Validating your business idea is an essential step before you go down the entrepreneurship path. The business validation process will help you answer important questions surrounding pricing, customer availability, competitor presence, and the right market entry points.
While many validation methods such as surveys and research reports exist, one of the best ways you can implement is to use an SEO keyword tool. Given the online nature of most businesses these days, keyword tools offer significant insights into what buyers in your intended market are thinking.
Here are four ways a keyword research tool will help you validate your business idea.
Cross Reference Competitor Keywords
Are your competitors targeting the same keywords as you, or are they using a completely different dataset? New entrants to a market have the advantage of building flexible processes. If one approach doesn’t work, you can quickly pivot to something else. However, the problem is that new entrants are more likely to make mistakes that burn cash.
Keyword research and SEO tool can mitigate this problem by giving you insight into what your competitors are doing. For instance, you can research their paid ads strategy and discover which keywords are performing well. You can even enter lists of prospective keywords and figure out how well your ads will likely perform.
These tools also list the search result properties your competitors possess. If a competitor appears in the snippet at the top of the search results page, you can reverse-engineer their content to see which keywords they targeted and their answer’s context. These datasets will give you a roadmap regarding content creation and product marketing.
Speaking of marketing, you can research the most profitable keywords and find niches your competitors haven’t discovered. As a new entrant, you’re better off targeting smaller niches in your market, and by drilling deep into your competitors’ keyword lists, you’ll discover phrases that give you the highest ROI.
Discover Search Trends
What are your customers searching for, and how often do they do it? Answering these two questions alone will give you insight into how much success you can expect upon launching your new business. Keyword research tools give you approximate monthly search volumes for a range of keywords connected to your niche. They also help you discover important trends you can leverage.
All you have to do is type a set of niche-related keywords, and you’ll receive a breakdown of monthly traffic and search results. Best of all, you can filter these results by region to narrow down demand. For instance, if you’re planning on launching a product for the UK market but find that French demand is also high, expanding quickly might make sense.
You can also prevent product design mistakes by researching keywords using these tools. Many of them highlight alternative questions people ask, and these provide insight into possible issues. For instance, if people are inquiring how to fix a persistent issue with a product, not only is this a sign that a product needs development, but also that you must avoid this issue with your product.
Check Related Keyword Volumes
New businesses often find that the primary keywords they’re targeting have significant volume, but there’s little else to support their business. For instance, someone who launches an iPhone case product business will likely depend on a small set of keyword searches. An iPhone case is not likely going to need servicing or parts replacement. No one will subscribe for a new case every month, and so on.
Related keyword search volumes indicate how deep a niche is. In such cases, you can rely on secondary keywords to prop demand up when there’s an industry downturn. The increased depth will help you recover from setbacks quickly.
It will even give you an easy road map to scale your business. A keyword research tool will help you identify these niches that are adjacent to yours which have high growth potential, so you can diversify and enter these markets.
Investigate Competitor Strength
When launching a business, figuring out your niche is essential. For instance, it makes no sense to launch a sports blog that competes on the same playing field as ESPN. Instead, niching down appropriately will help you attract traffic and grow over time.
Identifying the right level to which you must niche down is challenging. Keyword research will help you pick the right degree of granularity by highlighting how strong your competition is. For instance, if you search for a long-tail keyword and receive results of very high quality, your chances of dominating this niche are thin.
The thing to do in such situations is to either niche down further or pick a related niche with lower competition. Keyword research tools prevent you from making costly mistakes and put you in the right position from the beginning.
Worth The Investment
Keyword research tools seem pricey on the outside, but once you begin using them the ROI is significant. They’re essential business validation and ideation tools that you must employ if you wish to succeed. After all, your business is worth the investment.
