Conducting Market Research for Digital Planners

Conducting market research for digital planners is a vital part of your creation journey. In today's competitive landscape, understanding your customer’s needs and preferences is key to standing out. By conducting thorough market research, you can fine-tune your offerings to align perfectly with what your audience is looking for. This not only boosts your sales but also enhances customer satisfaction.

**Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you**

How to Prep for Market Research

Technically, market research can be conducted in a couple of different ways. You can search broadly for available digital planners and then choose the type of digital planner you want to create based on your findings. Alternatively, you can identify your target audience FIRST and then conduct market research for that specific niche.

I prefer to know who I am creating for before starting to create. Ideally, I recommend building an audience of your own so that you can produce products geared specifically to help them. Either way you go is fine, though. This post will focus on knowing your target audience already.

How to Conduct Market Research for Digital Planners

Don't freak out that market research is some long, drawn-out process that takes a technical mind to compute. That is not the case. You can do as much or as little market research as you want. If you are a newer digital product creator, market research can help give you ideas and take some of the scary out of what to create.

Market research is not copying. We are not looking at available digital planners and recreating them as they are, rather you are getting ideas from several searches to build the best planner for your audience. Make notes of what you like and dislike, but do not copy someone else's planner.

Ask Your Audience

First and foremost – ask your audience! If you have an email list with subscribers, utilize it to send out surveys to get feedback. You can even offer a discount or coupon code to complete the survey. Alternatively, if you have a Facebook group, create a poll to see what your people need help with.

Going straight to the source to learn their pain points is always the best solution. However, if you don't have an audience yet, or your surveys and polls are being ignored, you can still create products to help your target audience. This will help you gain more eyeballs to niche down later.

How to Gain an Audience

My number one solution is blogging. Blogging allows you to use search engines to get your ideal readers to your site. Not to Etsy – which is borrowed land – but to YOUR site. There, you write articles to help your readers and have links to your products either on Etsy or in your shop. Setting up a blog is easy to do if you follow Blogging Foundations. It's a free course and the most comprehensive one I have found.

Search for What's Available

When it comes to seeing what's on the market, you can't go wrong with, well, seeing what's on the market. Start with Etsy. Do some searches (preferably in an incognito window so your past searches don't appear), and see what types of digital planners are available.

When looking at available planners, consider making notes of the following:

• Cost – I would also note the number of pages or if the planner is part of a bundle offer where they can customize the layout. This will help you decide on a price point when you are ready to list your planner on Etsy.
• Title – See what words your competitors are using as their titles.
• Tags – Each listing on Etsy is allowed 13 tags. You should use all 13 tags, and they should not be repetitive or keyword-stuffed.
• Mockups – Click through to see what kinds of mockups catch your eye. Is it a video? Large pictures? Or maybe arrows? This will help you create great Etsy mockups.
• Layouts – Whether you decide to create a vertical one-page planner or a horizontal two-page planner, see what others include. Then, make a note of the ones that you want to create.

Also, ignore the first listings that appear and show as “Sponsored.” These are not the top-selling items for that search; instead, the creator is paying for ad space on Etsy, and that's why they are at the top.

Once you've found some good ideas, start planning out your planner. Yes, for real, start listing the pages, the links, the tabs, the sections, and all that jazz for the planner you want to create. Our Beginner's Guide to Digital Planners can help you outline your planner further, and get you through the listing process.

Social Media

Social media groups are another great way to conduct market research. Search your social media app of choice to see what groups are available for your target audience. This doesn't have to be just groups about creating digital planners – rather, join the groups that your people will be in.

Then, be helpful. If you see a post you can help with, leave a comment with your best advice. Don't be spammy. Instead, read the posts and ask yourself if something in the digital planner you create can be added to help them with their struggles. Get ideas, ask questions, and you'll be shocked at how many additions you can come up with.

Tools to Consider

When conducting market research, several tools are available to consolidate the research data for you. However, none of these tools are based on actual numbers provided by Etsy. They use an algorithm, and not all of the tools will provide the same data for a particular listing or shop.

The top three are Alura, eRank, and Everbee (in my opinion). However, I use and love Alura, so that's the one I'll cover for you:

Alura

My personal favorite tool is Alura. The clean design of their dashboard works well with my brain, and their AI assistant, Ava, is very good at providing product descriptions, titles, and tags. As for the market research tools, they offer the option of searching by Keyword, Product, or Shop.

When searching by Keyword, enter the word or phrase that best describes your niche and click the “Search” button. Alura will now generate a list of potential tags for your listing. If you don't find the relevant information, try searching again. This tool will also provide shop listings for the top products based on your input keyword.

Next, Alura offers the Product Seeker tool. This is the tool to use if you are trying to decide on a product to create. Once you input the parameters that you want Alura to search, the tool will provide you with the top-selling items based on your provided information.

This saves a lot of time when searching Etsy for product ideas. (TIP: If you are on the free plan with Alura and want to see the best first-page results, make sure to drill down the parameters, such as the monthly sales.)

Lastly, for the market research tools with Alura, there is their Shop Analyzer. If you find a shop with lots of sales, you can use the Shop Analyzer tool to see what tags they use for their listings, as well as other useful information to help you create the best listing for your product on Etsy.

Once you search for the shop, you can scroll down to see their current listings. Select different listings, and Alura will show the estimated sales, and the 13 tags they use. It's great to get more ideas!

You're Next Steps

Please, do not get hung on super thorough market research. Get a feel for what is out there, and start stocking your shop. It's important to remember that your first product will be your worst product. That's just how it works.

The next step will be creating your digital planner. Choose your platform and get those creative juices flowing! If you need help, join us in our Facebook group! I'm in there daily, ready to answer any questions that you have.