Today’s issue of The Keyword Informer will touch on one tiny little aspect of market research and how you can ethically spy on big business and steal, swipe and utilize their top sales data and market research (without them even knowing it).

We all love to be stealth and this issue is guaranteed to be just that.

If you’re a niche marketer or a trend marketer of any type with various content sites, then you really want to soak this up and make it a part of your consciousness.

Should you run a regular ecommerce site, affiliate site, content site or whatever you do, then this little reading could expand your marketing perspective and how to be an “aware” niche marketer and how to be always on the lookout for opportunities that can advance you.

First, let’s take a step back.

Back a while ago, I published an issue of TKI that discussed how unsubscribing from email lists you are signed up to was not necessarily a great idea and how you can get great examples from others in your industry of (1) how to properly do email marketing and (2) how not to do email marketing.  (Instead of getting pissed off at other people’s marketing maneuvers, why not just take it as a queue of how you don’t want to be in your own busines.) 

Now, why am I sharing this with you and how does it relate here?

The point I made in that article was to not get offended when people attempt to market to you through email, but rather, view it as a “marketing lesson” and try to understand what the website owner is trying to accomplish.

In fact, you should be signed up on all your competitor’s email lists so you know exactly what they are doing, when they are doing it.

I understand it’s hard as a newbie to keep your credit card in your wallet as I went through the same thing trying to learn this electronic rag.

Look, the real problem is this.  We’re human.  We’re all susceptible when we’re in the learning and progressing stage.

As humans, we are hard-wired to react to good marketing and all those distracting billboards that disturb our view when we drive in our cars.  So it comes as no surprise that most people (like you and I) tend to react to a marketing message as a consumer.

We get pissed off when someone tries to pull a fast one or gets your confidence and takes advantage of it and then you hit the unsubscribe button.

And believe you me, it does take time to get rid of that emotional knee-jerk response. 

What I’m saying is that, as an online business owner, you need to really take off your consumer cap (stop reacting) and put on your marketing cap (ask yourself why someone is marketing the way they are learn from it).

Great example:

When I head out to a large retail store chain to do some shopping for the family or the business, I head out not only as a consumer, but I also head out as a marketer.

What I do when I rove around these large businesses is I put myself in the mind of the actual business owner (versus putting myself in the mind of the consumer when I conduct keyword research).    I ask questions (to myself) while I’m experiencing how a store sets things up or why they made a change… “Why is this product display put in a certain way?  Hmmmm, I wonder why they relocated that item to the back of the store in that tucked away position.”

Big business and corporate America is primarily concerned with, quite simply, the profits.  You know it well — it’s called “the bottom line.”  So the goliaths of business like Walmart (Sam’s Club), Target and Costco have to setup their stores and rotate merchandise to maximize sales during their highest cyclical sales period.

There are some interesting things you can glean from watching how big business operates and that’s what we’re going to uncover right now.

So the other day, I went to my local neighborhood Costco Wholesale (a huge warehouse that sells just about everything you can imagine) to pick up some items that I needed to start off my new year right!  

Mind you, I had been to Costco just 48 hours prior to return some gift items that didn’t work out.

Now, to set the scene (and if you aren’t familiar with the enormity of this store), as you walk into Costco, there are a layer of items that greet you to your right.  These are much like those items at the checkout counter at the supermarket (I call them impulse items), but rather, they greet you as you begin your journey to the depths…

(Notice the pallettes of items over to the right – and then of course, the movie ticket savings and Starbucks gift card offerings to the left.  Why not grab a couple on the way by?)

And from the other end looking back, here’s a reverse shot of the scene above:

(the reverse shot from the one above – and yes, that was taken just the other morning)

As you can see, these are pallettes of product Costco plans to move (not one-sy, two-sy items, but 2-3 palletes deep of product).

The products in these areas are not put there to gather dust.

Back to the action…

As I’m walking into the store, I began to remember all the things along the right side that were there just 48 hours ago.

Holy cow!

What the . . .

It was such a radical shift that I stood there in shock for about 20-30 seconds.

