if you want to raise your rates… scream

One of my Product Launch Formula owners recently emailed to tell me he’d had his first six-figure launch. His niche? Teaching people to scream. Which sounds like kind of a strange market – but there’s an important lesson here when it comes to choosing your own…

Video Transcript and Relevant Links

Okay, so let’s talk about markets – or niches you could say. 

So a lot of times people come to me, and they’re asking me about ideas for businesses, and the first place I always go to is thinking about markets.

And this is on my mind right now because David Wood is one of our PLF alumni. He just posted in our alumni group that he just did a six-figure launch, and his niche is teaching people how to scream. He said, “Yes, you read that correctly.” 

So this is one of those markets that I didn’t know existed, teaching people how to scream, and he did a six-figure launch. I do spend a lot of time thinking about markets and this is one market I’m going to have to go take a look at this because I don’t even know what he means by that.  I’ve been in a few different markets and, of course, my students in Product Launch Formula have been in hundreds and hundreds of different markets and this is a new one for me.

So when you are thinking about, for me, it’s before you think about a product, before you think about a business, I think about what we call the Avatar – your prospect, the person you’re going to be selling to, and that leads me to the market. 

So when you look at a market, every market has different characteristics. If you’re selling education about edible and medicinal plants and herbs, if you’re selling instruction about tennis, about dog training, about online marketing, about the stock market, about how to meditate, all those markets have very different characteristics.

For instance, one of them is pricing. A lot of times people come to me and say, “Jeff, in my market I can’t charge $2,000. You’re charging $2,000 or up to $12,000 or up to $30,000. I can’t get those kinds of prices.” Well, that’s fine. That’s just a characteristic of your market. 

Now, we could talk pricing forever and how our mind plays games with our pricing, but we’re going to leave that aside for right now. It’s just different markets will support different pricing. 

For instance, the market I’m in – teaching business, or the market I used to be in – which is teaching about the stock market, that’s a market that does support high prices because people can see, they can quantify their return on investment. They know that if they get better at investing in stocks or trading futures or building an online business, that’s direct money that goes directly into their pocket. They can say, “Well, I spend this money, I’m going to get this kind of result,” so that supports a higher price than if it was meditation.

It’s probably going to be tougher to get $30,000 for a meditation product. Possible, maybe at the highest level with retreats and stuff like that. Who knows? But, in general, the average entry-level price is going to be lower in that kind of market.

Or say dog training – huge. A vast market that dwarfs my market. So that’s one of the characteristics.  Smaller markets will often drive higher prices. 

And if you think about it… I mean say you were teaching a time management course, and if it was just time management, what would that sell for? Just a straight run of the mill time management for everyone. You’d probably be lucky at the very high end to get just under a $100, call it $99, $97. More realistically you’d probably be at $47 or less for a training on that.

Now, if it was time management for oral surgeons, that would support a much higher price. Even if the product was primarily the same product, just tweaked. Some of the language in it is tweaked. Maybe a different introduction, maybe a different conclusion. But if it’s the same time management system but you made it for oral surgeons, you could probably charge quite a bit more. That might be a $300 product. 

Now, if it was a product that was time management for oral surgeons with multi-doctor practices, so you’re teaching them not just how to manage their time but teaching their entire practice how to manage and schedule their time, that could be a lot of money. That could be a $1,000.  That could be $5,000 even if it was the same core strategy that was adapted for that smaller, tighter niche. 

And that’s how you can take something that might sell for $27 or $47 and all of a sudden be selling it for $5,000 or $10,000. It’s a different market. It’s the same type of product. So that’s one way to think about markets.

Another thing to think about, I think, and we’ll just hit this quick because I know this video is getting long… but competition.

A lot of times people look at a market and they think that if there’s not any competition, that’s a good thing – and it’s not. You’re probably not the first person that ever thought about your type of product and your type of market. So, if no one else is out there doing it successfully, there’s probably a reason for that. It’s probably because it’s not a great market. They’re either hard to reach or they’re super expensive to reach or they don’t tend to buy. So it’s probably not a great market. So you definitely want to look for competition.

Now, I’ve had success… both major businesses of mine have been in super crazy competitive markets. And you go into that market and you look for the gap – and that’s another whole video there. But what is the gap within that market? 

I just came out with a new product in this market, in a very crowded sub-niche market. But it wasn’t too hard to find the gap. What is it that people are not serving that other businesses, other products are not serving? Where’s the opening that you can go in and differentiate yourself? 

So there are just a few ideas on markets. It pays to study markets – even if you’re not planning on going into different markets.  It pays to just be walking around throughout your life… Most of the best entrepreneurs that I know do this, they walk around and they can’t stop scanning and finding things and saying, “Wow, huh. I wonder what that market is like? I wonder how you would reach them? I wonder what the pricing is like? I wonder what’s the pain that you have to solve there?”

And that’s another – boy I forgot about that one. Really big things. I’m only going to want to go into a market that either has a lot of pain or people that are super rabid. 

So, I want people that are after the solution I’ve got – and they’re either in a lot of pain or they’re completely rabid – like their golfers and they want to lower their score. That’s a rabid audience. Or people if they’ve got migraines or they’ve got some other affliction that is causing a lot of pain that they want to get rid of. 

So study markets and it will make a huge, huge difference for you as you go forward and you start to look at the ideas for new products and new businesses. 

So I’m Jeff Walker.  Wherever you’re watching this, scroll down, leave a comment for me, and let’s go get ‘em this week.