Often, when we’re trying to launch a product or service in a market we’re unfamiliar with, we don’t even know whether there’s real demand for it.
After moving back to China from the U.S., I thought it would be a good idea to offer a medical tourism concierge service for Americans. I built a website without doing much research first. But my website was getting only about one visitor a month, so I decided to study SEO to increase traffic. That’s how I found the book 3 Months to No.1.
Along the way, I stumbled upon a free tool that could help us gauge market demand: Google Keyword Planner. Its Get search volume and forecasts section is useful for finding out how often people in your target market search for your product or service over a given period.
Note: The screenshot above was taken while I was writing this post. For some reason, the average monthly search range had dropped to 10–100 from the 100–1,000 I saw when I first researched the keyword. The estimates don’t seem very precise.
To my dismay, terms like “hip replacement cost China,” “knee replacement cost China,” and “root canal treatment China” showed fewer than ten searches per month. The most searched term I found was “dental implant cost China,” which initially showed an average of 100–1,000 searches per month. That helped explain why I was getting so little traffic: very few Americans appeared to be searching for these treatments in China.
I thought Americans would want to come to China for various treatments because of the price differences. There may be opportunities for Americans to take advantage of more affordable healthcare in Asian countries, but it seemed that many weren’t aware of them. That might explain why even treatments with some of the biggest price differences attracted so few searches.
I wish I’d known about this tool earlier. It could have helped me avoid spending so much time building a website before checking demand.
For future projects, I’ll definitely use this tool first to see whether people are searching for the product or service I plan to offer.