All the stuff to the left was pretty much in tact, but that entire right impulse section had been ripped apart and replaced with totally new items (for the new year obviously).

Then I started to take inventory of what merchandise they shifted just in time for the New Year.

It seems my protein powder I get from them had moved from the Health and Vitamin section to the front impulse item section.

The protein shakes as well as the protein diet shake had also been moved up.

Why would they do this?

It should be obvious to both you and me — and that is — people are more concerned about their health come the first of the year from pigging out at Thanksgiving and Christmas during the holidays and putting on excess weight (it’s back to the gym for me!”).  On a side note, I personally made a point to lose weight during the holidays so I didn’t have to worry about dropping any at the first of the year.

I took note of all the other things and even made some notes of different areas of niches that would be covered by the merchandise I saw in the impulse section.

Now let’s think about this together as an online business owner and how we can take this data from big business and actually apply it online (this is where the spying comes into play).

Okay, so Costco has been in business for quite some time.  They are now going on their 15th year, 29 on the list of the Fortune 500 and if you take a look at their major competitor and exactly how they whoop the booty right off of them even though there are more of their competitor’s stores, read this from Wikipedia’s description:

The main competitor in the membership warehouse space is Sam’s Club. Although Sam’s Club has more warehouses than Costco, Costco has higher total sales volume. Costco employs about 132,000 full- and part-time employees, including seasonal workers. It has 51.8 million members, representing 28.3 million households. For fiscal year 2007, which ended on September 2, 2007, the company’s store sales totaled $64.4 billion. In 2006, $1.1 billion of the revenue was net profit. Costco is #29 on the Fortune 500. The ACSI (The American Customer Satisfaction Index) named Costco number one in the retail industry with a score of 81 in 2006.

So as I’m sure you would agree, Costco does its fair share of business with about $64.4 billion in sales, right?

And this would be on a good majority of personal consumer items and standard business supplies across the board from major suppliers and manufacturers.

Okay.  Now, they also have a nearly 15 year track record and probably have all the sales history for those past years.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Given the fact that retail stores set up their locations to maximize sales, wouldn’t you agree that the products they rotate in the impulse sections (and other areas) are based on items they already know to be true as best sellers during that cycle of the season?

It must be true in my perspective because, otherwise, they wouldn’t have moved the protein powder I usually purchase from their health and vitamins section up to the front.

By watching how the largest retail chains rotate their merchandise, you can discover what items are moving during the current season and focus your advertising and promotional efforts on those buying cycles.

And by tracking what items are rotating through in impulse areas and aisle cappers like the ones that can been seen here at Costco, you can do quick and instant market research (that’s free) which then immediately humpbacks on the billions of dollars in commerce this big business is doing:

Yeah!  There IS a reason those items are on the ends of the aisles (because they convert a LOT of passers-by into buyers).

In fact, if you start tracking the merchandise over the cyclical seasons, you’ll begin to notice trends and patterns that you can then capitalize on (and probably ways to integrate things into your own website and industry based on what’s moving).

Not every item is going to be a hint of what’s moving online, but the more you pay attention, the more aware you are and can connect the dots when you are promoting, developing and building out your site.

Hey, if Costco is moving over 60 billion dollars worth of merchandise, I can tell you that there are some serious buying patterns that are inherent there and can lead you to know exactly when to promote certain items to your customers and your mailing list (in whatever industry you may be in).

And while doing online consumer research is great, let’s not forget that big business and mail order companies were doing just fine before the internet ever came along (so let’s just realize that the Internet is really just another medium that adds onto and enhances how business was being done quite well before with phones and fax machines).

Now, I know you may have already known this stuff, however, it may give you a different perspective to look at things when you next visit the super stores like Costco, department stores, the supermarket, the big chains that buy nationally and do millions and billions of dollars of business.

As seasons change, so do buying habits.

By watching big business, you can get in tune with the high volume products and perhaps spot something that relates to your industry.   (And hey, what a great way to go into a store (and truly do some window shopping) and not spend a penny — by going in only to conduct some market research and that’s it!). 

