Blogging can be an effective marketing strategy that attracts prospects to your business. But there’s another way to use to find customers before you start the business.
If you can find that customer need or needs, I recommend starting a blog or web site and building an audience of people interested in those topics. Do that before investing time in over-researching products/suppliers or investing money in manufacturing of your own products based simply on your own interests or intuition.
This sort of up-front activity will help you:
- a) learn a lot more about that audience and what they really want, and
- b) customize your products/shop to meet those needs rather than the theoretical ones you are worrying about today.
via How Not to Start an Online Store – Ask Scott Fox – ScottFox.com – Internet Riches – e-Riches 2.0.
Use a blog to create an audience that can be converted to customers. You will learn more about a niche while researching blog topics. Then use the feedback from your blog to figure out what problems your audience needs solved.