Does Your Invention or Idea Have A Market?

I was involved in another discussion with a group of inventors and I asked the question: Do you know if your invention has a market? And followed up with the question: Do you really know your customers?

Invariably most think they have a market, but in reality they don't know very much about their potential customers, so they really don't have a market defined yet. Oh sure many inventors know which industry they think they should market their invention to, however they have no idea if there is an actual need in that market for their product. What I have found is that many inventors do very little real market research of their potential market and the customers that make it up.

So today I am giving away one of my secrets. You can find your market through the Internet.

Are you surprised? Probably not.

Here are five easy steps to help you find out about your market and your potential customers:

1. What problem are you solving with your invention or idea?
2. Who is leading company that is currently solving that problem now?
3. Find their web site
4. Go to http://www.quantcast.com/ and enter the competitor's web site domain address
5. Copy or record all of the data into a document that you can recall later (demographics, traffic, other sites of interest, etc...)

There you have it, the first stage to identify your potential audience. The next steps takes a little more work but at least now you will have a clue who might want your invention. You will need more information than that to build an understanding of demand, like how many units of your types of products are sold today and how many people are searching for a solution to the problem. These answers can also be found on the Internet. Stay Tuned!