Hugh MacLeod was absolutely right when he said on his blog – Don’t try to sell a meteor to a dinosaur. It wastes your time and annoys the dinosaur.

The message is clear : You need to know your target audience inside out. Creating a marketing campaign without this information is more like buying a lottery ticket.

The question is – How can you get to know about your target audience without spending a fortune on those research reports from market research agencies?

In this article I am going to describe the exact tactics that I use to research my target audience without spending a fortune buying market research reports. If I can use them, there’s no reason why you can’t.

While its nice to take a look at statistics once in a while but they should not be your major concern and neither they should be your sole basis for making a decision!

When I personally am researching a target audience – I look for the psychological mindset rather than numbers. And, that always works better for me.

How can you identify this Psychological Mindset your target audience may have? Actually, its not that difficult as it may seem. Try these using these simple tactics for conducting a Market Research yourself, easily and effectively –

Niche Forums – Nothing offers more business intelligence than forums. Go visit them and try to feel what question are people asking and what answer are they getting. One of the best places for this kind of research is the general forums or the hangout zone – whatever they may call it.

This is because at the general forums people speak their real mind rather than hiding behind the masks of professionalism. But a word of caution – Try to take a detached view of things. See how they respond to those answers. You may disagree on a lots of points and perhaps be raged about some. Your purpose to visit is to pick intelligence not get too much involved.

Another thing is to use your commonsense and see which comments are individual and which are generalized. You purpose there is to focus on the general mindset!

Niche Blogs – Most blog writers are notorious [Yeah, that’s the exact word] for writing anything and everything on their mind. Visiting and reading blogs related to your industry or blogs of people who you know are your / your competitor’s clients is a highly recommended way of keepinga track of developments in your industry and getting to know what others think about it.

A better way to keep track of the Blogs would be to gather a RSS Feed from them. This way you can keep a track of the posts being made on those blogs without actually having to visit them regularly.

Your Competitors – This is perhaps the best way to research your niche market. No, I do not recommend you copying them exactly but taking inspiration from them. This way you are picking a fully ripe – low hanging fruit.

So How exactly should you be Legally Spying your competitors without actually hiring a private investigator?

We have always heard it this way – Know your competition. But what should you know about them? The color of the diaper they wore when they were born?

No, not exactly that much but the more the better. You should be knowing at least the things outlined below :

Learn their tactics: Will you ever see your competitors actually come to public boards and honestly blab our all the tactics that they use to grab the customers that could actually have been yours? You might have answered a no, but I see it happening every now and then.

See their pitches: Pitches are made in public and they always will have to be, otherwise, what is the meaning of pitching the client when the same information which was meant to make the prospect a client is actually being kept secret form her. And listening to others and reading their material is not a crime but copying it is.

See what psychological triggers do they use? How do they present it ? What do you like in it or what do you hate in it?

Whey do they roam?: Keep an eye on which all sites they visit and what content do they post on those sites. You don’t have to install key-loggers on their computers to know about it.

Go to famous communities, blogs, chat–rooms and wherever you think that they would be posting messages or talking. And it’s perfectly legal to read these posts and keep an eye on their activities in public places.

Pick hints of what they are up to and how they are doing their business. I have seen that most of the times people are very careless about what they post. Well, its their fault that they posted it and not our that we read it.

How do they keep their customers happy?: Learn what all goodies they offer to their customers and how do they handle their customer support. Most of the times you will find that they offer all they details about their offering on their sites.

Pickup ideas on what sort of addons do they provide and what exact language or presentation method do they use to offer it.Try contacting their customer support and see how do they handle it.

Let me give you an example of a thing I learnt from my hosting company about customer service.

Whenever I talk to their live support, just moments after I finish I receive an email from them stating what my problem was and what steps did they take to solve it.

For them there are three benefits for this -

1. Most of people have a tendency to forget things just minutes after it is told to them. So by sending me this email they are giving me a detailed answer which I can refer to in case something slips from my mind.

2. This shows that they are professional and really care about my problem.

3. This gives them an opportunity to do a bit of brand building by adding the closing line : ‘ We were glad to help you and in case you have any further problems, we are here to help you. Thank you for using XYZ co. Your business is very important to us.

See their Press Releases – Keep track of all the press releases that your competitors release. They will usually try to touch the Pain Points of your customers and try to prove how they are going to solve it by their solutions.

Services like BusinessWire.com and PRWeb.com are absolutely free. Also try searching for the Keyword – Free Press Release Distribution in search engines and register a Media Accounts on these sites, if it’s a option. This way you will never miss any press release targeted at your Market.

Talk to your clients about them : So you have won the client ? Chances are that your competition might have also pitched for the same project. Talk to your client about it. Most of the times they will tell you the exact details of the presentation that was made and what they liked of disliked it.

I personally find this as the most valuable form of information. Not only because this tells me what strategies my competitors use but also what that client likes or dislikes . Next time I pitch that client for a project I remember not to do the things my client dislikes

With all this information about your competitor at your disposal, you now know how they handle your target market. Take inspiration from it.

Get my point?

Ads focused on your Target Audience – Most of the ads are based on the AIDA concept ( Attention, Interest, Desire and Action ). Take a look at the ads that are repeated again and again ( this is an indication that they work) and see what points are they touching and how you can solve those problems yourself.

There a lot of Ad Collection sites like Ad-Rag.com [ It costs 2 Euros for 30 Days ] and AdCritic.com [ About $100 Per Year for subscription to the Print Edition and the Website].

And, sometimes numbers may help. If you can afford – consider buying reports from Jupiter, ACNielson, Forrester, Marketing Sherpa and the kind. Clickz [A division of Jupiter Media] has a freely accessible collection of some research reports here. They can help you focus your effort more!