Everybody thinks they know they’re market. And then, after doing some testing (if they even bother testing at all) they discover that they really don’t know their market at all. And yes, this applies to me as well. Just when I thought I knew my market…bam. I’m hit with a dose of reality that came as quite a surprise to me. I’m going to share a true story and then give you some tips on zeroing in on YOUR market in order to understand their wants and needs.

In one market I cater to, I offered a product line where I sold 100 units of that product. Yes, this was a limited release for each product in the line. And while sales were good, only a few of the products actually sold out. So I thought, “What if I limit the next release to 50 and raise the price a little?” Well, I figured that with the increased scarcity, the product would sell out for certain. While sales just started a day ago, it appears this isn’t the case. It appears price is more an issue than number of units sold.

So what did I learn from this little experiment? I learned that I might as well just sell 100 units, even though I’d personally jump at the 50 unit deal myself, and ultimately make more money anyway. Boy…did I read my market all wrong. But that’s how you find out things like this. You have to test. You have to see where the sweet spot is.

Okay, so here are my tips. For starters, you need to gather as much data about your market as you can in regard to price, conversion, sales and so on. Then, when you make a change, note the change in the stats. Did sales go up or down? Did you get more or fewer complaints than usual? Was there no real change at all? You can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.

Another thing you want to do is mix things up. Don’t be predictable. If your market knows what’s coming, they’re likely to say to themselves, “I can wait on this because I know that in X number of weeks, this thing will still be selling at this price.” If you mix things up and pull some surprises on them, they can’t sit back and relax. They’ll always wonder “what if?”

Sales is a game. Make no mistake about it. That’s why you see big retail stores coming up with these sales out of nowhere in addition to the usual days you’d expect, like Thanksgiving. If they were predictable, people would know just when to go and not go.

Keep your market guessing but understand what’s important to them, whether it’s price, quantity being sold or whatever.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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