Low Cost Market Research For Your Small Business

In the life of your business, there will be many critical points at which you’ll want to take the time to research your market, but the two most important times are:

• before you start a new business, and
• when launching a new product or service

At both of these times, you need to discover whether your business idea or concept (or your new product or service) fulfills an unmet need of consumers and also whether there are enough potential consumers of your product or service to allow you to make your revenue targets.

Here are 8 low cost ways to find out information for your small business :

1. The Internet is a goldmine of free information. You can find a wealth of facts and figures in various industry directories, government abstracts, and other reference guides. The major search engines are a good place to start searching for useful sites. There are also several government sites that collect statistical information:
   • US Census bureau:
     http://www.census.gov/
   • Department of Labor Statistics:
     http://stats.bls.gov/
   • Office of Economic Research:
     http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/
   • Federal Agency Statistics:
     http://www.fedstats.gov/
2. Conduct your own survey by speaking directly to customers, prospects, friends, and family
3. Visit your local public library to search periodicals and reference texts.
4. Find industry associations related to your business.
5. Visit your local Chamber of Commerce to pick up business directories and other local statistics such as population, median income, home prices, etc.
6. Scan through the Yellow Pages directory to find out if there are large numbers of similar businesses already in the area. If there are, this means you have competition, but it also means that your product or service has high demand in your area.
7. Become a customer of the competition by shopping there yourself or enlisting the help of a friend.
8. Look at the advertising and websites of similar local businesses to see what types of services they are offering and their prices.