Startups Stack Exchange Archive

Determine demand for a specific product or service

• posted by: Kozuch on 2015-07-09
• tagged: marketing, market-research, market-size
• score: 3

Say I have a (business) idea and want to create a product. I may want to create that certain product because I have skills to do it. Is there a way to check whether there actually is a broader demand for that product other than asking my friends? Maybe a specialized (marketing?) company that would do some market research for me and ask my potential customers in the industry that my product falls into?

Answer 5709

• posted by: Cason on 2015-07-11
• score: 2

You can take the google keyword searches for your product / service per month (via Adwords) and multiply it by avg cost of competitions product or service.

IE - 500 searches for widgets & competition sells widgets @ $10 each - the monthly market potential can be up to $5,000. But the conversion for searches to sales is much lower (ranges for me : 5-15%)

However, you need to gauge the feasibility as well before investing into a new venture.

You can gauge execution of a business idea with several factors : market size, market demand, your competitions, your customer, timing, and cost.

Market size :

• Who are you selling to?
• How big is the market monetarily?

Market Demand :

• Google keyword search - Build a dummy adwords account
• What are your potential customers using instead of your product

Your Competition :

• Who is your competition?
• What is the yearly revenues? Costs?
• What advantages do you have over them?
• What advantages they have?
• Avg cost of product or service they sell

Your Customer :

• Create an avatar for your idea customer and build the demographic information behind that avatar
• How much do they spend vs how much would they spend?
• When and where they buy?

Timing

• How long will it take your to build product or service
• How long does the transaction take – more expensive slower conversions

Cost

• What is your cost to make? If you are making it (what would your hourly wages be, if someone paid you)
• What needs to be purchased, acquired, leased to start your business (Refer to Lean startup for some incite)

Answer 5710

• posted by: AllenXactXchange on 2015-07-11
• score: 1

Actually the people closest to you have been found to give you more insight. Approach random people in the mall or wherever and start marking your own research study. You can go to different parts of town and see different age groups, ethnicity, etc. Remember a big misconception with start ups is using the Internet as your main source for data or investments. It’s really easier until you’re no longer considered a start up that online will take you where u want to be. But yes Google analytics, etc. Will give you good demographics as well as Web hosting and cloud services.

Answer 5699

• posted by: Denis de Bernardy on 2015-07-10
• score: 0

Google’s keyword research tool often is a good proxy. Throw in a few search queries related to the problem you’re solving, and see what comes out.

A few related threads:

https://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/3394/market-research-website

https://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/5378/market-research-and-gauging-sales-for-games

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