Market Analysis

In addition to knowing your industry, you also need to know about your market(s).

• Who are your customers?
• What do your customers value most about your product/service?
• Where are your customers?
• What do your customers need?
• What is your customers' purchasing behavior?
• How can you reach your customers with marketing messages?

These are very important questions. Answering them will help you to establish market segments and design methods to reach them. Once again, the Internet can be a wonderful tool to help you address these questions.

Professional associations may also have data on consumer trends. Such data or reports are likely to show consumption patterns for a particular region or even nationally. Professional associations may also provide data about products being sold. However, you are likely to need to find data about a relatively small geographic region. The Internet can help you find key demographic data to help you assess your target market segments.

Once you determine the demographic profile of your potential customers, you must figure out how to reach them with marketing messages. Internet and e-commerce strategies may be very good options. We've listed a few options below.

• Your website can convey important company and product information. The homepage can contain announcements about new products, special promotions, or recipes that incorporate your products.
• An on-line catalog either on your own or on a third-party's website will help you show off your products.
• An on-line shopping cart will allow you to make sales electronically. Depending upon the service you choose, this can be placed on your own site or on a third party's.
• Email notes and newsletters allow you to stay in touch with customers and let them know about promotions, products, and other things.

It is critical to understand your market. Once you have identified the demographics of your market, you can develop keywords for a search engine to attract your target audience to your website.

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