AP 0178: How Do I Determine If There’s a Market for My Niche Topic?

AskPat 178 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hi. What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 178 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

Before we get to today's question from Thomas, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks. Take the hustle out of running your business by joining millions of entrepreneurs, including myself, and other small business owners using FreshBooks to manage their business. From everything, from invoicing to keeping track of expenses, money going in, money coming out, and all that good stuff. If you want to get it for free and try it out, free trial, head on over to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Check it out now.

Let's get to today's question from Thomas.

Thomas: Hi, Pat. This is Thomas from Georgia. First off, thank you for what all you do. I really enjoy listening and learning from the content produced on SPI. I have a question about beginning a podcast. I have a very specific I occupy in mosquito control. As far as I can tell, there is no one doing a podcast about mosquitoes, the viruses they cause, and the control method used for them. Further, I'm wondering if there is market for other people who want to know how to treat organically, how to treat bites. Just all the things that seem to cause frustration from mosquitoes. Pat, how do I determine if there is a market? Do I begin to line up interviews with other professionals? I'm just trying to figure out how to get some traction here, I guess. Struggling with how to put it all together: the best content, the right content. I'd love to get your feedback on that. Thanks again for all you are doing.

Pat Flynn: Thomas, thank you so much for your question today. I think this is a very important question because a lot of us have great ideas and we want to know if there is a market out there for them. One way to do that is through doing a lot of research. I'll go over some of the topics and strategies for doing your research. I also want you to think about this as validation. Validation for your ideas, so that you know to pursue it further. Just a little bit of work upfront can help tell you if this is something worth doing or not. It could save you a lot of years, perhaps. A lot of people get into something because it's “their passion.” And they discover down the road that there isn't a market there, or even if there was a market there, that it's not really the right market for them. They might find that that particular market isn't really a market at all, because they don't have money to spend, or aren't willing to spend it in the first place.

One prime example of that is people doing niche sites and things all related around stuff that's free. Free wedding invitations, or free this, or free that. Anytime you target something for free. It's kind of obvious the type of person that's trying to go there. They are looking for stuff for free. Although some of them might convert to paid customers for something, related to that free thing, more than likely people are searching because they are looking for the cheap, easy way to go about it. Potentially building a business out of something like that might not work in your favor.

Mosquito control is definitely a huge pain for people. Let's talk about your specific niche here, Thomas. The first thing I want you to think about is your target customer. You want to think of it as your target customer; not your target reader, not your target subscriber, but eventually your target customer. That's something that Chris Ducker from ChrisDucker.com taught me, which is really important, because you want to think and focus on eventually how you are going to get paid. Yes, money shouldn't be the primary object, but you are building a business and you want to get paid. What is it from your target customer's point of view? When I'm thinking about somebody like myself who might be interested in mosquito control, maybe there is mosquitoes just piling up around my house for some reason, or outside, and I'm just not being able to control them at all. I want solutions fast. I'm not going to necessarily listen, I don't think, to … Again, this is just one person's view. What I would recommend you do is talk to people who are potential target customers. Talk to them about your idea, ask them questions, validate whether or not they would listen to a podcast, or find out if there is something a little bit more useful. For me, if I want to control my mosquitoes, it's a problem that I want to solve now, that I don't really want to deal with in the future, and hopefully would be able to just wipe away from my problems forever. I would rather have an article that I could read, or a YouTube video. I'm curious to know if you did any research on YouTube to see if anybody is delivering content in terms of mosquito control on YouTube. There might be a reason why there are no podcasts out there.

Whenever you go and do research and you find that there is nothing like what you are trying to create, that can be a good thing, because it could mean you are first to market. It could also mean a bad thing. Meaning, maybe there isn't actually a market for a mosquito repellent or mosquito control podcast. That's not to say it's not going to work, but it is a red flag, and you will want to do further research. The only way … Again, I'm spitballing here, thinking out loud. A podcast could be useful. If it's about a very specific topic and then it goes over very specific strategies like a YouTube video, it could be very useful for me, and definitely a lot easier to consume, potentially even more convenient to consume on a podcast. However, I can't imagine subscribing to a podcast because I'd want that pain away. I want to erase that pain. I want all the mosquitoes gone, and I wouldn't want to have to listen to the show anymore if that makes sense. Just thinking and having the gears turn in my head about this, there is a way to potentially have a show that people would subscribe to. That is not necessarily from B to C standpoint, business to customer, but from a business-to-business standpoint. If you are potentially giving advice and sharing new innovative solutions or organic solutions for other people who have repellent companies, who have pest control companies that are specifically mosquito control companies. Perhaps you are even helping people become experts in this industry to create their own business as well.

