The Complete Product Research Guide

Are you new to E-commerce and want to find a winning product for your drop shipping store or Amazon FBA account? Maybe you’re a well established CPG brand and you’re looking to develop a new product? Well, you’ve come to the right place. This article will break down product research into actionable steps so you can save time and money on your research efforts.

By the end of this article you will know:

1. How to analyze a potential industry or niche for opportunity
2. What matters when researching products and your customers
3. How to turn keyword data and conversations into powerful insights

But before we get into all of that let’s talk about me for a second.

“Who the hell are you and why should I listen to you?”

Great question! You should always be weary about anyone who is writing a piece of content with the intention of selling something.

My name is Jack Marchese. I’ve spent over 6 years consulting 8+ figure CPG and SaaS brands to develop new products and take them to market. Do you eat food and use software? If yes, it’s highly possible you’ve used a product I’ve helped develop. I’m a certified New Product Development Professional through the PDMA with an MBA in analytics. I not only KNOW how large companies innovate I’m usually the one helping them do it.

So what does the product research process look like? This article is going to break it down. Let’s dive in.

Step #1: Analyze the industry

In this phase our goal is to consider all market variables to gauge how viable an industry or project could be.

If you’re just starting out and you’re not quite sure what industry you want to make or sell a product in this is where you should start. Even if you’re already an established business this step is still important. There is a very simple model I use with most clients as outlined by in the book Product Planning Essentials by Kenneth Kahn.

The point of this exercise is to gauge the overall state of the market by analyzing the positives and negatives on a macro level. If a variable is a positive mark it with a (+), if negative mark with a (-) and if neutral or N/A mark with a (0). Ideally you would weight each one of these factors, and that is what I do traditionally, but this is by no means required. A mock example has been filled out below.

Market factors

Size (+)

Growth (+)

Life Cycle Stage (+)

Seasonality (0)

Cyclicity (0)

Financial Ratios (0)

Competitive factors

Power of buyers (0)

Power of suppliers (0)

Rivalry (-)

Substitutes (-)

Entries and Exits (+)

Environmental factors

Technological (0)

Economic (0)

Social (+)

Political (-)

Regulatory (-)

In this example we have 5 favorable variables and 4 unfavorable variables. Because the positives outweigh the negatives, this could be something to explore. Need to know what each of these terms mean? I’ve written a glossary that you can view here. If you want to save time on research and quickly see the market factors in your industry you can do so on the Keylitic industry dashboard as seen below.

Have a general industry or niche selected? Let’s move on to the next step.

Step 2: Analyze your customer

In this step our goal is to understand the customer on a deep level with the tools we have available to us. These are the four critical questions to ask:

1. Who are they?
2. What do they talk about?
3. What do they search online?
4. Where do they hang out?

If you cant answer these questions in-depth you shouldn’t be developing or selling anything. Let’s talk about each one.

Who are your customers?

How old are they? Where do they work? What does their day-to-day look like? It’s best to try and come up with a few customer personas that help you better visualize your customers. HubSpot has a killer tool that can help you with this exercise you can access here.

What do your customers talk about?

What’s in the news that could be relevant to them? What jargon do they use? These are things you ought to know and they are constantly evolving. Keylitic can help you drastically cut down the time it takes to conduct this research with a dashboard that highlights recent news, most common phrases used and links to forums related to specific trends. The example below is from the Baby industry and you can see insights like this on our industry dashboard as well.

What do they search online?

This question is complex. Read this section a few times if need be. It could be the most important part of this entire article. With that warning out of the way, let’s continue.

What websites do your customers visit most? What relevant keywords are trending? What problems are they trying to solve? Keyword analytics are incredibly powerful for studying this. Customers can lie on surveys or interviews but not in a Google search bar. You can quickly see the top websites in your industry on the Keylitic dashboard as seen in the example below. Visit each website and analyze the top selling products if it’s retailer or the posts with the most engagement if it’s a blog or forum. Each website is clickable. Really spend some time on these websites. Chances are they have done the research already and know how to relate to your audience.

You can also use Keylitic to quickly view dozens or even hundreds of current product trends in an industry as seen below. Knowing what’s trending in your industry is one of the most important things to understand. Keylitic analyzes the search volume of a keyword and looks for patterns.

A rising trend is something that has been growing steadily overtime. That’s a good choice if you’re looking to develop a product that will likely have a long life cycle. A breakout trend is a keyword that has shown explosive growth. Breakout keywords can help you spot a trend early and potentially be first to market, but without enough data it’s hard to know if it’s just a fad that will die down soon. Breakout trends are good for companies who have lean operations and can deploy a product quickly. Lastly, we have seasonal keywords which usually have predictable cycles during a calendar year.

Even if you’re not interested in any of the trends you see we still recommend drilling down into each card. Once you click on a card you will be shown critically important information that can help you discover customer pain points and potential product features and variants. Let’s look at an example below assuming we select the “baby swing” trend.

