Make use of social listening software

Data from social media conversations regarding goods, industries, brands, and other topics is gathered through social listening.

Many platforms allow you to filter chats, target certain geographic places, and provide summary analytics reports that you can combine with other information. Each instrument operates in a different way, but when it comes to market demand research, they all accomplish the same goal.

Basically, you’ll type in a few phrases, and the application will gather social media postings that mention or are related to those topics. You can see how others feel about it, where they’re talking about it, and what they’re saying about it.

However, market demand entails more than merely gauging product interest. It’s also about figuring out how much of a product your target market will buy and at what price.

Examine publicly available data on product sales, such as industry reports and case studies. A good old-fashioned Google search might also be a nice place to start. We looked into “the number of individuals purchase iPhones?” on Statista and acquired the accompanying data: 

How can you figure out what a product’s market demand is?

Are you ready to put all of this knowledge to use? Let’s do some math in a hypothetical situation.

Returning to the iPhone accessory concept, we’d want to offer “Billie Eilish iPhone covers,” which was another of our long tail keywords discovered in Google’s Keyword Planner.

A short search on Google Shopping reveals that these phone covers may cost anything from $1 to $25 per case. These are significant facts.

We’re now going to look at individual demand. What is the average number of Billie Eilish iPhone covers sold, and at what price point?

Riley, our first client, enjoys changing up her phone cover on a regular basis—and she also breaks it regularly. She buys a new iPhone cover every month, and six of them feature Billie Eilish over the course of a year. Sandra, our second client, buys only two cases every year to extend the life of her cases. Billie Eilish is the artist behind both of those songs.

We may, however, affect Riley and Sandra’s conduct by adjusting the offered price. Prices will rise, causing them to buy iPhone covers less frequently.

Here’s what it looks like over the course of a year:

• An example of how to determine a product’s market demand
• Riley and Sandra buy less iPhone covers as costs rise, affecting market demand.
• Take note of how, as prices rise, demand falls. That is essentially true for all products and marketplaces (though there are always exceptions). You’d repeat the procedure for each consumer to gain an approximation of total market demand.