Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Hmm. You are doing this project, yes? What ideas have you and your group come up with thus far?

The differences between an "international market" and a "different country" are what, exactly?

Dynamism matters HOW? To you? Wrong answer: you're not the ones with the needs; you're not the ones buying.

What KINDs of demographics and cultures?

What SORT of economy?

Natural resources figure into your mix HOW?

Technology is a factor BECAUSE?

The political landscape influences people's potential buying behaviors HOW?

What SORTS of psychographic trends?

As for "great need", your interpretation of a great need and the needs of hundreds of millions of people worldwide are probably worlds apart. Bear in mind that many hundreds of millions of people exist on less than $US 3 per day.

Great needs for many millions of people are: growing, catching, or preparing enough food to feed their families (along with having a surplus for emergencies, and having enough as a side crop to sell in order to buy the things they cannot grow, make, salvage, catch, or trap).

Then there are the needs for decent shelter, access to affordable and modern healthcare and education, along with access to clean water and decent sanitation, and PERHAPS even access to cheaply produced and easily distributed electricity.

You are looking into the wrong end of the telescope. When you say you want to "pick a north american product that [you] can launch into an international market or different country," you are off on the wrong foot.

Instead you should be asking what someone outside of North America needs that isn't available to them, but that could satisfy an important need for them that is already satisfied in North America.

Marketing is about satisfying an important need of your target audience, not pushing whatever you happen to have at them.

Colin, let's have a look from a different perspective.

Firstly, choose a product that's already selling well. Knowing people will buy something is the most important thing you can know about it from your point of view. As the old saying goes "go where the money is". Sure it's tough, sure it's a fiercely fought over area of the market. That's usually irrelevant. Because most of the players are fighting with their shields and their swords are still sheathed. More to the point is that these people usually don't even know they've got a sword, let alone know how to use it. And they're only wandering around in armor because it's what they think's expected of them. You could enter the fray wearing jeans and a teeshirt and not be injured. Okay, so you might get bruised or squashed ... they may even shout at you to get out of the way.

So you have a product - now finding one that hasn't been sold elsewhere is going to be the problem here :-) Never mind that, you can have some fun finding one, okay? Believe me, this entire process is like driving a motorcycle through the Corsican mountains. The views of the Med through a break in the trees is something you'll never forget. It's fun, thrilling ... and dangerous.

Now this is an established market you're aiming at. What's more, you're aiming at the bull. You aren't aiming to miss, you're aiming at the area of the market that's most profitable for you. Oh, you say, but we don't have the money for that kind of advertising. Well get this, nor do I. I'm paying anything up to $16 for a click for marketing - the clever bit is to winnow out the impressions before you even start. There are ways around this which I will come to later.

Sure, go for the online market where clicks cost around $25. I just put "business intelligence software" into the Google Adwords keyword tool. It's the most expensive click at $15 or so. I started with "software" found the most expensive click, it was business software. I clicked the link that said there were seven alternatives and chose the most expensive. This is counter intuitive for those who are worried about the cost of marketing; that's plain wrong. You are marketing to make a return on your spend, not just to pump up a balloon full of dollars. I repeat: go where the money is.

All this, by the way, uses the online advertising tool called Google Adwords. If you've never heard of it, you can visit https://perrymarshall.com or https://askhowie.com (he wrote the Google Adwords for Dummies, by the way - if you do anything in PPC, read that book first. He's a great guy and there's no bull).

The real power of Google Advertising (or any advertising) is what comes before it. The market research. Work out why someone needs business intelligence software, what questions it answers, what objections it poses, what "itch" needs scratching - and why. Answer all these and your keyword will start the floor rumbling. You now have an idea of what your business buyer needs of your product - so set up a website and on it put a landing page that addresses these issues.

This is what the Google Adwords keyword tool came up with -


Clicks Impr. Avg. Pos. Cost CTR Avg. CPC
14.03 1138 4.63 €2.26 1.2% €0.16


Bear in mind this is for a keyword with an initial cost per click of €15 or so. Whilst I'm rubbish at the Adwords algorithm itself, the real power of adwords isn't even in the algorithm. It's what people do when they click, and that's Perry Marshall's specialty. Because if your ad stands out, it'll get noticed. You'll have noticed that the CTR (click through rate) is 1.2% - with a powerful emotionally challenging ad that could easily be 6%. The likes of Glenn Livingston can easily get 25% and more. This'll take a little getting your head around, but when you have a 6% CTR and someone else has a 1% CTR, if you have seven times the clicks, Google makes more money from you than them. That's how you can dominate your niche at very modest cost.

This is the nasty bit: how to get attention. So what do these guys hate most? You're into business intelligence software, so fear is a dominant factor here. After all, if marketers fight with shields, it's hardly a brave thing to do, is it? They're scared of something, fear something. Work out a few possibilities and form your Adwords ad around this. A SWOT analysis of your competition will also help immensely - only be warned, you're looking for black cats in a coal cellar with the light turned off. You can't see the gaps - you have to work out where they are by a process of exclusion.

It's a skill that's extremely rare.

The psychology of missing objects fascinates me - people don't notice their market disappearing. Like the lookouts on the Titanic, who couldn't see the iceberg. In fact they couldn't see anything at all. All they could see was a dome stars way overhead. Then they notice that one's missing. That takes way more observational skills than just seeing something floatin' around. Was it the seventh or seventeenth star that told them something was blotting them out? That must have been truly scary. I don't even know if they survived.

Back to the real world, ordinary businessmen find they're making fewer sales (ahem). Their reaction is to mitigate the situation by laying people off work so as to retain their profitability. Think about that the next time you see the headline.

Doing It.

Putting it online means reading Howie's book carefully and implementing it diligently. You can place a bid for $1.50 instead of $15 because you're after sales, not the ego polish of a #1 spot.

And we have barely started. Reverse engineering this little test - for test this is at this stage - you can form a solid marketing plan around the data that you've gathered. Because data isn't something nebulous. The beauty of PPC (Google Adwords) is that people have done something - clicked. They weren't thinking, they weren't answering bland questions from a bored marketer on a rainy street. They did. Knowing who did it is the real power, and that in broad terms is what you now have from your Google Analytics file.

It'll cost you $50 to $500 and the things you'll learn will be 100x as valuable. You will learn as much in putting your knowledge to the test as you will have learned from all your university studies. This is pure guerilla marketing in action - and when universities teach that "the purpose of such a strategy is to make short term marginal gains that can still be important for the smaller organization [ ... ] It is about hitting poorly defended targets hard, and then retreating"* This is a misreading of the first order. If you've understood the above, you'll understand why.

So: have you enough to make your study?

*Brassington & Pettit, Principles of Marketing; p882, 3rd edition

Perhaps one of these lists might spark some interest: https://ca.askmen.com/top_10/entertainment/top-10-iconic-canadian-food-prod... or https://www.beachcomberandtrailroamer.com/2013_04_01_archive.html