This post is all about the critical first steps before starting a business in fashion or consumer product.
So you are thinking about starting a fashion line or producing a consumer product- awesome!
But before you start designing, have you asked yourself how well do I know my target customer? What are their pain points? How do they shop? Is my product category trending online?
These critical questions can be answered with a thorough market and customer research. You might be thinking I can't afford to hire a market researcher or pay for a service. Do not fret!
This post will go over the 4 types of business research every new business owner can do online before they invest their time and money into this new adventure.
When it comes to researching a new business, your research should cover the 4 key areas that makes up a business.
QUICK POST NAVIGATION:
- Product Research- Is your product trending? Using SEO tools for keyword research
- Customer Research- Do you know your customer? Building your Buyer Persona
- Competitor Research -What are they good at and how can you do it better?
- Founder Research- The business blueprint exists, read about it or listen for the details
Below will cover each type of research and the online tools to help you gather all the must-have data you need to get your new business off on the right foot!
Product Research: Using SEO online tools for
keyword research
PRODUCT RESEARCH: Using Google Trends
What is it? Google Trends is a free online tool that shows search popularity of a word or phrase when typed into the tool's search bar. A simple graph line will show when the word or phrase search request vitals. The data is calculated from 1 being the lowest to 100 at the height of popularity.
Why do I need it? What is the first thing you do when a question pops in your head? Look it up on Google.
Google has dominated the world's search queries, making up 92% of all internet searches and handling 5.6 billion searches a day! With all that search query data, Google Trends is the go-to site to start your keyword research.
What are the features? You can enter multiple words or terms at the same time so you can see the difference of the popularity results between each other. You can also change the time frame from as early as 4 hours ago to 16 years ago. When I use the tool I like to use 12 months or 5 years.
Another great feature is the related queries.
This is a great way find to niches because it could take a starter word or "seed" word and provide the related popular words.
Take for example the two words above: Tie Dye and Hoodies, the related popular words (below image) are tie dye sweatpant set, tie dye loungewear. Bam! More related ideas in an instant!
Another feature is viewing the popularity results by US regions and countries from around the world! There are lots more features Google Trends can offer, read more about it.
RECAP: Google Trends
- Free online tool from the world's largest search engine platform
- Provides a quick snapshot of a keyword or phrase search popularity by time frame, country or US region
- Tool provides related keywords popularity results that can help a generic or board term scale down
- Easy to use and navigate
PRODUCT RESEARCH: Using Keywords Everywhere
What is it? Keywords Everywhere is an add-on extension to your Chrome or Firefox web browser. The tool will display search volume data right next to the search query result on sites like Google Search, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and 12 other platforms.
Why do I need it? It's like having a friend telling you what’s hot and what’s not, based on what people are searching for.
If I were starting a t-shirt line, I would want to find out how many searches there's been on Amazon for oversized t-shirts. Or how often do people search for shoes on Etsy?
Get the search volume data that will validate your customer's needs or discover a white space in your product category.
What are the features? Keywords Everywhere shows all of the data right next to the search query results, which makes it super convenient and easy to decide which information to explore even further. The tool will also reformat the page to show you related keyword suggestions.
How much does it cost? Keywords Everywhere offers a free version of their tool after a super quick and easy install to your browser.
With the free version, the data will show estimated traffic info and related keyword suggestions, but without any traffic volume data. All just estimated data. It’s pretty bare-bones data.
But for the paid version, starting at $10 for 100K credits (credits= search results), the data will publish monthly search volume, CPC, competition, related keywords (with search volume data), and 12-month trend volume. A small price to pay for more accurate data
RECAP: Keywords Everywhere
- Easy to install extension to a web browser
- The extension works on 16 different platforms (Google, Amazon, Etsy..)
- Instant monthly search volume, related keywords, and 12-month trend data (paid version)
- More info about Keywords Everywhere
PRODUCT RESEARCH: Using Ubersuggest
What is it? Ubersuggest is an add-on extension to your Chrome browser that will display search volume and social share volume right next to the search query results of any keyword or phrase that you enter on Google. It also has an added bonus to a fully-loaded dashboard that provides deeper insight into the keyword (see images of dashboard below).
