Interview Your Niche

Overview

If you are entering a new niche, you should do market research first. The goal is to understand what they want and need BEFORE investing time into developing a solution that may not resonate.

This "interview method" allows you to quickly gather data from members of your niche. You can use this data to identify patterns and hypothesize a solution based on that feedback. This alone can save you months or even years of wasted effort chasing the wrong offers.

Best of all, you can sell your services to these folks once you have completed your research and designed a solution, so there is no wasted effort. You are doing R&D, marketing, and sales all in one.

Instructions

1. Audit your current network to get introductions to your niche:
   • Use this template to request a referral (NOTE: You can also do this with a book or podcast, but a report is simple and just as effective).
   • Send 20 requests per day through email or LinkedIn.
   • Your goal is to get at least 2 interviews (then move to step #3).
2. Rest an interview with the person of interest:
   • Use this template to request an interview (NOTE: You can skip the referral and go directly to the person of interest by name dropping your previous interviews).
   • Send 10-20 personalized messages per day.
   • You want to book 3 research calls per day. 
   • You don’t need a website, just a LinkedIn profile 🙂
3. Conduct at least 20 interviews!
   • Use this template
   • Schedule these interviews with Calendly or a similar meeting app.
   • Use Zoom, phone calls, or in person meetings.
   • Keep detailed notes. Record your interview calls.  
   • Don’t filter any of the customer feedback. You want to keep it raw. You will be refining it as you do more interviews.
4. Complete your report & follow-up
   • Design a simple report with a summary of your findings. It doesn't need to be pretty.
   • Reach out to the prospects you've interviewed and request a follow-up call to walk them through the report.

Conclusion

You want to shoot for about 20 interviews, but the real indicator of success is when your interview subjects start repeating themselves and you can predict what they will say. This level of knowledge allows you to create deep rapport and shows that you've uncovered real patterns in your niche.

Keep in mind that you won't be able to get this type of information from statistics or articles on the web. You will be conducting in-depth market research and coming up with your own as a result of this process.

If you are starting from scratch, expect this to take 1-2 months, although you can complete this within a few weeks if you ramp up the number of requests you send out.

Make sure you keep accurate notes and ask all of the questions each time. This reduces the number of interviews you need to conduct and will help you finish faster!

Tips

• Train a staff member how to do this and have them help you.
• If you don't have staff, then hire a first-line writer on a platform like Upwork to assist you.
  • Use this template.