Michel Fortin once told me that if one of his sales letters bombs, 99% of the time it was because he didn’t understand the market well enough. And since Michel is really good at understanding markets, his sales letters are almost always successful.
One way to get to know the market you’re writing for is to hang out where they hang out. And see what they see.
For example, you could do a Google search for terms they might search for, and check out the top 10 sites that come up. (Also check out the ads on the side, and I like to type in the URL so I don’t cost the advertiser money while I’m researching.)
PCMag.com has a list of the top 100 sites covering several different markets.
But that won’t always take you to the spots where your market “hangs out.” A great way to find the most popular sites in your market is to go to Alexa.com and do a simple “web search.”
The results don’t come back in the order of popularity, but the site’s traffic rank is listed below each result. Any site under 50,000 is a popular site, but anything under 10,000 is gold.
Check out these sites to discover what’s “new” in the marketplace. What are these people reading? What are they thinking about? What offers are other copywriters/publishers presenting them with?
This information can help you to take advantage of trends, but also tell you what you need to be DIFFERENT and UNIQUE, which is important.
So that’s my resource for today. What about you? Where do you go or what strategies do you use to check out your marketplace?