Why do I need it? If you are super serious about finding out everything there is to know about a topic or subject then Ubersuggest is the ultimate keyword search tool for you! The tool will basically show you everything there is about the keyword or phrase and provide you with even more information and ideas of related keywords.
What are the features? The tool scrapes all of its data from Google and breaks down the keyword or phrase results into three parts:
- Overall search volume
- Related keyword ideas
- Content ideas
That’s a lot of valuable information on a word or phrase! Let’s take a look at each of the different results this tool has to offer.
Ubersuggest Keyword Overall Results Page Example
The Overall Keyword results page includes:
- Search volume by month
- Search volume by mobile or desktop
- Searchers' by age group -super helpful data for customer research
Ubersuggest Related Keywords Results Page Example
The Related Keywords results page includes:
- Related keywords by search volume -great for discovering a "niche" in your product category
- Keywords in a question form
- Keywords compared with... "vs."
Ubersuggest Top Ranking Content Results Page Example
The Content Ideas results page includes:
- Links to articles based off of the keyword (hyperlinks are live and will open to site)
- List ranked by authority on Google
- Data from social media shares - discover what the buzz is all about your product category
How much does it cost? The tool has a free and paid version.
The free version includes everything you see above. Ubersuggest offers one of the more robust SEO tools in its free version. However, you can only search a certain amount each day and once you hit your limit, the tool will not show any more results until the following day.
The paid plans range from $29 per month to a lifetime subscription of $299
Ubersuggest is my top go-to SEO tool for keyword research, competitor research, and content idea tool. It’s totally worth paying for. Try it out for FREE with their 7-day trial.
RECAP: Ubersuggest
- Easy to install extension to a web browser
- Data directly from Google
- Insane amount of information based on one word or term
- Easy to read format
- Download feature, where you can pick and choose which data point to include in the download
RECAP: PRODUCT RESEARCH
- Using SEO tools for keyword research will help you discover if your product category is a popular search term
- You will find related word or phrases to your product category- could lead to finding a niche
- You could discover searcher's age group, what device they are using and which link they click to related to your keyword.
Customer Research: Building Your Buyer Persona
What is a Buyer Persona? A document based on a fictional character that represents your ideal customer.
Why do I need it? The document goes beyond the general information like demographics or education level. It paints a more in-depth picture your ideal customer's struggles, pain points, motivation, and tendencies.A buyer’s persona adds a human-likeness filter to the document to help create empathy and promote a problem-solving approach.
It’s also a great tool to use for product development and contention creation for marketing.
Where should I start?
- Ask our BFF, Google- Do some back of the napkin general assumptions to start off with. Like what age group is your customer? Are they a Millennial or a Gen Z ? Find out all the answers to your questions from your Google search. You should be able to find articles and blog posts that will help start to paint the picture of your character.
- Conduct ideal customer interviews (IRL) - Get your info straight from the source. Use your social media connections and post on Instagram Stories or on Facebook that you are looking to set up an informal interview describing your ideal customer. This technique will be worth the time and effort and add a real human connection to your research.
Here are some questions to ask for your Buyer Persona Interview:
3.Join online forums for customer insight and research- Forums are a great place to tap into the heart of your industry, demographic or specific niche audience.
People who participate in forum discussions do not provide their real names, so there's a bit of freedom from being judged when providing comments, opinions or asking questions.
You can join in conversations too and even ask questions about your product category to get feedback.
Here are some top forum websites to check out:
- Reddit - Enter your keyword(s) into the search bar to find a conversation thread or forum group to join.
- Quora - Format is in questions and answers only, no groups.
- Facebook Groups - Most of the time the groups are private and will need to request to join.
- The Fashion Spot Forum - A part of an online fashion website, the Fashion Spot. You can find the forum section under "community". The forum has a large catalog of different topics and conversations threads about style, fashion and the industry.
