Many experts enhance their product offerings with high quality services. Regardless of what you make available to your market, you need to take one very important step.

Before you invest time, money or effort into product development make sure you understand the needs of your market. You must have enough information to address these needs. The more you know the more focused you will be on what solutions you create by way of products and services.

Pay attention to what your customers/clients are asking for. You can determine what your market wants by studying your own market, studying your competitors’ products and services and what your competitors’ customers are buying; and…. by asking.

The more you know, the more targeted your approach to development and delivery of products and services; this equates to higher revenues and higher profit margins.

A well constructed survey will reveal a great deal. There are several types of surveys you can use. Here are just a few; multiple choice, yes/no, open ended questions, one question surveys, and opinion based surveys (to name just a few). You can conduct a “name required” survey or one that is completely anonymous.

Often, respondents will be more frank and honest with the anonymous survey; people tend to not hold back if they are not identified.

The greatest benefit of surveys is that you know what to do before investing a lot of time or money developing products and services that may not be what your market wants or is willing to pay for.

Survey results give you fodder for articles, media releases, blog postings, and products and services based on what your market wants.

Unfortunately, many professionals spend incredible amounts of time in development based on what they THINK the market wants rather than what they DO want. Survey, survey, survey. This is the magic word.

What is your markets most challenging problems, their pain points; what drives them?

Knowing what is “hot” at any given time is simply a matter of researching your market.

Find out what motivates your prospects. For some it will be a high sense of values, for others it will be money, or status, or love. There are universal drives that are common to humans, and we all prefer one or two of them over others. If you’re not familiar with these, do some self-assessments on yourself to discover what your own preferences are. That will make it easier for you to identify and understand motivators in others.

Join Kathleen Gage for a FR*EE teleseminar – How to Gain Massive Visibility Online with Little or No Money. December 17th at 10 a.m. Pacific.

Kathleen Gage