Businesses thirst for new ideas, and will always be on the lookout for creative solutions to problems. Creativity in today’s business world, means coming up with ideas that make money, win business and puts you ahead of the competition.
Ideas must be economically viable, and what will make that possible are 2 main factors: uniqueness and relevance. Is your business unique and is it relevant? It takes skill and is not very easy. This is because it is easy to see a good idea that already exists, and is easier in hindsight to see an opportunity once it has already been exploited.
However, developing a process that identifies new opportunities, and generates business ideas on a consistent basis is something else entirely.
How to generate business ideas
Careful observation of the times we live in reveal 3 facts that are very profound namely:
- Everywhere, people are reading, watching videos and listening to information that they search for and find online
- The amount of time they invest doing it is growing
- The amount of money they invest doing it is growing
Already over a billion ipads and iphones have been sold. The question is what are these devices being used for? You will discover that more and more, they are used for reading books, listening to audio programs, watching videos, and attending online courses.
The next question is who is creating the most successful ebooks, video courses, and other digital products? The answer is regular people, people just like you, who have learned how to do it from scratch. In today’s world everybody, especially entrepreneurs like you, should have a digital product.
Everyone including you should have a way to share their knowledge with others, and do it in a way that is valuable, so they can sell it. What then do you need to do in order to start? You need a GREAT BUSINESS IDEA. You will need a business idea for your product.
This business idea is the seed of a product that will share your story. A business idea that will inspire you to finish your digital product, and then use it to build your online business. You must identify your GREAT BUSINESS IDEA and then build a digital product around it.
TARGET YOUR NICHE
The first and most important thing to do is to TARGET YOUR NICHE. In other words, you must identify who your target audience is. Who are the people more motivated, and more likely to buy your product? How do you do this? You do this by asking 3 questions.
1- Is your target customer motivated? Start by identifying someone who has a need, and who is feeling a strong emotion- an emotion that is motivating them to get the need met. This is critical because, it is very difficult trying to sell a product to someone who is not motivated, so locate someone or people who are motivated.
2- Are they searching for a solution? Next, within your group of motivated prospective customers, filter out the sub-group of people who are searching for information and solutions. These are customers who are looking for you. One very simple and ingenious way to do this is by using the free Google Keyword Tool to identify the kind of people searching for solutions or answers within your chosen niche.
3- Are they having difficulty finding the right answer? So far at this stage, you should have successfully completed the 1st 2 stages which are to identify a group of motivated people who are searching for answers. Then you need to ask yourself “are these people able to find a high quality answers online?” If you got good results in the earlier 2 stages, you will likely have identified a niche where your knowledge, and story will make a much more valuable digital product than anything they have been able to get.
YOUR STRENGTH FACTOR
You must identify honestly, sincerely and precisely what you are naturally good at. This is your strength factor. You can only excel outstandingly at what you are naturally gifted in, or what you are naturally endowed for by God. This x factor, your strength factor will provide the fuel, the drive and the passion you need to survive, stay the course and go the full distance inspite of obstacles, diversions, and other challenges you will encounter on the journey to success.
YOUR STORY AND PECULIAR INSIGHT
In your quest for success, you will no doubt encounter many pitfalls and hazards on the way. What are the lessons you have learnt? What peculiar insight have you gained as a result of these experiences? A digital product gives you a platform where you can express all this in a unique way and commercialize it.
At this point you have now arrived at the crux of the matter, the fulcrum, the pivot and the turning point. The place where all these 3 variables overlap is your GREAT BUSINESS IDEA. This can be depicted below thus:
In conclusion, this is the process you need to undergo to generate business ideas. Once you identify the idea, make it the core of your digital product.