So you’ve got a great idea – that’s a good start. But how do you know if that idea is actually a marketable product? We asked e-commerce expert Warrick Kernes to share his best advice on the steps you need to take before setting up an online store. Is it possible to check if your idea might be profitable before you begin?
In his video response, Warrick explains how to use the Google Keyword Planner in Google Adwords to identify the demand for products you’re thinking of selling by looking at search volumes.
In his deep dive, he looks at:
- How to use Google Keyword Planner to see what products South Africans are searching for
- How to find the right number of impressions that relate to the product that you’re selling and the market that you’re selling it to
- Predicting potential income using keyword forecasting
- Understanding the conversion matrix
- How to use the campaign tool
Predicting demand for online purchases
Warrick gives some invaluable tips on how to use Google Keyword Planner to predict the demand for products you’re thinking about selling – before you even invest in inventory. This free tool gives you an insider’s edge on how many people are searching for what you want to sell.
“Within the Keyword Planner you can put in the keywords for a product that you’re thinking about buying or thinking about selling and you can see how many people in South Africa are currently searching for that product. The more people that are searching for it the better. You can also get an idea if it’s a small market niche product. As long as there are a few people searching for it that’s still a good sign. If there are a lot of people searching for it that’s even better because you can also then go and look at how many people are selling this product. If there is nobody selling the product and there are a lot of people searching for the product you may have just found yourself a winner,” says Warrick.
Watch this step-by-step 11-minute video that outlines exactly what to do to determine whether or not you should turn your idea into an online store.
About Warrick Kernes
A serial entrepreneur with more than a decade of e-commerce experience in South Africa and Europe, Warrick won London’s 2009 Young Businessman of the Year Award. Founder of the SA award-winning online store Action Gear (founded 2010, exited 2018), Warrick is a guest lecturer on e-commerce at WITS Business School to MBA students and has also talked on e-commerce for JP Morgan (S&P 500).
Warrick is a regular contributing author for Entrepreneur Magazine and in 2018 he published his book on South African e-commerce. He also sits on the Education Committee for the e-commerce Forum Africa. In 2017 Warrick founded the Insaka e-commerce Academy and is now dedicated to growing SA’s e-commerce industry.
If you found this article helpful, we recommend reading Google tools to help your small business.