That, to me, is something that has a lot of potential, and could potentially be a great solution for you in terms of having this podcast, being able to use the podcast as the outlet for this information, but also getting paid for that information, for courses, for ebooks, all about this to help again, not the person who is having trouble with mosquitoes in around their house but for the other business owners out there who are helping people with mosquitoes in around their house. Maybe you take on the lead of finding the newest research when it comes to repellent. Maybe you talk to other mosquito experts out there, which would be definitely useful for somebody who is in that industry already as well, or who wants to get into that industry. Not necessarily useful to the end customer, who really, like I said, their big pain is just wanting to get rid of those mosquitoes right away. That's how I would go about it if I were you, but you could still do more research down the road to see if actually customers or people in their homes would want more information like that. You could overlap both, but I would focus specifically on building businesses, and establishing yourself as an expert and helping other mosquito experts out there learn from you. That would definitely help you and potentially help your existing business if you have one in your local area. You would be known as the mosquito repellent guy: the go-to person online that all of the other businesses go to for the top, leading information on that, which I think would be really cool. You can also have stuff for customers as well, like YouTube videos. Again, YouTube videos specifically for those who are really wanting to get rid of those pains, get rid of those mosquitoes in around their area, take care of bites right away, super fast. They just want to watch a quick video, boom, done. It's over with. Those are the videos that go viral, those are the ones that people share, those are the ones that people when it happens again.

Again, I don't … I can't imagine someone subscribing to this type of content unless they were somebody who would want this content over and over andover again. I think this is a solution for a lot of people. Don't just think about B to C, but think about B to B, because other businesses, those are people that do have money and are willing to spend more money to research and learn all the best information. If you could be the person to give them that information, there is definitely a lot of potential there. Even flying out to different companies and doing speaking gigs about this. I feel like a great way to validate a potential niches is, could you imagine yourself speaking on this and having people come to see you speak about this? The reason I say that is because that's what you become a known expert for. That also helps you determine, who is going to be in that audience? Who is going to pay to watch you speak about this stuff? I don't think customers, people who own homes, who have mosquito problems are going to pay, or fly out to see you as an expert in mosquito repellent. They might watch a video on YouTube, because it's convenient and they have that major pain. The people who are going to go out there to pay to watch you speak about mosquitoes are going to be people also with an industry, who are going to want the latest information to take back home with them to better deliver value. This might be a way for you to actually serve more people, just not directly to the customers, but through other people who are helping the customers for you.

I hope this makes sense. Thank you so much, Thomas. I'm curious to hear what you think. Anybody out there, if you have any other questions or comments about this, use the hashtag #AskPat178. That's the number of the show, #AskPat178, and we can continue the discussion there. Thomas, an AskPat t-shirt is going to be headed your way. Thank you so much, and definitely validate this idea, the B-to-B idea with other people in the industry as well. You might be able to see groups on LinkedIn, groups on Facebook that are related to this mosquito industry in a way that you haven't looked at it before. I'm really looking forward to seeing how you go about moving forward with this. Thank you so much.

I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. I seriously wish I knew about FreshBooks when I was first starting out. It could have saved a ton of time. I was just using Excel spreadsheets, and especially all the headaches that were coming around doing taxes. This just makes it so much easier. Discovering FreshBooks was actually a little bittersweet, since I was so glad to be using it, but sad that I hadn't found it sooner. Obviously, very happy now, and I hope you get to use it too. Just head to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. That's how you can get your free trial. Thanks so much.

I'm going to end with a quote here from Roger Staubach, and he says, “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Cheers. Thanks so much, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.