Your required to research your target market and your competitors carefully.

A common misconception is that businessmen who fail simply because they lacked sufficient funding or did not put together the right team. In many cases, new businesses fail because they have not spent enough time on researching their business idea and its financial viability in the market.

There are particular criteria you can use to establish this:

• Does your product or service satisfy or create a market need?
• Can you identify the potential customers?
• Will your product or service outlive any passing trends or capitalise on the trend before it dies away?
• Is your product or service distinct, unique or superior to those offered by competitors?
• What competition will your product or service face - locally, nationally and globally?
• Is the product safe?
• Does your product or service comply with relevant laws and regulations?
• Can you sell the product or service at a price that will give you the sufficient profit?

Market research can play a vital role in answering many of these questions and increasing your chances of growth.

How much research you go through will depend on the time and funds you have available. You could:

• informally canvass the opinion of friends and family
• talk to the industry contacts and colleagues
• survey the public about whether they would use your product or service
• ask the customers of the competing product and what improvements they would like to see
• set up focus groups to test out your product or service
• examine what your competitors are doing
• monitor what has and hasn’t worked in your industry or market niche
• study wider economic and demographic data

The more information you have, the better it will be for you and your business idea growth.

Tags: marketing