- Style Forum - A website with a wide range of individual forums with topics that range from fashion to pop culture. If you want to comment or contribute, you will need to sign-up.
Are there tools to make a Buyer Persona? Yes! Once you have gathered all of your research data you can enter them in a buyer person generator.
Hubspot's Buyer Persona Generator
Here are a few free online Buyer Persona Generators:
RECAP: CUSTOMER RESEARCH
- Buyer Persona is an in-depth document based off on a fictional character of your ideal customer
- A documented tool that describes the character’s goals, motivation and pain points as a consumer
- Great tool for product development and content creation
- Put out a PSA to your circle of friends or LinkedIn community and asked them to connect you with people who may be your ideal customer to conduct real-life interviews
Competitor Research: What are they good at?
And how can you beat them?
What is it? Competitor research will uncover who exists in the marketplace.
Why do I need it? You will discover not only who is in the same space, but also what your competition is good at and what they aren’t so good at. You might discover a big hole in the competition's offering or question their pricing approach. Discovering the pitfalls of a competitor could make you the hero of disruption in the marketplace.
Where should I start?
- Start with your competitor’s website- Conduct a thorough "stalking" session through their website. Review the home page, blogs, and even the FAQ page. If it is an e-commerce site, try their search feature, check out process, and even purchase something from them. You want to know their customer’s user experience.
- Use Ubersuggest- You might be wondering why would you use an SEO tool for competitor research? Where a company’s website ranks on search engine results is one indicator of how likely they get in front of the customer first.
With Ubersuggest you can enter your competitor’s website URL and the tool will provide you with a full report on their organic traffic by month, which page ranks best for them and which keywords perform well for them.
Take for example below: I entered the URL of the online clothing store "Everlane".
- Review Customer’s reviews
“There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit to go after. You’d be surprised how powerful a
simple review is."
A perfect quote from Casey Winters (lead growth creator for Pinterest and GrubHub).
Reading through customer reviews is like digging in a gold mine. Customer’s comments are extremely valuable because they will give full details on quality, overall user experience, successes and failures of a competitor’s product. Taking in all of this data can spark improvements and innovation in your design to either produce a far more superior product than your competitor or solve an issue from customer's complaints.
RECAP: FOUNDERS RESEARCH
- Start with a thorough review of competitor’s website, from home page to FAQ page
- Purchase product from a competitor’s site, know their customer’s experience
- Use a SEO tool like Ubersuggest to find out your competitor's monthly organic traffic, their best ranking keywords, and which page of their site gets the most visit
- Review customer comments and make note of your competitor's success and pitfalls
Founders Research:
The Business Blueprint Does Exists
What is it? Interviews, articles, books and podcasts from founders or CEOs from companies in the same or similar industry.
Why do I need it? As a future business owner, you will be walking down a similar path and possibly facing the same obstacles that company founders have been through.
Researching their career and how they built their company can give you some insight on the road ahead. Building a business is like a hero’s journey and a hero loves to share their stories. Whether it's for an article, podcast or a booking they wrote, founders are willing to share the lessons they learned, challenges they faced and the solutions they discovered.
Where should I start?
- A quick Google search on the founder's or CEO’s name for articles or books written by them.
- Look them up on LinkedIn- follow them or try to make a connection.
- Search online or on your podcast app - "How I built this" is one of my favorite business podcasts. The host Guy Raz has interviewed an impressive list of Founders and CEOs across all industries. We also have a list of episodes to get you started.
- Conduct your own informational interview - reach out to founders or CEOs via LinkedIn. Be honest and direct by asking them for advice. You’d be surprised by how many people get responses back.
RECAP: FOUNDERS RESEARCH
- People love to talk about themselves- listen up to how they built their business
- It’s OK to do a little “cyberstalking” search for any articles, books or interviews they have done
- Make a real connection and ask for an informational interview
This post is all about doing some major research before you start your new business in fashion. Do not overlook this step! What you discover could help save you time and money before you start investing into this long adventure ahead. Your future self will thank you later.
So what are you waiting for? Start your research with more informational posts on this site.
