cabbagehead909 - 9:34 pm on Aug 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

Regarding process - here are a few thoughts:

Pull v Push - Search is inherently a pull media. You must pull the searchers with your product toward you. The engagement starts with them searching so they're the pictcher and you're the catcher. Push is where you can pitch what you want to. that tends to be more TV and radio ads, though I guess you could push a bit on social but only if you have a signficant following already (perhaps that is key here).

Research: I start with keyword research and its very clear where demand is. If I use a tool like keywordSpy, then its also clear where supply is. And because these things are pretty clear, most of the obvious pull-driven niches I think are already uncovered.

So what does that leave? Push-driven niches. In otherwords, those products where there is some search volume but the competitors are not spending on PPC. Why is that? Well, in those cases you could argue for example a lot of those realtors (mentioned above) may not be looking to improve their process with a CRM tool, but if you showed it to them at a conference or at their office, maybe they'll sign up. So this is kind of creating your own category in a way - you're selling, not simply catching the search demand that 's already there.

So if it were up to me to make a call on this, I'd say 2011 is the year we capitulated from a search-driven opprtunity market, to one where entreprenuers now need to go out and sell their new ideas to the marketplace with push tactics. So then the question is how, and how expensive?

Unfortuantely, its my guess that this is a longer sales-cycle process and things like conferences and a lot of travel are very expensive. It seems to me *these* types of opportunities are mostly reserved for those who raise capital to support the product development and sales cycles.

Perhaps the individual entreprenuer is really limited (realistically) to the following types of businesses thus:

a. consulting (advise client)
b. contracting (build it for $x price for a client)
c. eCommerce for a niche product (good for another 5 yrs at most?)
d. Blogging (build a nice part time income and/or reinforce your consuilting business)?

And perhaps starting that new SaaS type product or anything involving push marketing (aka "sales") is reserved for the funded. And I know there's probably a few examples that fly in the face of what I'm saying ... but if I were to generalize, that's what I observe.

Thoughts?