How To Find Your Profitable Business Idea And Market Potentials

Discovering your passion. 

Let me start with a scenario that best describes how you can easily know a business idea that is ideal for you. Imagine a man named James loves dogs and has two different breeds. Take it that he calls them ‘’guys’’. Funny right? That’s the depth of affection.

His natural likeness for dogs made his cycle of friends and neighborhood profile him as ‘’the dog's president’’ and he dearly appreciates the rare title. Over time, James started thinking of what he could do to make life better for dogs and their owners. This is how a passion or lifestyle translates to a venture.

This is a good business idea for James. Do you agree with me? I am sure you did and thank you so much for that. I want you to perform a short task at the moment. The result will amaze you. You may be tempted to stop reading after this task but you have more benefits if you stick to the end. So here we go…

Substitute your name for James

Insert your hobbies/lifestyle/passion

What is the business side of that passion/hobby/lifestyle?

How you can help someone with it?

It’s not rocket science. Those simple steps have helped you discover a business that is perfectly right for you. You don’t have to be a Harvard graduate to know this. Hey! Before you pump the Champagne to celebrate the niche you just realized, go a step further to ask yourself the following questions:

Is there a market for my niche?

Is the market sector growing, stagnating, or shrinking?

Are customers expressing dissatisfaction with existing service providers?

Are customers expressing eagerness to try a new entrant?

Does the industry suggest a promising trend?

I can tell you confidently that when you swim in the direction of the waves, the struggle to flow easily is almost zero percent. The same applies to business. It is a good practice to agree your internal conviction with external forces before you can give a thumbs up to your business idea. 

Remember the essence of a business is to offer utility in exchange for a fee. So, an idea can truthfully be good for you if there are people out there to benefit and pay for it. The profit matters less at this phase. What is vital is the ability to make progress and create value. 

Future macro profits should not be traded for present micro returns. Remember to get some feedback on your ideas. Think differently, it’s the worst attitude to keep burning idea(s) completely within your mind and launch them overnight. 

I advise you to ask further questions and meet with experts who are already in the industry to seek constructive counsel. Open your mind to suggestions and criticism; be flexible when you are consulting for information. Sometimes you may have concluded that your great idea will be the best at solving a certain problem not knowing it will equally solve another long-abandoned problem. 

Now you can pump your Champagne🍾🍹🤣to enjoy the rest of your day. Remember to make your business visible. I want to recommend an insightful entrepreneurship-free course for you on Alison's online learning platform. It is all you need to be a successful business owner.

 

How do I find markets for my business idea?

I want you to be glad after reading this post from start to finish. Therefore, I am making it very simple to implement; not the academic stuff you may have come across. You can’t spend valuable time with me without a major change in your business mind.

I am passionate about adding value to people. Take your time and read over and over until you have a good grasp of everything in this post. They are rich enough to ignite a change in you. 

Now flash your mind back to the scenario I painted earlier, let’s assume that James is equally skilled in coding or website design (what is your own skill?). He can combine his skill with his passion to build a website that details everything that matters about dogs. Do I guess rightly?

A step further, he can partner with a veterinary professional to have robust blog articles about dogs. Don’t you think this will be a fantastic move? Of course, yes. It is not a bad model to leverage the expertise of others. It is better to understand your absolute advantage and stay within that region. 

For James to successfully find a market for his business idea, he will have to do a good profiling of his buyer persona and have a comprehensive understanding of the market potential.

He will also have to make a list of those keywords related to his business and punch them into search engines, to extract a pool of useful feedback such as the monthly traffic volume. Comment sections of related blog posts and forum threads would reveal people looking for solutions to what his niche has to offer.

Friend, don’t despise the potency of Google Trends. James will have to use it to figure out how often his venture keywords are searched, the location of the searchers, and additional or related things they are searching for. Are you still here? 

Pay attention to the graph on Google Trends; it speaks volumes. The interest over time report section will help you achieve optimum targeting decisions.

Google business profile search trend 

Interest report section on Google trend 

Social media is also a great platform for you and James to search for keywords related to the business of choice. If businesses appear, check the number of followers they have, and the engagement rate. 

Pay particular attention to the customer comment section; it’s a hub of gratitude and dissatisfaction remarks. Market opportunities lie in those comments so don’t be in a hurry when you are reviewing customers’ comments.

