Delivering What the Digital Audience Craves

Understanding Your Market

While the internet's audience is so diverse that virtually any topic will find its audience, identifying that audience may not be straightforward. Suppose you have a knack for writing, a wealth of experience to draw from, or the ability to research a specific topic thoroughly. In that case, you might consider a different approach to creating an information product. Instead of deciding on a topic, writing about it, and then seeking an interested audience, why not research the market first? Identify what people want to read about before creating an information product to meet that need. This approach ensures that your market exists before you start writing, allows you to understand your audience and their needs, and enables you to create a highly relevant information product that meets those needs.

The Power of Keywords

A few weeks ago, I purchased Web Position Gold, intending to create doorway pages that would rank well with search engines and drive traffic to my site. I decided to follow the instructions, which began with targeting keywords that people would likely use to find the type of products or services I offer. This led me to the "Choosing Keywords" topic, which emphasized the importance of selecting the right keywords to increase traffic. The best way to do this, it suggested, was to stop guessing and actually see what people are searching for. I followed this advice and tried the keyword generator service they recommended.

Uncovering a Niche Market

Initially, my goal was to generate a list of relevant keywords for my site to target with doorway pages. I signed up for a one-day membership with Word Tracker and ended up with hundreds of potential keywords, all of which were actual search terms entered by users over the past 60 days. While all the expected keywords were there, I discovered some keywords at the top of the list for each search engine that I hadn't thought to target, and neither had my competitors.

The revelation was discovering a subject matter sought by a significant segment of my market but largely ignored by me and my competition. I had discovered a niche market. The subject matter involved is very specific and narrow. It is a simple matter for me to research this subject and create an information product to meet this demand.

Reaching Your Market

Once I've created my information product, I can reach my market by using the same keywords that I know people are entering to find my product, create doorway pages for those keywords, and voila! I have a targeted information product for a targeted niche market. My market may not number in the thousands every month, only the hundreds. But of those hundreds, a significant proportion are highly motivated to purchase my product because, as the above analysis shows, they have a need that is currently not being met.

Conclusion

Targeting your niche means narrowing your focus, devoting your energies towards a smaller but more highly targeted market. What you lack in terms of sheer numbers of prospects you will more than make up for on your bottom line. So, start with a broad subject matter that you know something about or that interests you enough that you can acquire the requisite knowledge within a relatively short period of time. Follow the steps that I went through with the keyword generator and see if, like me, you can identify a niche market that is underserviced. If so, create an information product that satisfies that unmet need and promote it by targeting the very same keywords that you used to identify the niche in the first place.