Step 1: Define your audience or niche.

Assuming that you are looking to sell a product or service online, the first crucial step is to define who your audience is. You can never be everything to everyone. To quote Sun Tze in “The Art of War”, knowing your enemy (audience) is half the battle won.

Only when you know your target audience will you know where to focus your efforts on. This will save you lots of grief and coming back to square one later.

Step 2: Market Research – Test, Refine & Conquer.

The lazy way to do it is to first check out your competition. See what they are doing and refine a model to suit yourself. Online success leaves a trail of crumbs like no other medium.

Your competition also tells you that there is a market out there for your product. If you do not have any competition, it may actually be a bad thing as it may be an indicator that no one actually wants to buy what you have. Unless you are Google, which is an entirely different story altogether.

Needless to say you have to differentiate yourself unless you want to solely compete on price points.

Step 3: Ask them (your audience) what they want.

One good way is to test your product online first before laying out the ground work for your entire project.

Some of the lowest costs methods you can use include testing your product in a PPC (pay per click) campaign and gathering some response. Place an ad and see if it will sink or swim. Start with Google Adwords.

Another good method is to test it on Ebay.

Or one of the most effective is to literally ask them what they want by using survey tools like the popular Ask Database.

Refine your offer till you can get the numbers you want. In this process, you can define your price points and tweak your marketing by improving your copy.

This process also allows you to generate testimonials from satisfied customers which you can use to enhance your marketing.

Step 4: Seek and you shall find.

Brainstorm on this and list down methods which are known to work best in your niche. Very often, it’s right in your daily life.

I’m assuming that your business is something that you are passionate about and quite familiar with. Even better if you have once been a customer of your own product. Your circle of influence will reach your target audience if you know what they need, want or desire.

Note that behind each email is a real person and that you are looking to convert them into customers by giving them something of value in exchange for money. The rule of thumb is that if you can’t convince yourself to buy your own product, they wouldn’t even consider it either.