Marketing experts agree that the best way to make a splash in Internet Marketing today is to create, promote, and sell your own products. However, most aspiring entrepreneurs face several obstacles:

- Lack of time to fully concentrate and focus on innovation.

- Lack of specialized skills to fully develop goals and strategies.

- Lack of money to successfully implement business ideas.

- Lack of supportive networks or mastermind groups.

So what’s the Solution?

The audience of the third “Be the Legend” webinar was treated to a session with Internet veteran Shawn M. Casey. As a former CEO of an Inc. 500 (Fasting growing private companies in America) company, Casey brought considerable corporate and entrepreneurial expertise to the presentation. With $30 million dollars in “digital” sales since 1999, he presented a forceful argument for creating your own information products business.

The Difference Between Success and Failure.

In no uncertain terms, Casey contrasted two formulas right off the bat:

A. The Formula for Failure, i.e.:

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”:

1. Find, create, or acquire a product or service.
2. Find someone to sell it to.

What’s wrong with the above picture? Simple – it only focuses on product creation and sales, while completely ignoring marketing. Shawn strongly advises budding entrepreneurs to investigate and research their target market, and create a marketing plan BEFORE considering what products they will create. Hence:

B. The Formula for Success:

1. Find a hot, HUNGRY target market first.
2. Find out what they already want and are already buying.
3. Sell them more of the SAME.

It’s a tried and true formula that established marketers use to stay on top.

What Defines a Hot Target Market?

Shawn Casey proceeded to list the characteristics of an ideal target market:

• Passionate, irrational, easy to reach and find, hungry
• Interested, motivated, insatiable desire to buy “stuff”
• Have discretionary income, are pre-disposed to purchase, and are proven buyers.
• Addicted, desperate, even obsessed with consumerism.

Marketers, with rare exceptions, should not be in the business of introducing people to new concepts and emerging trends. Casey tells us not to bother “educating” people. Instead, reinforcing existing values will improve your ability to connect with and gain lifelong customers. Shawn says that becoming a full-fledged market educator is the surest road to business failure and bankruptcy.

How to Find a Hot Target Market.

Finding the right target market takes work, so a little head start can go a long way. Shawn suggests that many market segments of interest have exploitable business or vocational attributes. Therefore, consider the following areas of endeavor:

1. Hobbies (e.g. Coin collecting, gardening, camping, fishing, hunting, etc.).
2. Self-improvement (Spirituality, health and wellness, lifestyle trends…).
3. Sports and games (e.g. Golf, tennis, poker, etc.).

New marketers should frequently visit newspaper and magazine stands to check out what people are reading, and zero in on what appears to be most profitable. The best strategy according to Casey is to find a market where “fools” are making money in spite of themselves. It will allow you to “sell in a vacuum” without any real competition.

Market Research 101 – Find the Easy Path!

Business and management schools teach students sophisticated methods of conducting research, many of which are further refined and tested in the corporate world. However, Internet Marketers be aware! People often lie, so surveys are to be used at your peril. Instead, Casey suggests that we immerse ourselves in the market we want to build our business in. Specifically:

• Shop what they shop.
• Buy what they buy.
• Read their books and magazines.
• Online: Participate in forums, visit online chat rooms; join competitors mailing lists.
• Offline: Attend industry trade shows, seminars, live events etc. Network, network, network!

In Part 2, you will discover:

• The Case for Information Products.
• Outsourcing and Joint Venture (JV) Opportunities.
• Resale Rights and Back-End Marketing.
• On Your Marks, Get Set, Go!

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Rahul Majumdar is a full-time Information Marketing Specialist focused on teleseminar reporting, list-building techniques, and information product creation.

Get full access to his insights at:

==> http://www.info-entrepreneur-rm.net

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