A few weeks ago I was watching my 7 year old nephew Joel drawing a picture of a strawberry field.
As I drew, it began to look more and more like a Christmas wreath than a piece of strawberries. I told him it looked pretty good, but suggested that “maybe you could put some strawberries here, here and here” as he pointed to the large white area in the center of his drawing.
He looked at me seriously and said …
“Grandpa, it doesn’t matter what YOU think, that’s what the artist thinks!”
It was fun at the time, but I thought about it a lot.
You know what? He is right!
There is a great lesson to be learned here. The lesson applies very well to Internet marketing. In fact, it applies well to ANY type of marketing, it doesn’t necessarily have to be on the internet.
We tend to have an idea that we think is best after sliced bread. We are absolutely convinced that everyone will make their way to our door to purchase our product. We spend a lot of money to develop a sales campaign, create a website, buy advertising, etc., and we spend a lot of time and effort attracting people to our website, getting high rankings in search engines, and more. Sometimes we are disappointed that very few people buy our products.
Could it be that the market doesn’t care about our opinion?
Is it bad for your ego? Should not. It should open your eyes to this very simple, yet extremely profound truth.
NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK, IT IS IMPORTANT WHAT THE MARKET THINKS!
Large companies spend millions of dollars on market research, testing, and surveys before spending money on product development or marketing. Doesn’t it make sense that before we spend a penny on any kind of product development, website development, or whatever, we should take some time to find out what people are buying, when they buy, and how they buy?
If you do proper research beforehand, you will save a lot of time and effort and will be rewarded many times over by successful and profitable websites. Finding profitable “niches” is not a difficult process, but it can make a difference in the world whether your website will be a huge success or a sad failure.
When considering what kind of websites you will create, keep in mind the lesson a 7-year-old learned.