Marmalead is an awesome tool for finding keywords for your Etsy listings, but it can also be super powerful for doing new Etsy product research and development. In today’s Jam, we’re talking about how to get the most out of Marmalead when you’re looking at entering a new market.
All those new products
Today we’re talking about using Marmalead for new Etsy product research. So what is that? Well, whether you have a brand new Etsy shop or an existing one, and you want to add some new products to your Etsy listings, we’re going to talk about how to use Marmalead to facilitate that. To help you find out what people want to buy, we’re gonna take a close look at Etsy keywords.
Etsy product research: From generic to specific
Normally when you’re in Marmalead, you’re looking for good keywords for your listing, which are going to be more specific keywords, longtail keywords, etc. When you’re doing Etsy product research, the process is kind of that in reverse. You don’t want to look at very specific keywords at first. What you want to do is first, do a search in Marmalead for some very generic keywords. Then use the keywords that Marmalead brings back as part of that result set to understand where you should be looking inside of that.
Here’s an example
An example would be this: let’s say I want to sell some sort of a digital download. That’s very vague, but that’s a perfect place to start inside of Marmalead when I don’t know exactly what market inside of digital downloads I want to target yet. So if I jump into Marmalead and I do a keyword search for digital download, that’s gonna be where I can start this process of market research.
And here’s what you’ll see
You’re going to see both similar similar shopper searches and also you’re going to see the long tail alternatives table which is going to help you to identify popular market niches under that larger market. It’s going to give you the alternatives. Basically, you put in digital download and it’s gonna say, “Hey, this one is not long tail. Here are some suggestions along those lines that are long tail.”
And it’s going to show you right there which ones are the most popular of those long tail keywords too. So you know immediately which sub-markets underneath digital download have the most engagement, yet are still niche markets. Those are great places to start.
Add keywords to a comprehensive list
As you’re doing this process and finding these keywords, add them to a keyword list inside of Marmalead. Build out a new Etsy product research keyword list, and as you’re finding things that could be a good fit, add them to a list. It’s an easy way to keep track of those words. If you find out some of those things don’t pan out, you can remove them from the list later on.
Using Storm for Etsy product research
When you have that list, you now have a nice strong candidate list of keywords. Those can be great! But now you want some more of them also. What we want to do is to jump into Storm (which is one of the features in Marmalead) and you want to add even more to the list. You want to take those keywords that you think are good ones, use those as seed keywords in Storm, so you can find more like those. The idea is to get nice, big, healthy lists of keywords, so you can go from there.
So now we have a nice big list of suggestions for markets that we think we could actually create the things for those markets, and they could be something that sounds like fun to us, and it looks like an area that might be successful. What we really want to do now is figure out which of those has the most promise. Which areas seem like it makes the most sense to attack.
Study keyword data for market vitality
What you’ll want to do next is to start vetting each of those words that you have in your list by using a keyword search. You can note any other phrases that you see in those results as well. You’re going to want to look at some of the information on that keyword search page to understand whether or not there’s any life to this sub-market that you think you’ve found on Etsy.
You’re going to look at searches. You’ll also look at engagement and what the competition level looks like (just like you would when you’re normally selecting keywords inside of Marmalead). You want to be coming at it from a perspective of, “Does this have life here? Is this a good market?”
Don’t be so concerned with super high competition numbers like you would when you’re picking keywords for your listings (we’ll do that later). Right now, we’re just trying to look and see is this actually a valid market? Is there interest in this product that I could be making and selling inside of my shop?
Etsy product research: Be aware of market seasonality
One thing that you want to be aware of there is seasonality. Inside the keyword search, we’re going to show you the seasonality of those keywords. Just because a keyword is showing in the Marmameter, and it is saying, “Hey, there’s not gonna be a lot of search and engagement over the next 30 days,” that doesn’t mean that this is going to be wrong for a different time of year.
You might be doing this research in the spring and come across something that’d be great for the fall or winter. So you don’t want to throw that away. You want to make sure that you’re paying attention to that seasonality also, and say, “Hey, this could be a great addition to my shop for the winter,” especially if your shop is otherwise seasonally geared towards, let’s say summer and spring.
Understand seasonality to help with your Etsy product research
Those Marmameters at the top of the keyword search page are showing you what that keyword is forecast to do over the next 30 days. But if you’re considering a market to get into, you really want to understand what that seasonality looks like for the whole year. You don’t want to pick a keyword simply because it’s supposed to do well in the next 30 days, only to find out that, that market is dead the other 335 days of the year.
Pay attention to pricing
Another thing to consider when you’re in there doing your keyword research on these is to check out pricing. You might not have a very good idea of how much it’s going to cost or how much time it’s going to take to make this right off the bat. Do a little bit of a gut check and see if the pricing makes sense.
You might find that you can’t even compete in your market. It could be that it’s going to be so expensive for you to be able to make your product and you’re not going to be able to sell it for the price that other products are selling for. And so you’re really not interested in spending your time on that. This is another way that you can weed out some of those market options that you’re finding and that you’ve added to your list.
Decide what you want to do when it comes to Etsy product research
You might think you’ve discovered a market and found something that you can make, but then you’re seeing that people are going to pay $20. There’s no way you’re going to make this product for $20. It’s just not going to happen. This could be for a variety of reasons, maybe you want to make a product that’s higher quality than people are willing to pay for and that’s perfectly fine. You’ve got to go through a bunch of ideas to find the good ones.
Final thoughts
So there you guys go! There are some tips on how to best use Marmalead for doing new Etsy product research and development. We hope this helps you figure out what could work in your space.
Happy selling, everyone!
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