains model train stuff model train layouts

In the next step we're going to use these to get a sense of who the competition is.



Ok so that's it for Step One. We've uncovered some of the top keywords in our niche. Now we need to see who the "Big Dogs" in the market are and leverage the research they've already done.

Step 2 - Identify the "Big Dogs" Before we dive off into this step, I recommend you use Firefox as your browser and install a plugin called SEOQuake. Basically SEOQuake is going to let you very quickly see some important data such as what each site's PageRank is, the number of inbound links it has, it's Alexa ranking and more.

So keeping with the "model train" niche, I enter that term into Google and see who pops up.

Sidebar Tip

If you don't have a niche idea in mind, the keyword tool is a great place to brainstorm.

If you use the categories on the left, you can uncover some really cool niche ideas. Amazon is a great place for brainstorming too (but we'll get into that a little bit more later).



We're not really looking for the competition exactly. What we're really looking for are the major players - the authority sites that are getting the lion's share of the traffic in our niche.

We may or may not compete directly later with these sites. The important thing is these are sites that already are attracting and interacting with the people we want to get to know.

When I run a search for "model trains" (without the quotes), here's what I get:

What I'm looking for are sites with good PageRank (4 or higher) that are "niche-specific."

What I mean by that is I'm going to avoid general hobby sites. I want model-train-specific sites.

One site that immediately jumps out at me is DiscountTrainsOnline.com.

If you'll notice, they have a PageRank of 4, almost 50 thousand backlinks, and an Alexa Ranking of 740,380.



(Now the Alexa ranking I think is a little misleading. I'm not sure how many people in the model train market are using the Alexa toolbar. So I'm taking that number with a grain of salt.)

What I do know is the site is a PR4 site and is ranking in the top 3 for a main keyword that gets 450,000 searches a month.

The site's getting a TON of traffic. Bank on it.

Next what we want to do is visit the site and look for the "4 P's":

o Products o Prices o Phrases o Positioning

Remember, we're looking to understand the model train market, how it thinks, what it responds to, etc.

One of the fastest ways to do that is to see how the top competitors are interacting with the market.

It's like legally stealing their market research.

So let's take a look at DiscountTrainsOnline.com and see what we can find out.



Ok so basically this site is an ecommerce site. Pretty good for getting a sense of the type of products people are buying.

We can also get keyword ideas. But the main thing you want to see is what products are being offered, the price, phrases used to sell them and how they are being positioned.

Do this with 5-10 of the authority sites you got from the search results.

Sidebar Tip

A fantastic way to manage all the notes you're collecting through this research is with Evernote.com, a free web clipping/note taking software. What's really cool about it is they have a web version, desktop version, and mobile version. And they all sync with one another. And it won't cost you a single shiny penny. I highly recommend it.



Next we need to see who is visiting these sites. And for that, we need to go to Step Three.

Step 3 - Identify the "Eyeballs" Go to Quantcast.com. It won't cost you a cent and you don't have to register. Just enter the main domain of one of the authority sites you found in the last step.

So let's put in Discounttrainsonline.com. Here's what we get...

http://www.quantcast.com/



So you can see that the average visitor to discounttrainsonline.com is:

• A middle-aged Caucasian male • who has no kids and has a modest income

What does this tell you?

The first thing that jumps out to me is this is a hobby market where the people are essentially interested in toys. But they don't have kids. But there's a pretty good chance these people DON'T view model trains as toys.

Plus they live on a modest income - likely have a lot of other bills and expenses - and yet will plunk down $300 for a new train set.

Translation: this is a market of passionate people who take their hobby very seriously and dedicate a significant amount of their discretionary income on model trains.

Think I'm pretty close? Maybe. It's a good working theory. But it's just a theory at this point. And that's all you really need. That's what you're looking for. A starting place.

The picture will become a lot clear and more detailed the better you get to know the market.

Make sense? Good.

What I do is take that data and enter it into a spreadsheet. I do this with each of the top 5-10 sites I found.

Once I've done that, I have a pretty good general idea of the demographics.



Step 4 - Google Ad Planner The fourth and final stop for us is Google Ad Planner.

Now there's a ton you can do on this site, mainly if you're doing banner advertising.

For our purposes right now, we're going to key in on one piece of important data Ad Planner gives you - "Sites Also Visited."

Enter in one of the domains from your list. When I entered discounttrainsonline.com, I didn't get much. It happens.

Just pick another (bigger) authority site. I chose trains.com.

You'll see demographic data similar to Quantcast (which I think is a bit more accurate). But just below that you'll see "Sites also visited."

http://www.google.com/adplanner/



What I'm looking for here are forums, blogs, and news sites. Basically interactive sites where the market is hanging out. Do you see the power of this?

Yes, you could go to Google and type in something like "model trains forums." And you should. But what Ad Planner is giving you are specific sites visitors of the authority site are going to.

Keep in mind, Ad Planner is for people wanting to place ads. So Google is helping you see WHERE the market is hanging out.

Awesome stuff.

So what do you do with this info? Go hang out. Read what the market is reading, join the conversations, get in their skin.

This is going to help you seriously fast-track your knowledge of the market, it's hot buttons, it's lingo, it's pleasures and it's pains.

Vital stuff if you want to connect with them in your marketing.

Summary There you have it. The simple 4-step niche research system for getting your finger on your market's pulse in 30 minutes or less.

First we covered finding your top keywords using the Google Keyword Tool. Then we used those to find a handful of authority sites in our market.

Then we found out the demographics of the people visiting those authority sites. And finally we uncovered some tightly related sites the market also visits.

As I said in the intro, this isn't the only way to grasp a market. And you shouldn't stop here.

This is just a fast way I've found works for getting me a 50,000 foot view of the market pretty darn quick.



But it only works if you do it. So go ahead and dive in. Don't over-think it. Just do it. It works.

Rock it out!

Chris Chris Custer

P.S. Now that you know how to quickly research a market, take the next step and...

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The Busy Marketer's Guide to Covert Niche Intelligence