Whether you’re in the process of creating a new product or trying to find a tagline for you next big marketing campaign, testing the waters is a pivotal step. After all, you wouldn’t want to shell out thousands of dollars on developing a product or campaign only to find out that people don’t have a need for it.

There a number of market research methods that you can use to assess the market validity of your prospective product.  Common practices include conducting focus groups, surveys, or in-depth interviews to test ideas. However, while the above-mentioned tactics are effective in gathering data, they can often be time consuming, not to mention expensive.

If you’re someone who doesn’t have the time or budget to conduct elaborate studies, then consider using PPC advertising as your market research tool. Not only is it easy to set up, it’s also very cost-effective, because you’ll be able to control how much you spend on your campaigns.

On to PPC market research

Tim Ferriss, author of the best-selling book The 4 Hour Workweek, was one of the first people to popularize the use of PPC for market research. According to him, when he was choosing the title for his book, he decided to use Google AdWords to A/B test various titles. He created several text ads with different headlines and tracked the CTR of each ad. In the end, the ad with the headline “The 4 Hour Workweek” received the most clicks, and that’s how it ended up being the title of his best-seller. Read the rest of this entry »