I’m currently going through Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge
and we’re spending a lot of time on market research. Neglecting
appropriate market research is a mistake that many marketers (both
online and off) make. I’ve been guilty. Overlooking this can be costly,
both in time and money. Here’s a lesson waiting to be learned.

We recently returned from our vacation in the beautiful Caribbean. We selected a lesser-known island, St. Kitts, to spend our time as we wanted to stay away from all the tourist crowds of the more popular islands. It was lovely, the people are fantastic and we had a wonderful time. But that’s not what this post is about.

My husband loves to talk with the locals of wherever we visit so we can really get a feel for what life is like for them. Sitting at a beach bar one afternoon, he struck up a conversation with the bar owner and another man. Conversation turned to all the construction going on and it ended up to one particular development.

The locals were shaking their heads – one developer was building a multi-hundred-million dollar development on the island, overlooking a lovely bay on the Caribbean. What’s the problem with this? The land was untouched, overlooking a beautiful bay… it will a perfect place for high dollar real estate. Except… that particular bay is where the sharks breed.

That developer never bothered to find out what was swimming in his pond. By asking just a few questions, he could have easily found out what lurked in those waters.

A lot of people see a potential niche where nothing is going on and think they have discovered the next biggest market. I challenge you to explore a little further and find out WHY no one else is in that market. Maybe they know something you don’t – just like the locals on St. Kitts know where not to swim.

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