Solving a Problem For Your Market

Imagine yourself in the middle of the Sahara desert. The heat is blistering and you can actually see it rising off of the scorching sand. You’re thankful you’re carrying a canteen of cool, refreshing water.

About a hundred feet in front of you, you spot a haggard man crawling on his hands and knees. As you approach the man, you notice he’s dragging a burlap sack full of what looks like gold coins. 

He turns and, with a gasp, he asks you for just a sip of your water. And, he says, in exchange for a sip he’ll be willing to give you his entire bag of gold coins, worth $100,000. You accept-and being a generous soul, you allow him to take two large gulps from your canteen.

Once done, he wipes his cracked lips with the back of his withered hand and continues crawling into the desolate desert. You, on the other hand, throw the bag full of coins over your shoulder… and head back to your sport utility vehicle. This story illustrates how successful products are created.

In this story, the haggard man you find has a problem: He’s hot and probably suffering from dehydration.

He has a serious problem … and without a solution to his problem, he’s doomed to become vulture food in the middle of the Sahara.

However, once a solution is presented to him, he’s willing to give up his riches-an entire bag of gold coins-for it. He realizes that the solution to his problem (even though it may be short term) is worth quite a bit of money to him.

While you will rarely find a market or “niche” (a small group or market of people who have the same interests or wants) as desperate for a product as our man stranded in the desert, there are many markets currently looking for a solution to a common problem they have.

If you can find this common problem shared by a niche-and create a product or service that solves this problem, you may have a winner on your hands.

When you’re trying to come up with product ideas for a niche, write down all of the problems that the people in this niche share. To get an accurate idea of what types of problems they have, you may want to actually interview a few people in your target niche-and jot down their concerns, worries, challenges, and fears.

Once that’s done, prioritize your list.

What is the top challenge that the people in your niche face?

What problem would they most like to see solved?

Then, once you’ve identified their top concerns, write down ideas for products that would solve their problems in a quick, easy way. For example, I recently studied the market of pet store owners.

Individuals – not large corporations, run most pet stores in America.

However, a handful of large corporations are taking a big bite out of the multi-billion dollar pet industry-and the “small guys” are getting worried.

I first decided to take a look at this market while I was browsing through a copy of the Standard Rate & Data Services Magazine Advertising Directory. (This mammoth publication features advertising information for a wide variety of business and consumer publications.)

I noticed that there were three magazines that catered to pet store owners and each magazine had a circulation of about 20,000 to 30,000 readers.

I called up each magazine and requested a sample issue. One of these magazines, Pet Business, even gave me a free subscription.

Once I received the issues, I read and re-read them… looking for potential problems that pet store owners had. And, in each magazine, I hit pure gold! 

Of course, all of this research can now be done online! 

What I discovered was that many of the smaller pet store owners were scared that the national pet store chains would crush them. These large multi-million dollar corporations had the power to not only offer their customers lower prices and a wider selection, but they also had the resources to pay for professional marketing campaigns.

The concerns of the smaller pet store owners were echoed again and again… in issue after issue… month after month… in each of these magazines. Now that I had identified their main challenge, the next step was to find a solution. Here are some ideas for information products that I brainstormed:

Manual: The Guerrilla Pet Store Owner’s Guide to Marketing for Massive Profits
Manual: 137 Ways to “Steal” Customers from the Large Pet Store Chains
Manual: How to Instantly Increase Your Pet Store Profits… in 10 Days or Less!
Course: 1,001 Insider Secrets to Making Your Pet Store Profits EXPLODE!
Video or Audio Set: Ex-Pet Store Chain Executives Reveal How Small Pet Stores can Compete and BEAT-the Big National Chains!
Seminar: How to Beat the Big Pet Store Chains at Their Own Game… Even If They’re Right Next Door!

Here’s a Quick Tip

People will always have problems and challenges-both in their personal lives, as well as in their businesses. If you can find a problem or challenge that a market is willing to pay to solve, you’ve just uncovered a potentially profitable product. 

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