As any successful entrepreneur knows, an idea alone isn’t going to set the stage for financial success. Anyone can come up with an idea, but how brilliant that idea is actually can remain debatable. Many people have attempted to break into the entrepreneurial world only to have yet to succeed. The last thing a person wants is to waste their time and money. This is why you shouldn’t decide to sink your money into a venture until you’ve done your research first. There is a lot of planning that should be done.

To give you a good idea before going any further as to whether or not your idea is marketable and if it will sell, ask yourself these questions first:

          -Will it help make people’s lives easier or better?

          -Does it fulfill a core human need?

If you answered yes, fantastic! You may be on to something!

Now you can dive a little deeper into the desirability of your product. Some strategies you can use are:

-Conduct a focus group
Leading a focus group is an excellent way to see a consumer’s interest level. By engaging with and interviewing a group of people who represent your target audience, which by now you should have a good idea of just who that target audience will be, you’ll gain some insight into how well your product would do in the marketplace. Receiving input and suggestions can make your product even that much better.

-Observe search trends
Two super easy ways to conduct search trends are by using the Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends. By plugging in some related keywords, Google will show you how often that search has been performed over the previous months. If there aren’t enough people doing these searches, then it probably won’t be something worth pursuing. Google Trends allows you to search for a product idea and view how often it was searched for throughout the past couple of years which can be helpful for insight into how well your product might do over the long haul. To effectively conduct search trends, ensure you use the right keywords, or your efforts will become useless.

-Analyze your competition
It never hurts to see what your competition is doing. What is working well for them? How are they performing? Have they been around for a while? You can gain a lot of knowledge by researching companies in the same market.