How many times have you grabbed your phone in search of a particular product only to find out that you had to break the bank to order it from a website on a different continent? Despite the incommensurable way online shopping has taken over audiences, finding desired items and services within seconds and budgetary or time restrictions is not obligatory. This is a reason why some European nations still reach out to offline channels when making purchases, with 45% of German consumers buying stuff the old-fashioned way.

The internet remains the present and future of shopping – it’s only that you’ll have to dig really deep to unearth the unsatisfied consumer needs that could be your golden ticket. Market gaps are everywhere, representing the disparities between consumers’ requirements and desires contrasted by how the market meets these needs. From inadequate user experience to poor marketing to missing functionality, numerous culprits exist behind the underserved desires of some purchaser categories. Assuming the scarcity in your sector isn’t caused by factors that don’t depend on you, such as external conflicts, a lack of materials, laws and regulations, and so on, then you should stand pretty good chances of unblocking a lucrative category.

How can you nail the process of spotting market gaps and coming in your prospective consumers’ help to benefit you both?

Conduct market research

Essentially, market research is the one activity offering a one-size-fits-all solution to companies looking to get under their consumers’ skin, start-ups familiarising themselves with their prospects, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the market in style. Being such a broad concept, you’ll want to learn which type of market research best suits your needs. This is where the best specialists with years of experience and numerous successful clients in their records come to help future-oriented entrepreneurs make the most of their marketing research.

Market research helps you understand what your audience wants, feels, and thinks of your products and of competitors’. Primary market research will help you gain first-hand information, targeting the source instead of supplies of already-existing data. This model approaches stakeholders, clients, consumers, and other reliable sources of insights. Consequently, secondary market research will help you zoom out on the image and learn priceless insights about your competitors’ products, services, prices, and consumers. You will access data that’s already gathered, compiled, and valuable.

As emphasized by Savanta in Europe, other market research methods exist and allow you to choose from them, including branding research, customer research, product research, and qualitative and quantitative research, to name a few. As long as you have a trustworthy expert to consult with, this primary step to reading consumers’ minds to discover what needs are yet to be met becomes a breeze.

Monitor market trends

Most customers turn to Google to find their needed products and services or at least information about them. Businesses learn a lot about their consumers’ purchasing and researching behaviour by monitoring market trends, picking up new market requests effectively and outshining their competition. Besides Google, Amazon is another unbeatable online retailer and data provider that can help you tap into consumer categories. Amazon contributes the lion’s share out of the over 15K e-commerce marketplaces, driving the vast market revenue worth over $363BN in Europe.

According to Statista, marketplaces are the departure point for consumers’ purchasing journeys, with Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Shopee, and Bonanza leading the ranks, among other mammoths. So, how will you monitor such abundant and fluctuating data? How will you stay on top of such ample and ever-changing data?

One way is to monitor keywords associated with your niche through Google Trends. See what spurs interest in some key phrases and terms. Another step to get you where you want is to leverage trend discovery tools aimed at equipping you with a database of previously picked trending matters.

All these efforts are rewarding when you lean on the right collaborator, who specialises in marketing research and market trend examination. So choose your ally wisely!

Try social listening

In a world where word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing strategies every business can rely on, social listening carries the torch as the process to assess the results of such initiatives. Social media listening, long, refers to determining online discussions and conversations involving your brands or your niche’s products and services, to name a few indicators. It includes overseeing your company’s social media accounts for cases when competitors mention your entity.

Conducting social listening means you’ll get feedback from your consumers directly and gather it in a database for further research. This process helps you benchmark and draw parallels between your presence and your rivals’ position on the market. Getting under your consumers’ skin has never been easier now that you have all the access to assess what people say on social media about you, what consumers appreciate in competitors, and so on. Though it may feel like stalking, you will engage in a trending, widespread marketing habit for everyone’s benefit.

Draw inspo from global markets

Foreign markets are always good if you know how to approach them right. Maybe a hearty community of foreigners in your city would go to all lengths to enjoy some of the mouth-watering traditional food they had back home. Or you may have found some delicious, specific dishes you know a large enough audience in your city would fall for.

Examine international markets or local niche ones to discover products that sell well yet aren’t met in your market. Find out what issues or needs they tackle and if your market’s consumers have parallel pain points with the assessed audience. If so, you may have come across a million-dollar idea.

Keep an eye on economic and legal changes

With the ever-changing economic and legal landscape nationwide, people have started looking into them for goldmine ideas. Upcoming such modifications and numerous other factors often impact consumers’ needs and wants as lifestyles adjust, and new products and services replace others. In this area, many newfound demands exist, and old stagers in business have fewer means of tackling the rising requests.

New legislation may also signal a need for your product to be adjusted to comply with the rules. Look into this area, and you may find the diamond in the rough you’ve only dreamed of!

Spotting market gaps is a breeze when you know and lean on the information mentioned above! Do you have any other insights or wisdom to share?