AP 0529: Is My Potential Audience Large Enough?

AskPat 529 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 529 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.

Okay. Here's today's question from Hunter.

Hunter: My question is to know if you have a large enough audience to start a website. I'm a real estate producer here in Virginia, and I want to start a website to help people become real estate appraisers. The problem is, Google AdWords shows about 300 searches a month for that topic. Is that number large enough, and are there other ways to see if a market exists? Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey Hunter, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today. You know, I appreciate this because the size of an audence is actually a very interesting topic and Google search is not actually a great place to start. I mean, I guess it's an okay place to start. There used to be a lot of websites that would pop up just because of the data that would come from Google, and there used to be specific numbers and benchmarks where if there was a certain number of searches per month, that it would qualify that website to then go deeper into research to see what the competition is like. And if the competition's not there, that's like a green light to build a website.

And that's how I built SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com which is done really well, but again that was started back in 2010, back when Google was much different. I remember the criteria: It was over 1,500 searches per month minimum I believe, and that one had 2,750 if my calculations are correct, and the competition was quite low, so it was fairly easy for me to build a website that then ranked higher than everybody else and got a lot of good searches. A cool by-product of the security guard training industry is that a lot of people are paying some good money to get information on how to become a security guard.

So, people are paying for key words, which means to get in front of that particular audience, especially colleges who want to get those particular people into criminal justice degrees and whatnot. So, I'm banking $1 to $1.50 per click, which is pretty cool. But you know all this Google search, volume, competition, key word competitiveness numbers, AdSense, AdWords, click through, all that stuff, it's just a part of the overall process of building a successful website now. If you're only getting 300 searches a month, it just tells you that people aren't searching for that thing in Google. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to be useful. What's useful now is understanding whether or not people resonate with what you have to offer, your message, and it doesn't necessarily start with a website.

A great place to start, engage whether or not there is some interest there, is actually through social media. You can actually look at other people's profiles, and other people who fit the same description who are serving the same particular audience to see if there's any interest there. If not, you could even run a small-scale experiment with your own social media profiles. So, whether you use the one you have now to focus on some particular topic for the next X number of days or months or weeks, to discover whether or not there is some interest there to find people and actually have conversations with people, reach out to people, have a Skype conversation with them, see what their interest is, you know, taking advice similar to what I talk about in my book, Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money. I mean, this market research definitely is a big component of that.

And like I mentioned in the last episode, if you haven't listened to Episode 528 with Marco, he asked how to you decide which niche to focus on if you have multiple ideas. And in that episode I talk about creating your market map which might be a helpful way for you, Hunter, to see what's out there in that particular market. And one thing that you could do is actually see who else is out there that's serving that particular market. I think that's a great way to gauge, also based on how active their websites are, and you know, who is following them on Twitter, or how many Facebook groups those people are in, you know, this is how you can gauge interest nowadays. For a real estate-related type of thing, you might want to look at LinkedIn, and just try to discover where people are at.

But I think more importantly, you're going to want to have conversations with people, and for something like real estate I know word of mouth actually plays a big role. So the more relationships and the more you can be on top of mind of people when they talk about this particular topic with others, the better it is. And so, 300 searches a month, that's not a red flag. It's just a, “Huh. Not everybody's searching for this stuff on Google.” So when you break this down, that's about 10 searches per day, and that's not very much. But again, if you become the top person in this space, and depending on how much you might be making from each person that lands on your website, I mean 300 a month might be awesome! I mean, I don't know exactly what the business is, or what the closure is, and that you know how, what that funnels like and whatnot, but if you had 10 people a day come to your site, for example, which isn't going to happen because that's how many people are searching for it …

Well, okay, let me back up a bit. You're only seeing 300 searches a month for one particular key word. There are other long tail keywords. So actually, part of this situation is, if you want to gauge some more, find out what other keywords people are searching for. So one thing you can quickly do is put that keyword into Google, scroll all the way to the bottom and find the related key words that people are searching for, and type those into Market Samurai or Long Tail Pro or into Google Keyword Planner to see how many people are searching for those. Another great tool to use is SEM Rush. Put that initial keyword, that seed keyword in there, and you'll get other keywords popping up, you'll get competitors, you'll be able to see what they're doing, in terms of where they're ranking and what else they're ranking for.

