How to do Product Research

Often online stores fail because they invest too much of their budget on products that don’t sell or are late to trends. The solution to these common issues is simple—product research.

There are millions of different products to choose from. Choosing the right ones for your brand can be challenging when the goal is to maximize revenue for your eCommerce or dropshipping business. Here’s how to find products that offer you the most opportunity for success. 

Product Research Guide: How To Find Winning Products

The most challenging step in product research is knowing whether to sell one specific product, create a store for a particular niche, or sell a wide range of products. 

To help you out, here is a product research guide for identifying and filtering out winning products that aren’t too saturated. 

Conduct Market-based Product Research

Market-based product research covers market size, how competitive the niche is, and your target demographics. Tools like Facebook’s Ad Sets can reveal the audience size of a niche. 

Broader niches will have a larger audience, and larger audiences tend to compete more for products within that niche. You want a mix of high audience volume and low competition.

The more you filter out demographics or get specific with your niches, the better you can zero in on your target audience and find products within less saturated markets. 

Suppose you’re selling products within the broad pet supply niche. A more specific niche would be cat supplies. From there, you can go deeper and focus on supplies for specific cat breeds. 

Leverage Product Research Tools 

Product research tools do the heavy lifting, providing users with data-driven insights into historically profitable products, where they are sold, and who is selling them. 

With WinningHunter, you can find and filter out hundreds of thousands of products posted on Facebook, Meta, and TikTok ads. Users can also filter out dropshipping-only products, which lets you see what products competitors have, their ad set budget, and the creatives they are testing. The best part is you can create hundreds of persuasive ad copies with just a click and even remove watermarks from TikTok Creative Center ads. 

Consider Product Outlook (Short Term vs. Long Term)

Virality, trends, and stability are vital to identifying which products are better for the short-term or long-term. With WinningHunter, you see the exact ad set amount your competitors spend and how long they’ve been running the ads.  

Competitors typically run longer-running ad campaigns for products that generate consistent revenue. Trends can be lucrative as long as they stay relevant, but you must differentiate them from fads. 

Fads are products that go viral but don’t have the market for stable growth. Think of gag or meme-based products. They fall off quickly, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t profitable. You just have to time your entry and exit.

Find Product Variations

In digital marketing, you rarely get a pat on the back for originality. There will always be similar products with little variation, which you can capitalize on—as long as there’s proof of concept. 

Let’s say you found an adhesive bathroom shower organizer that works well on Amazon (proof of concept). You wouldn’t want to sell it there because it’s a saturated market. Instead, you can find similar products on sites like Temu or AliExpress and then sell them on Facebook or TikTok. 

Finding Product Suppliers 

Finding your competitors’ suppliers requires little effort. Just go through their catalog. Find the product you want to sell and do a Google Image search. Use an image without labeling for faster and more accurate results.

Two of the most popular suppliers are Aliexpress and CJDropshipping. Partnering with local suppliers is also an option. Thousands of online stores use Walmart or Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) as their suppliers.

If you’ve found success with a product and are already starting to grow demand for it, you can try talking directly to a manufacturer and asking for minimum product quantities. However, going this route requires hiring a third party if the manufacturer doesn’t do shipping. 

Do Customer/Interest Targeting

Customer research or interest targeting is as integral as product research. You don’t have to specify your ideal customer profile just yet. However, it’s an essential step in lead qualification. 

Let’s say you find an ad set with high engagement (likes and comments). But you also discover that most people engaging with the ad are between 14 and 16 years old. 

Teens typically don’t have credit cards or the ability to purchase. That’s why it’s better to do competitor research based on how many ad sets they run and how much they spend. 

Likes or comments might not provide the necessary insights to make data-driven decisions. With product research tools like WinningHunter, users can see competitor data and how they’re scaling ad campaigns, not just likes and comments.  

Research Product Selling Price and Markup

Consider a product’s potential selling and markup price. Even with high profit margins, advertising costs, and transaction fees can quickly eat away at potential revenue. Determine the average retail price of the product and find out how much it costs on supplier sites like Alibaba, Aliexpress, or CJDropshipping. Then, adjust markups accordingly. Try using:

• Fixed markup on cost (FOMC): Cost + markup (by the dollar or percentage)

• Cost-based pricing: Expenses + profit margin percentage

• Tiered markup: Cheaper items get higher markups, and expensive ones get lower

• Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): Follow supplier price recommendation

• Penetration pricing: Lower markup price than competition 

Key Takeaways

Whether you’re running an eCommerce store, doing dropshipping, or handling fulfillment yourself, product research ensures that you’re optimizing your budget for scalable and sustainable revenue. Here’s a quick recap:

• Start product research by identifying a niche you want to get into

• Find a mix between broad and specific niches

• Leverage product research tools to streamline competitor and market research

• Find affordable and quality suppliers by doing reverse Google image searches on winning competitor products

• Follow product research best practices such as conducting marketing-based research, considering product outlook, and researching potential product markup prices. 

Go beyond surface-level metrics and win through in-depth data. Start finding winning products today!