The market research that’s bad for business

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Categories: Business Attitude, Marketing Small Business

business research ideasWhen you are starting up your own business and deciding on a particular niche or speciality to focus on (always a good thing to do, BTW!), one of the traps that many small business owners fall in to is searching on the internet for people who do what you want to do already.

Now, of course it’s important to check out your competition.  It can be a useful yard-stick to help you understand price ranges, services to offer and products that sell well.

BUT when that internet searching becomes endless hours of finding more and more websites, all seemingly to be offering a bigger and better service/product that you could even dream about – then STOP!

Worrying about your competition at such an early stage can be damaging to your confidence levels.  In today’s market place it is highly unlikely to “discover” a niche.  You should be more worried that no one is doing what you want to be doing because it generally means there is no demand – but that’s a lesson for another blog posting!

Other articles you may be interested in:

  1. The 5 Marketing Rules for Small Business Owners in 2009
  2. 7 Steps to Attracting New Clients to Your Business
  3. Business Referrals – how do you ask for them?
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5 Responses to “The market research that’s bad for business”

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  1. Helen Lindop
    October 12, 2009 at 9:40 am

    This is a very timely article for me. In creating my website I’ve been looking around the internet for advice and info on how to get get traffic and ‘monetize’ my site, but along the way I’ve stumbled across lots of other site that cover similar ground to mine. It’s hard to not lose confidence when comparing yourself to people who have been in business 2 or 3 years longer than you. So now I’m going to take your advice and stop!

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  2. Lesley-Anne Hornbogen
    October 12, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Great post Karen. Yes it is daunting when you are setting up but if you believe 100% in what you are offering you will succeed. Yes it is useful to see what other sites similar to yours have to offer but you should follow your own instincts. Provide the service you know you can and be proud!

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  3. Adam Moore
    October 12, 2009 at 10:53 am

    Nice post.

    Helen – My advice: do what you love and believe in it. One way or another you’ll get some payback. It is worth looking to see what others are doing and thinking ‘how can I do that better?’. Believe me you’ll find a way to be better and you have the advantage of being brand new – you haven’t made any mistakes yet.

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  4. Alice Elliott
    October 12, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    I have researched lots of sites that seem to be doing the same thing as me, only to realise that they weren’t. Dare I say it, not only what I am offering is different, it’s also a bit better than some of them (well, at least I think so). That is because I am offering my side of the story, and it comes from me and what I believe in, and not just a template or franchise. As long as your properly explore your ‘niche’ and explain/market/promote it to the best of your abilities, then who’s to say it won’t become better than the next person’s?

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  5. Kate Bacon
    October 23, 2009 at 10:02 pm

    A good thing to remember is that even if you have the “same” niche as others you will attract your own individual clients as they will want to work with you as an individual!

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