Have you ever been so excited about a product that you went all in and promoted it?
You wrote the posts. You set up the squeeze page. Maybe you even ran some paid ads.
And then nothing happened.
I have been there. More than once.
When it happens to you, the first thing you blame is the product.
But here is what I learned the slow way.
It is usually not the product.
It is how the product was chosen in the first place.
Most of us pick what to promote backwards.
We find a product we like.
We fall in love with it.
Then we write a list of every reason people should buy it.
Does that create sales? Sometimes yes, mostly no.
When you observe professional marketers you find something interesting.
They do not start with the product.
They start with the market.
They ask a different question first.
They ask "Who is already buying, and what are they buying?"
Then they find or build a product for that group.
This is called market-product fit.
And it might be the most important step in all of the steps required to succeed online.
Here is why.
A perfect product sold to the wrong market fails.
A good product sold to a hungry market wins.
The market matters MORE than the product.
Now of course the product matters.
I am not saying it does not. and you absolutely should promote products that you really believe in, for no reason other than you really believe in them.
But that's not how you build a business online.
Building a business online requires that you already know that there's a market for the product you're going to promote or create.
It’s just too expensive, in both time and money, to experiment with product-market fit.
So before you promote (or create) your next product, run this quick fit test.
1. Are they buying? If people are spending money on solutions to this problem today, the market is real. If nobody is buying anything like it, that is not a wide-open opportunity. That is a warning.
2. Do they feel the problem? A market in pain that knows it is in pain buys. A market that does not know, does not.
3. Can you reach them? If you cannot get your offer in front of these people, fit does not matter. Nobody is buying what they never see.
Maybe that test sounds easier said than done.
Here is how to do each one.
1. Are people buying? Search the problem in Google. Ignore the results and look at the ads. Ads cost money, and nobody pays to advertise to people who never buy. Ads on the page mean money is changing hands somewhere.
Then check a marketplace like Amazon or a course platform for products like yours and read the review counts.
2. Is the pain real? Go where these people talk. Facebook groups, Reddit, Amazon reviews, the comments on YouTube videos about the topic.
You are looking for people describing the problem in their own words. They often use emotional language to describe their situation. Write those words down. They are your future headlines.
3. Can you reach them? This one answers itself while you do the first two. The places you just visited are the places your market gathers. Pick one. That is where you will promote when the time comes.
None of this takes more than an hour.
And it is an hour that saves you weeks.
Get the fit right and everything downstream gets easier.
Your emails write themselves.
Your ads convert.
Your posts attract buyers instead of compliments.
You stop pushing reasons to buy and start answering demand that already exists.
That is the beauty of selling what people want to buy.
Because finding the right product-market fit is a beautiful thing indeed.
Hit reply and tell me - what product are you planning to promote next, and who is it really for?
Thanks for reading,
Charlie