Above we see various search terms from clicking on the baby swing card. Top related results are the top 10 results you see from google with the product. Googles autocomplete technology is powerful because it uses predictive analytics to guess what searches you’re likely trying to make based on the billions of searches that occur on their platform daily. We can leverage that in our research. For example, we can see that when consumers are searching for baby swings it’s clear swings that are made for the outdoors are a top priority. Knowing this information, we not only have an idea about the potential materials or quality necessary in a product but making the utility CLEAR in your Product listings and packaging.

Keylitic also shows you the top results relating to prepositions that are often conducted in conjunction with products. For example, the “to” preposition can help us answer WHAT customers are hoping to solve with this product. For example, we can see a baby swing would likely be used to help a baby fall asleep or even play outside. The “for” preposition can help us understand the intended use case for a product. For example, we can see parents may need something for a baby who is a bit larger, for multiple children or even for small spaces. Could there be a blue ocean here? It’s certainly possible. Lastly, the “with” preposition helps us understand potential features or variants customers need. From the above example, we can see parents actually want a swing that’s highly technical and has features like lights or Bluetooth.

Now let’s tie all of that together. Parents want an outdoor baby swing for their multiple or large children that has lights and Bluetooth capabilities to solve the problem of helping their baby sleep or play. We were able to put all of that together just by looking at keyword results. Pretty cool, huh?

But let’s take this further. The customer is trying to help their child fall asleep. Why? Is it because they want their baby to be healthy? Is the baby constantly crying and the parents are fried and need a break? Understanding your customers motivations for features is arguably more important than the features themselves. This is where innovation happens. You now understand the problem and how customers think they could solve it. Is there a better way? Surely there is.

Where do they hang out?

This applies to physical locations but also online. Are there forums they frequent that allow them to connect with others like them? We want to find these groups or forums and read or even join the discussions. You don’t want to join these forums and be an obnoxious marketer. You are there as a guest and communities will sniff out BS.

Keylitic provides links to multiple forums related to a trend to help you dive into the community. For the keyword baby swing there were several different forums that were found that can allow you to dive in and see what people are saying. Have a blank word document open when reviewing these forums and document statements that can give you insights into pain points, use cases and goals as discussed earlier. Forums are powerful because they usually foster a sense of community and it’s a judgement-free zone where people can be open and will be accepted by others. People who join forums are people who are usually very passionate about a particular topic and these are the customers we want to understand. Let’s look at an example post we found.

Looking into one of the forums related to baby swings we came across this post from a mom who is in crisis. Her problem is clear. This mother has a baby that is discontent! But that’s not the most important thing said in this post. Can you guess what it is? Read the post carefully and take a guess.

In the last sentence of this post we learn something really powerful. The mother is telling us that while the swing solves her problem it causes her guilt for using it. Could she feel this way because she feels it’s a crutch? Maybe it’s creating a bad habit with her baby? Does she feel if she was a better mother she would not need this swing? Guilt is an incredibly powerful emotion, and many times, it’s often irrational. As researchers and marketers we need to know and understand the feelings and emotions tied to a specific product or experience and implement that into the design of a product as well as the messaging.

After you’ve done this deep dive into your customer from afar you may think you have enough information. However, if you’re trying to develop a brand new product you likely need to do even more research. This leads us to the next step.

Step 3: Interview your customers

Some may argue this should be the first or second step in the process. I would agree, but trying to talk to customers can be a time-consuming process. Just finding people willing to talk to you can be like pulling teeth sometimes. The gold standard of product research are customer interviews because they allow you ask open-ended questions and understand your customer on a deeper level. It can be hard to have these discussions without asking leading questions. You can always find a way to validate your concept when you’re leading customers to the answer you want to hear. The key is asking open ended questions and just letting them vent. The best customer interviews I’ve had are ones where the customer is doing 90% of the talking. In-person interviews are the best approach but video/voice calls and even DM’s over social media can be effective. Try and talk to about 10–15 people at a minimum. There is an excellent guide on how to conduct customer interviews like a pro from The Daily Egg that you can access here.

Closing thoughts

I hope this article has you ready to begin your product research journey. This process takes a lot of work and practice but if you want to be a company that can innovate this is what it takes.

Start by analyzing industries that interest you and market, competitive and environmental factors that impact them. You would be surprised how many people want to enter an industry without even considering these factors.

Do a deep dive on your customers and answer critical questions such as who they are, what they talk about, what they search online and where they hang out. Understanding consumer trends in your industry is important and can be used as a foundation for conducting deep and meaningful research.

Talk to your customers in a human way. Most survey efforts fail and focus groups can have several issues if not conducted appropriately. Take the time to talk to your customers yourself. This will really open your eyes when paired with your previous research.

Keylitic was made with the intention of making the product research process quicker, easier and data-driven. If you need even deeper insights into your industry or niche and help uncovering even more trends we can do this for you as well. We work with both brands and agencies and use the methods discussed above, and much more, to help you find your next disruptive product.