The marketing tool that is most overlooked in relation to its tremendous POWER is surveys.

Even a simple 3-question survey with the correct questions – if you know how to prioritize the answers you get back – can reduce the risk of your entire business venture by 85%. I’m not exaggerating.

Some of my opt-in forms add just ONE question – for example “What one thing do you most want to accomplish with Google in the next day or two?” – and the answers we get are priceless.

Case in point: Dr. Glenn Livingston was $750,000 in debt 5 years ago from a failed corporate startup and he realized he couldn’t make that back doing $125/hr psychotherapy sessions in his office.

He turned to online marketing and started building highly focused niche websites.

The topics he chose were diverse, ranging from people with disabilities to Alpaca farming.

He applied his psychology and research background and devised a way to ELIMINATE loser markets before he’d even built out a single website.

(The secret to success is eliminating games you can’t win, and not playing them. Never forget that!!!)

Glenn honed his market research system to the point of being 14 for 14: 100% success rate for entering new markets, 14 times in a row. If his research system gave him all green lights, he could build the product and the marketing based on the surveys and it was profitable.

I know of nobody else in business who has that kind of success rate. In November Glenn paid off the last of his $750,000 of debt. He is a liberated man.

As a result of this strange detour in his life, he probably knows as much about online niche market research as anyone in the world.

With that in mind I have three things I’d like to direct your attention to:

1) Glenn and Howard Jacobson (Howard is Author of “AdWords for Dummies”) put together a “Market Research by Proxy” system called AdWords Check Mate. It’s a delightfully simple system for finding gaping holes in any AdWords market simply by asking yourself a series of questions about your competitor’s ads. (You don’t even have to put up a survey.)

I have never seen a market that didn’t have a gaping hole in it, based on Howie and Glenn‘s system.

Their $67 ebook constitutes a powerful way to grab yourself a spot in even ruthlessly competitive markets, get superior Click Thru Rates and strong sales early in the game.

The thing I like most about it is how elegantly simple it is. You don’t have to learn some huge technique, you just need to spend an hour or two studying your competitors’ ads and offers, using their handy matrix:

* NEW PPC Technique Can Double Your Click Through Rate:
http://www.AdwordsCheckmate.com/NewAdwordsTechnique.php

2) After you begin to use marketing surveys to guide your activity, you realize how much you used to just GUESS (!!!) when you could have so easily *asked*. Glenn offers the full version of his Market Research System for Pay Per Click – as well as many hours of insightful free audio recordings and interviews – at
http://www.LivingstonReport.com/

3) This is so vital that I incorporated it as a mandatory element in our Jet Propulsion program which launches February 3. In short, Jet Propulsion is a 12 week total marketing makeover executed for you by Glenn Livingston and Jeff Hughes’ team in Milwaukee.

Jet Propulsion costs $12K which ain’t cheap. However if a person is spending $5K a month on AdWords it probably makes good sense, and if you’re spending $10K+ per month on clicks, it’s pretty much a no-brainer ROI investment.

(And it takes a truckload of work off your plate.)

In Jet Propulsion we will execute the simplified “80/20 Version” of Glenn‘s survey system for each client.
http://www.perrymarshall.com/jetpropulsion/

In the Spring 2009 Bobsled Run (which runs parallel to JP) it will be one of the first things we teach.
http://www.bobsledrun.com/

Again, once you start surveying your prospects, your customers and even your Google traffic, you’ll be amazed at how much of your marketing USED TO BE pure guesswork, but is not anymore.

And delighted with how much easier your life is. Why guess when you can ask?

Perry Marshall

*AdWords Check Mate:
NEW PPC Technique Can Double Your Click Through Rate:
http://www.AdwordsCheckmate.com/NewAdwordsTechnique.php

*Free audios & interviews with Glenn about online market intelligence:
http://www.LivingstonReport.com/

*Jet Propulsion: Crackerjack PPC marketing team surveys your market, fine tunes your AdWords performance, and installs split testing and autoresponders – and assigns you a professional copywriter. Built For You. Commences February 3:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/JetPropulsion

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.