That sort of thing can be really helpful to help gauge interest of this overall market because again, if there are people out there who are already serving this market, you can use that data to your advantage. You can see what they are doing to not serve your customer, and then you can serve them in that way that they want to be served, for example. So, going back a little bit further, long tail keywords is something that's going to help you out.

So you could potentially get 10 plus, you know, or even hundreds of people coming to your site a day. It doesn't mean that you won't by just having 300 searches a month for just one particular keyword. Going back to what I was saying earlier, let's say 10 people do come to your site, and your conversion rate, you're able to convert one of those 10 people into your program. Or to, you know, it turns into a lead which you then get on the phone with to close something. I mean, you have to run your numbers too. So how many leads would it take for you to reach your … to close a sale, and then how much is that sale worth to you? And then how much traffic would you need to actually come to the site? And if you just need to close one deal a month, for example, then boom! You're great, right? So you have to think about your end game too, and your closure and all that stuff.

So Hunter, I hope this answers your question and at least gives you some things to think about, other ways to gauge interest and other ways to search beyond those 300 hits a month for what it is you're offering. And of course, as always, I'm big on this now. I'm big on talking to people. And you know, coming out of your shell, I know a lot of you are like, “Uh, I don't want to talk to people.” But if you are doing business and you want to best serve your audience, you can't just hide. You can't hide behind a website. People want to be involved with other people. And if you are willing to have conversations with people, I mean you're gong to have a much better chance at learning exactly what you need to do of closing those people and also validating different ideas as you come up with them.

So, yeah. Hunter, thanks so much for the question today. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. I also want to give a shout-out to everyone else out there who has asked questions, and if you have one that you'd like to ask, just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page.

And one more time, just to remind you, because I talked about this yesterday, The Freedom Journal, John Lee Dumas' cool project, very inspirational for me as he has launched with a bang here, and I'm about to launch Will It Fly? If you go to TheFreedomJournal.com you can check it out. Back this project, you're going to be able to accomplish your number one goal in just 100 days. TheFreedomJournal.com, he has raised over $300,000 dollars from over 5,000 backers, and you can be included too. Again, that's TheFreedomJournal.com. Love it.

And gosh, I'm just so excited because if you are listening to this on January 29th, the day that it comes out, on Monday, February 1st, my new book, Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money, is coming out, and it's going to be available on Amazon. It's actually available right now on pre-sale, but it's going to go live as a physical book and as a Kindle book on February 1st on Amazon. If you want to check it out, go to WillItFlyBook.com. Guys, I am so incredibly excited and just man. I'm just so … I don't know … I won't be able to sleep on Sunday, that's for sure.

And there's a launch party that's going to happen, so if you want an invite to that just head on over to SmartPassiveIncome.com or just follow me on Twitter, @PatFlynn. I'm going to be talking about it, and you're going to be hearing about it, and I'm going to share exactly what's happening with the numbers, and how many books are selling. It's going to be a fun, wild ride, and I'm just so thankful to have arrived at this point, and I want to thank all of you, all of the listeners of AskPat who have been with me for a however long. Whether this is your first episode or if you've been listening since day one and episode one, man, just thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I'm excited. WillItFlyBook.com is the website.

And here is a quote which is actually the dedication of this book. I wanted to share it with you all before we get into the book launch on Monday and into our weekend here. And this is, again, a dedication in the beginning of the book that you're going to see. And it says, and it's from me of course, but here's what it says, “To my parents for giving me wings. To my wife for giving me air. To my kids for giving me purpose, and to you for giving it a chance.” WillItFlyBook.com. Check it out.

Thanks so much. Cheers, and I look forward to serving you on Monday, February 1st and the next question of AskPat. Man, February 1st … that's going to mark a crazy day in my history. Love you guys, take care, bye.