Your Questions Answered

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place you could go that gave you great ideas, that were assured to work?

Well, here’s the next best thing. Follow this strategy, and you’ll be able to discover if there is demand in the market, and you’ll be able to test market new small business ideas before you commit too much time and money.

1. Go To The Google Adwords Research Tool

The Google Adwords Research Tool will show you the number of searches for keyword phrases.

For example, if you wanted to have a small business in the travel industry, you might enter the word “travel”. You’ll get back a long list of keywords relating to that topic. Do any of the keywords Google suggests sound like good business ideas?

Try searching on a range of related keywords, and make a list of any words that sound suitable, and have a high number of monthly searches.

This data will give you a rough idea of the level of demand for your proposed service. If there are a low number of monthly searches relating to your idea - say, less that one hundred - then this indicate a low level of demand. Any keyword with a few thousand searches is potentially a good one.

If there is good demand for your idea, move on to step two.

2.  Run A Short Adwords Campaign To Test The Words

If you haven’t run an Adwords campaign before, Google’s site explains how it all works.

Essentially, you place online ads that will display when a keyword relating to your topic area is searched for in Google. People will click on an ad, and come through to your site, if they’re interested in what you have to offer. Don’t have anything to offer yet?

We’ll get to that in a minute.

3. Create A Site To Collect Leads

Your site doesn’t need to be very big. It could be only one or two pages. The aim is to get people to sign up for an offer, or express an interest.

What if you don’t have anything to offer yet?

Ask people to sign up to a mailing list, so you can mail them when you’re ready to go. Perhaps the offer is to provide some free information, say in the form of an e-book or newsletter. Provide people with something of value, but doesn’t take too much of your time and money to create.  Be sure to read up on Google’s terms and conditions first to make sure your offer complies with their accepted use policy.

Now, it’s unlikely you’ll get too many people signing up, but you only need to run the campaign for a few days to see if there’s some level of interest for what you’re offering, and people are prepared to take action to get more information about it.

If people click on your ad, and sign up for more information, there is likely to be interest in your idea. You could then take this idea further.

If nobody clicks through, this might indicate that there is a lot of competition, there is little interest for your idea, or the text of your offer isn’t enticing enough. Cut the losers. Run with the winners. Repeat.

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