I just hope you are not panicking right now because you have seen someone doing what you want to do. Please calm down🆒. Don’t get frightened. Those fellows ahead of you have actually made things simpler for you. 

To be frank with you, don't think anyone is stupid! Someone else will follow your footprints if you are on the right track with laudable results. it is a common occurrence in a free market where entry restrictions are virtually zero. Just keep innovating to stay ahead of the crowd. 

Did you know? Only the folks who shared the same keywords with you are truly your direct competitors. Others will forever remain indirect competitors not minding the significant similarity in your niche.

Keywords are major differential factors. Just make it a duty to constantly compete within yourself using the Kaizen concept of continuously improving on what you do and how you do it. No one out there will ever be a threat to your business as long as you stay focused.

Your business idea doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel, just be pretty sure it’s solving the real human problem(s) better than what the existing providers are delivering.

Your goal is to do what they do but with a different strategy that improves results. Right now, you are identifying and eliminating waste/noise in the value chain thereby cutting down on your production/service cost.

Let me also tell you a simple step-by-step you can adopt to implement the last paragraph I just talked about because it is very crucial. I will list them in bullet points.

·     Write down the end/finished product/service of your competitor (the output)

Find out the process/procedure/formulae used

·      Identify the waste in the process. Whatever you skip and do not impart quality and quantity represents waste. The same is also applicable to what the customers will never appreciate or pay for. All waste!

·      Think and list the ways you will improve on the weaknesses you just identified. This will help you offer quality products/services and a premium user experience. What you have just done is move your niche to the monopoly domain; a whitespace with zero competitors. You are the only one operating in that domain at the moment. No one else.

Hola! You just branded your key differentiators.

I hope you noticed that with the launching of James's optimized website, he has created a robust market for his business. That's it.

 

Sources of business ideas 

I want to start by saying that some business ideas can be visibly bad at the outset when you look at them objectively; your inner gut will definitely convince you never to run with such.

Permit me to ask you this question and I am sure you will be sincere in your response. Do you think there can be a sustainable market for the sales of expired food items for human consumption? Definitely NO as you have responded.

No one will ever be willing to buy and consume that not for any ethical reason. It’s absolutely a bad idea from the beginning. That said, some ideas could be ethical but initially lack convincing promises. 

Eventually, they turn out to be great ventures. Can you think of any bad business that eventually turns out great? Several of them. The fact that you don’t have 100% assurance of success rate at the inception of that business shouldn’t prevent you from launching it.

I have listed below some of the approaches to discovering business ideas in general:

1. Can you improve on negative feedback in that business category?
2.  What are your inner qualities of mind and spirit?
3. What can you make out of your nation’s annual budget? Look at those budget heads that will attract cash outflow and figure out the aspect that aligns with your passion.
4. What has been the trend of your work experience? Consistently in the same industry is a great fortune. Can you launch yours and make it more engaging?
5.  What has been your family business trend?
6. Can you recognize matured markets that are desperately in need of innovations?

Before I conclude this segment, allow me to emphasize that your passion plays a timeless role in the short and long-run lifespan of your business idea.

Just imagine you have seen a promising market to offer coffee for breakfast in your neighborhood. Unfortunately, you naturally dislike the aroma of coffee for unexplainable reasons. Oops! Nice to consider dropping out.

The business may suffer some setbacks over time except you are ready to outsource certain processes but sadly, this happens to be the core of your business. It’s risky outsourcing your business secret sauce.

Starting from zero ground

Honestly, it is not a weakness if you don’t have any business or work experience. No doubt it may have been a good platform for you to start but as long as the idea of working for someone else hardly gives you any inner satisfaction, you haven’t missed anything.

You can still start on the zero ground and rise to stardom. There is absolutely nothing to worry about. Take what I am about to say as your first step if you have no entrepreneurial background to build on.

Now let me use the restaurant business as the example of the venture you have considered. A nice thing to do is visit a couple of restaurants around you and observe the owners' routines/engagements.

Questions you will ask yourself after multiple visits can include the following:

Do I like what I have seen these past few days?

Can I do what I saw the owners doing?

Can I manage the number and attitude of employees I observed?

Can I afford to wake early and close late based on the job demand?

Am I really cut out for this?

Does my passion align with what I have observed?

Are you willing to commit a big chunk of your lifetime to it?

Are there other sector(s) within the industry to explore?