Smart online marketers know that asking the right questions is the most important aspect of establishing your expertise in a successful niche. Let’s say your niche is “how to avoid foreclosure on your home.”
The tendency is to jump ahead of your prospects and give them information on loan consolidation or credit protection. Those are major issues, but not the only issues. If you aren’t sure what kind of questions people facing foreclosure ask, get into forums on that topic and pay attention to what solutions they need.
Talk to anyone you know who’s facing this problem. Then ask yourself these basics (regardless of the niche topic):
• Are the immediate concerns personal or financial?
• What are the emotional issues?
• What happens next?
• What are creative, non-traditional ways to approach the problem?
• What products or services does a person in this situation need or want?
Notice how these “personal impact” questions take your thinking processes beyond the usual information “how to” ideas. That’s because each of these questions represents a potential information product, video “how to” and affiliate product that takes a different twist than the generic options.
You can also use the contrary approach. Information products tend to show what happens when the buyer follows the advice. Some viewers will read your sales letter and dismiss it saying, “So what if I don’t follow that advice?”
Show them what happens by preparing an information product that explains the worst-case scenario or the less than ideal situation. Then wrap up the final pages by pitching how to change this for the better with the positive spin version.
Other questions that you can use as idea starters for product development are:
• At what point is the buyer likely to get stuck or frustrated implementing the system?
• What skills need to be improved to use this knowledge to move to higher level of profits?
• What are the biggest obstacles to success for a newcomer to this system?
• How to you want the buyer to feel after using (implementing, reading) this product?
And the final, critically important question is: What do you want buyers to say in recommending your product? If you want them to say, it’s simple, concise, sophisticated or worthwhile then make sure you build those features into the product and highlight them in your sales copy.
