The First and Most Important Thing You Need Know About Marketing

What is the first and most important thing you must learn when it comes to marketing?

It’s not the products. Not the techniques. Not even copywriting.

Any guess?

According to the late Gary Halbert, “you must be a student of the market. The first and the most important thing you must learn is what people want to buy.”

There is no ‘better’ place I know in the modern world to found out what people actually buy than ‘Amazon’

Amazon is a goldmine.

During the time when Gary is writing the Boron Letters, he recommended buying SRDS Direct Mail List Book.

Well. I don’t know if SRDS still exists. But we have already a modern version of it.

In terms of studying the market, Amazon is second to Google.

From the prepper market to the prostate market. From market who wants a ripped body to the market who wants to rip your money.

(Almost) everything you want to learn about a particular topic is on Amazon.

Just reading the review comments is a real gold mine.

Read 4 to 5 stars review and you will see what topic appeals to your niche.

To attract your targeted audience, it is a must to create content that is popular and engaging.

Read 2 to 3 stars reviews and discover what might be missing, what customers are still looking for.

This is where you can get ideas or potentials to stand out the niche you have chosen.

Of course, there are other ways to find what the market wants like forums, blog posts comments, surveys. And these deserve a separate discussion.

But for those in the early stage of finding a product or service to sell, Amazon is a good place to go.

Why everyone should be a ‘student of market’?

The first benefit of being a student of the market is you eliminate a massive and crazy ‘guesswork’.

People are already telling you (unconsciously) what they really want. All you have to do is to create what they want and sell them what they want.

Second, it is once said that if you do enough research, you are already 80% done on your project. The better you know your market, the better you can serve them with your products or service.

Third, it helps you decide if it’s a go or no. Why waste time, effort and energy on things you know won’t work? Gary Halbert had said it very well,

“Gonna be tough, if you gonna be stupid.”