If you go into a market and you want to find out where your competition is finding their customers, you just call up all your competitors and you tell them that you are a marketing students who wants to learn what they do.
And you ask for a 15 minute interview with the marketing executive, and you’ll be surprised how many people are willing to share time and knowledge and experience with you.

Another way to find out where successful companies in your industry are finding their customers is to contact trade associations and they can provide you with directories of media brokers and other industry specialists. And when you contact them and tell them about your plans for marketing your product, they will help you. And of course everything they tell you will be biased to everything they specialize in, but you still can get very valuable information that way.

Afterwards, send follow up “thank you” notices and maybe small presents. This way, they’ll probably talk to you again if you ask them in the future again.

5 Steps To Picking The Perfect Startup Product.

1. Find out what products are currently hot in the market.
2. Determine if your product idea fits that trend.
3. If it does, you’re ready to go. If it doesn’t follow steps 4 and five.
4. Come up with “me too versions” of several hot products.
5. Improve them in some way by adding features and benefits the originals lack.

How To Find Out What Products Are Hot
Identify the primary media for your market. And look at what’s being advertised the most. What are the bestsellers? How long have they been selling? That can give you a clue about the state of the trend. Because the trend is like a curve, and you want to be in on the trend as early as possible, you don’t want to get in when it’s already fading.
(Of course there’s no sure way to guess how long a trend will last, but you can find out by talking to people in the industry – speak with brokers, consultants, and even competitors.

Get your hands on the top 3-5 products in the market and study them. You don’t even need to buy them – you can just walk into a store and examine them in the store, or you can order, test them and return them for a refund.

And for every product make a list of all features and benefits. Compare the products to one another and figure out which characteristics are the most appealing and make a list of any shortcomings you notice.

And you can also share the product with others – friends and products, and get their ideas about how it can be improved. This is a great thing because you just tap into so much more brainpower, you’re multiplying the brainpower.

What you are looking for is an idea that will really excite you, an idea that you feel will really capture the market – that will create the tipping point buying frenzy. (Of course, just because you feel that way doesn’t mean it WILL be, but it’s a lot easier to get things going when you are excited).

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