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This is an essential part of your entire marketing strategy, because you must learn from your competitors’ mistakes and try not to make such mistakes as well. If you are starting a new business or you are looking for ways to expand your business, you must first understand the nature of the market and identify ways that can help you in gaining an upper hand over your competition. It is also important that you identify which marketplace fits your products and services. Here are metrics that can help you in markets evaluation: SURVEY This is the most important of all points listed below, it is the first and foremost thing that you need to do, because you need to carry out a thorough survey and research on the market, then analyze and figure out how badly people require your product or services. While you’re conducting your survey, ensure you include your customers as part of your survey. When you conduct a rigorous and thorough survey, it will give you a clearer picture of the product or service demand. After this, you will be able to decide better that establishing or expanding your business will be a good idea or not. MARKET VALUE This is another important thing to do while evaluating the market, you have to check out the market value of your products or services. This way you would know the amount of people actively buying or using whatever you are selling. With the knowledge of how many persons actively buying your products, you’ll get a better insight on the amount of products to produce or if the business is not worth it.
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NATURE OF THE MARKET Before you establish your small business or try to expand an already existing business, you should have a proper knowledge on the nature of the market because sometimes, accessing your competitors’ strength and knowing your target audience might not be enough. Your knowledge on the nature of the market will help you in accessing your success potential in the market. However, to determine the nature of the market, you might need to do it yourself, or you can hire a market expert who would provide you with the necessary information on the market. STUDY THE COMPETITION Generally, small businesses are typically very competitive, because their products tend to appear similar. Other times, there could be multiple people selling same or like products as well. On the other hand, your pricing will likely vary across marketplaces and at this point, you can use software-using algorithms produced specifically to match customers’ prices to their work. You may choose not to offer certain products or categories on various marketplaces and instead, sell them on your own online store. PRICING TECHNIQUE This is another important factor to consider while evaluating a market place, because some sellers choose the same price across all marketplaces, while others set prices based on the marketplace. Conduct your research to find out the prevalent pricing technique in a particular market, or if it varies based on color or texture. TARGET AUDIENCE These are the most important people in your business and should be put into consideration properly while evaluating a market. Not every market attracts the same kind of customers, hence a proper research has to be done to know if the customers in a particular market place align with yours. PRODUCT PLACEMENT This aspect majorly deals with online marketplaces, as most of them have unique procedures for adding products. Some require frustrating spreadsheets, while others are manual where you can individually upload each photo and product description. Consider the time (and labor cost) to place or update a product when evaluating profit per marketplace. Featured image source: Multimix Academy
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