Every business that starts is started with the belief that somewhere, out there, someone will be interested in buying that product or booking that service. Sometimes, the person at the helm of such an initiative will be right. Sometimes, they will be wrong, which will harm the chances of that business from ever succeeding past step one.
It’s important to note that you don’t have to have the most innovative idea or a brand new invention to sell in order to make yourself relevant as a firm. Sometimes, just performing a service well in a given area with the right balance of competition is enough to justify your firm’s existence. For instance, there are many similar hair salons within a five-mile radius of a major city, but the understanding is there’ll be enough people in each area to support those businesses as necessary, and some may offer treatment you cannot find elsewhere.
But how can you go about identifying a promising business opportunity or market in the first place? One that might encourage you take a risk, pivot direction, or start a business to begin with? In this post, we’ll discuss that approach and more:
Perform Competent Market Research
Essential market research is a crucial part of any brand’s capacity to understand exactly where, when and why they’re operating. It can help you determine which brands you’re competing against, what consumers are looking for in that space, what the recent developments are, and where you may fit into that changing market. Remember that while there are general strategies, it's often best to tailor your approach to whichever field you are currently operating in. For example, one sector that is growing is the healthcare sector, and you can Discover insights from a leading healthcare market research agency to determine what your best approach should be if that is your area of operation.
It’s important to recognize that market research should always consider the present and future trends of a market and how it’s changing, but also use its history to provide context towards that. Market research can be as simple as determining what people think of your logo via surveys and other outreach measures, or it can mean determining the turnover of the five biggest companies providing a similar services in your region.
Ultimately, market research cannot determine exactly the answers you’re looking for, which is ‘will my approach work in this context?’ - but it can certainly provide you with the guidance on the way towards answering those questions.
Market research can also lead you to draw conclusions - such as who might be the ideal consumer for this product I hope to sell? Where do gaps in the market exist? And what hasn’t been tried in this space before?
Consider Competitors
Your competitors will always be the yardstick by wish you measure your own progress. This isn’t to say that you should use them to determine every decision you make, or that you should follow them. But not knowing who they are or how they’re operating can be just as bad as trying to emulate them without question.
After all, look at how many established automotive manufacturers are now looking to firms like Tesla to consider how the future of the industry might be shaped. You can never be too big to avoid paying heed to your competitors.
Spotting an opportunity can be achieved via this method, too. After all, if you notice what your competitors are doing, you notice what your theoretical competitors may be missing out on. Think of how Uber’s market researchers noted that almost no large taxi brands were using apps to make the convenience of the smartphone market align with the need to quickly book a cab. Often, spotting the spaces between actualised entities is the most helpful way in which to contextualize your own opportunity.
Unique Selling Points
Of course, unique selling points will almost always provide some worth to that which you have to offer, as a non-replicable valuable property that others can appreciate will give you more to stand on. This can be had even if the large scope of your business is relatively derivative but done well.
For instance, think of how Pepsi, often considered very similar to Coca-Cola, managed to distinguish itself in the market. Not only was it slightly cheaper, but provided easy beverage drink solutions that could be bought in bulk for restaurants to use, and marketing techniques like the ‘Pepsi challenge’ added one of the first viral marketing strategies in the 70s to enhance its ‘clout’ in the market.
As you can see, with smart consideration, even similar or seemingly derivative products can provide their own unique value. Identifying that through and through can help you see if you can compete, and to what extent.
Future Industries
The industries of today will change and shape as times move on. No industry stays the same forever, and the advent of technological growth has created massive worldwide markets that didn’t exist before.
Think of the SEO industry, a marketing niche totally dedicated to lifting the search ranking results of companies that use those service through various means. Without search engines, this wouldn’t exist. As cannabis legalisation has swept through the United States, cannabis extraction companies have started to flourish pursuant to a range of profitable and useful purposes.
In other words - don’t expect the norms of today to remain the norms of tomorrow. The world is too nuanced and developing too quickly for that. Often, the people who can predict where those trends will end up are those that can take the foremost step in actualizing that trend.
How Will Its Branding Work?
Sometimes, it’s not what you sell, but how you sell it, and what impact that has. Even the most useful service or practical product in the world will struggle to perform as well as it could have with good branding and outreach marketing. For this reason, any business opportunity you see is also a branding opportunity.
Keeping that in mind can help you understand the culture surrounding what you hope to sell, how the market defines that, and what the reaction might be. Think of how Apple’s new minimalist graphic design ran counter to the other marketing approaches in the field, as others wished to sell the complexity and power of their devices, Apple were perfectly happy to look sleek, refined, accessible, competent and cool. All of a sudden, geeky tech items became fashionable. Now that well-formatted visual appeal is an approach valued and espoused by almost companies out there.
For those savvy in branding, sometimes, the opportunity may come to them through that means. It takes learning how to sell something before you can sell it, no matter what business opportunity comes knocking.
Focus Groups & Surveys
Of course, more than exercising visionary insight or charting all trends known to man, speaking to people is bound to have a popular effect. Focus groups and surveys exist to help you get a real understanding for how people are regarding certain products or certain services you wish to offer.
Running these can help you get immediate impressions that help you understand what to trim and what to expand upon. It might be that you realize you’re patronizing the intelligence of your audience by incorrect marketing technique. It could be that a totally new concept within that industry explains much more discussion and trust before people begin to apply it to their lives.
With real boots on the ground research you can do in a private context, you’ll give your business opportunity more context.
Get Comfortable With Risk
Ultimately, any opportunity you take part in will have risk associated with it. That’s just the way of the world. We understand this in most aspects of life. For instance, taking on a job or investing in a stock has inherent risks involved in it, but we know the rewards are so great that we’re happy to take those on, sometimes as a matter of obvious course.
The same philosophy is applied to making good on a business opportunity. Being comfortable with risk, knowing how to calculate it, and also being able to make firm decisions without hesitating overly can help you make the best of both worlds, as well as helping you diversify your output.
This means that whatever business opportunity you do consider important will be given its right contextual place before you pursue or reject it.
With this advice, you’re sure to properly identify a promising business opportunity going forward.
