Understanding what your market wants, what they will spend money on versus what they need, but will not spend money on is a critical skill to learn as an information product marketer.
In a way, its tough because it means putting aside our own beliefs of what a market will want giving precedence to the evidence that is often available for what your market is willing to pay for.
Here’s a very good example from a recent forum entry I weighed in on.
A question was listed asking about developing an e-book around a course for college students to perform better in school.
Think back, when you attended school, were you looking for books that would help you improve studying, exams, or any aspect of school?
I wasn’t – that’s the last thing I wanted.
Everything I spent money on was outside of school – fun stuff, trendy stuff.
So – if you wanted to target the student crowd, you most likely will do it with something fitting into trends with college students (Example – think mp3 players, social networking sites, dating…)
Its one of the classic arguments – they may need help with school, but they want other things
Finally, I ended with this advice – should you consider the student population at all in terms of a market for information products. Here’s why I ask.
A good market for building your information product marketing business holds potential for spending greater and greater amounts of money with you. As you build a relationship with your market, you want to be able to scale your business by offering them cross-sell (other products and services) and upsells (higher-end products and services) to build the lifetime value of your customer and profits of your infoproduct marketing business.
Will college students present an opportunity to scale your profits? Perhaps, but it certainly would be something I would consider strongly before approaching this market.
Visit our exclusive Information Marketer’s Zone for a complete system and tools to develope your own information product marketing empire.