This frame of mind can easily help you tap into other ideas to use in your affiliate marketing or marketing your own products and services as well as ideas for backend products, and something to really think about where you spend the most of your advertising dollars.

Remember, Costco is a national buyer, so you could be a niche or trend marketer and spot a hot toy trend that is being pushed on the end of the aisle (and go to town with it online).

You could have an adventure travel business or a recreation style site and go do some recon at the local super sports store.  We have those around my small little town nestled in North County San Diego.  We have Chicks Sporting Goods Stores and on the East Coast there is Dicks Sporting Goods stores.  Both of these stores are huge and I’ve personally been inside Chicks.

I’m merely trying to open your mind to looking where people have already done the research.   And this is just one other avenue.

On a side note, I have a colleague who is a trend marketer and he knows ALL the highest seasons and cycles for his markets, and he does a lot of high value, high dollar ticket items (some items are $1,000 – $2,000 and up – so the commish is nice and high and worth the affiliate commission acquisition).

So not only does he take advantage of his own insider knowledge, depending on what time of year and the type of product he’s promoting, he’ll spend more money advertising to make way bigger payoffs during the high times (and not spend as much during the slow season).

It only makes sense.  Why not spend your advertising during the most active buying season rather than wasting dollars during the slow season.  It’s just like the common sense of concentrating on “buying cycle” keywords rather than “research keywords” where visitors are click happy and just researching the topic.

And this is ultimately the takeaway I want you to leave with today.

You need to understand your market’s buying cycle and leverage that knowledge by spending a good majority of the time on your promotional efforts during the high season, or in preparation thereof.  (You’ll never see someone marketing Halloween stuff during January, but you may see them preparing for the season in June).

Why advertise during the slow season when people are only luke warm interested in your products or service (unless you are preparing for the entry of the high season)?

You can concentrate recruiting partners and doing content swaps with other sites during the slow season.

If you have a sports type site, go to a sports super store and check out what is being promoted at the ends of the aisles.

What are the specials the store is running?

What brands are being heavily advertised?

Go and double check those brands with keyword research by tapping into a keyword database.

I hope I’m clear on that.

And if you don’t have a business or a website that yields profits yet and are still trying to find a niche market to exploit, please make sure to do market research and not use keyword research for that.

You can read my fully detailed article on the Five 5 Free Powerful Ways to Conduct Online Consumer Market Research that has Nothing to Do With Keyword Research.

You’ll want to make sure you are embarking into a niche market that is proven as I discuss in the article above.

Once again, we leave big business to conduct all the market research, the focus groups to create new products.  Most small businesses do not have this kind of funding.

So for the bootstrap entrepreneur all the way up to the heavily armed venture capital person, you really want to make sure you walk right smack into a proven market that is year round and will bring you profits plentifully once you pluck the market properly.

The other thing to note.

Keyword databases are not measures of what people buy (nor should they be relied upon for market research), it’s what people are actively searching for (and there’s no way to really measure intent without actual sales figures or some measuring system).

And if I know that Costco does 60+ billion in sales, then I know I can count on the fact that they are rotating their merchandise to optimize sales during the high season for that product, which to me, acts as a buying gauge.

And if I really want to know what is at the heart of a keyword and understand if its a trend or not or a dying fad, I’ll just go over to Google Trends and pull up the 4 or 5 year history on the keyword.

Well, actually what I do is I’ll just log into my NicheBOT account and use NicheBOT WordTrend Comparisons (which is powered by Google Trends) and I’ll type in a keyword that I actually know has a certain amount of a traffic.  Then I’ll match it to that other keyword phrase and I’ll be able to see if the keyword I’m curious about has more or less traffic than the keyword I already have stats of how many visitors it produces. 

So now you actually have a double check system with offline businesses and Google.

And if you really wanna take it to the third level, you can check large niche sites that have database driven product sites like one of the places I get my bowling equipment…  Bowlingball.com.  If you check out that site, they will tell right on the home page the hottest searches and the hottest products.

I go into this a lot more in detail on the five free powerful ways to conduct market research.

Nonetheless, I would love to hear how you are thinking and marketing different in 2009…