# General Business Category > Marketing Forum > [Question] What would you search for?

## duncan drennan

I am in the process of improving my marketing and would like some feedback on search terms.

If you had an idea for an electronic product or gadget and needed help to develop that into an actual product what kind of searches would you do on the internet? Also, other than the internet, how would you go about finding that kind of service?

Another scenario: you have a company and see the opportunity to improve how you do business by creating an electronic product to fulfil some need what would you search for? How would you find someone to fulfil that need?

Some examples for the 2nd case (to get the gears oiled)
You want to have portable touch screen terminals for technicians to obtain information about assembling your productYou have an idea to improve warehouse picking speedsYou need a special tool to test the quality of your products...etc.
I would really appreciate your feedback. Thanks.

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## Karenwhe

Don't know if this is of much help, but here goes nothing ...

1. If I wanted to develop a product that is software, I would look for a software house. But first I would look if I can find it already in existence. If not then most likely go to rentacoder etc. Who would I search for would completely depend on the vertical (e.g. accounting, erp, inventory optimization, warehousing and so on and on).

2. If I wanted to develop a hardware product for any reason whatsoever, I would look up engineering companies in that sector (after of course I checked that there is no product that exists or that can be modified to suit my needs). Then I would search for an engineering company in the sector/vertical niche, e.g. metering, data storage devices, electrical engineering etc)

3. If I wanted to invent something that I would want to build a company upon, I would go to a patent attorney to check if there is a patent for this, if not I would hire an engineer together with a patent lawyer to work this through and get a patent. Once I have invested in that (which would cost around 50K dollars), I would raise money for the prototype as seed, then first round for marketing and then second round to go either mass or ipo.

I am not sure this helps, but this is what I would do.

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duncan drennan (25-Jun-08)

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## Karenwhe

After looking at my own post and at the question several times, I think I know why I couldn't answer the question and what you are looking for, then again maybe I am wrong.

You see there are many niches in many industries, and investing/building/constructing in each and every industry means a different thing.

So, if one is to look for someone to build something, they would have to look under that industry for something. That something may be engineering or software house.

But they would look under that industry. If you deal in warehousing then one would type in or look for warehousing software for example. 

That would not be the same thing that one would look for if it is in the transport industry to build something totally different.

So, in the oil industry you may look for something "...... oil", while in any software industry would be "...... software or solution".

The more accurate the vision of what one is looking for, the more accurate the search of that person would be and that would leave search options to millions of options.

Hence, if I got your question right and you want to narrow the building/creating things down to simple search, it would have to fall either under engineering something for hardware and physical things and software something for such type of solutions.

Maybe I am wrong, because I am not sure what you are looking for.

But if this is what you are looking for, then there are as many searches as possible problems in the world to solve.

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## Dave A

Examples of search phrases would be:
electronic engineering design service 
electronic prototype design
electronic engineer
electronic design

Keywords:
electronic, electronics, design, engineer, engineering, prototype

There are some tools that can take a short list like this and expand it into a whole pile of alternatives - a kind of thesaurus for search terms. But I can't find exactly where it is amongst my gazillion bookmarks at the moment.

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duncan drennan (25-Jun-08)

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## duncan drennan

> There are some tools that can take a short list like this and expand it into a whole pile of alternatives - a kind of thesaurus for search terms. But I can't find exactly where it is amongst my gazillion bookmarks at the moment.


I know the tools, and the basic search phrases (and variants) that I would search for - but that is the problem right there, *"I"* would search for them.

I am trying to figure out if I have a blind spot due to my technical background so that I can supplement a particular area. Karen raises one of the challenges.




> But if this is what you are looking for, then there are as many searches as possible problems in the world to solve.


This hits the nail on the head, and is what I'm trying to think my way around at the moment. If someone has a specific problem they make searches which are specific and around that problem.

Unless I am lucky enough to have something about that problem/field on my site which ranks high enough to get some attention or is a targeted keyword for an ad, then they would never come across me.

The way I would go would be a specific search (e.g. warehouse stock tracking system), and then slowly generalise that until I found something suitable. If I did not I could start searching for things in my industry which I think might yield results. If I still didn't find something, then what? There is still a bit of a chasm between searching for "warehouse stock tracking system" and "electronic design services".

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## Alta Murray

Hi Duncan,

Yes this is problematic, but I like the word prototype. What about inventor,creator....but I do get your problem.  It could be anything in any industry, so I shall give it some more thought..... but product should be in there combined with new perhaps.  

How many people will think of an engineer when they want a bike with wings for example? Most people will search under the product which is bike, but surely *design* will be a common element once you can not find what you are looking for? What about *Build*?  If I can not find something, I will certainly search for someone building what I want?  

Sorry, if I am not helpful, but I don't know anything about your field, and feel intimidated around anything mechanical or electrical.

I think the key will be to find the common words or elements, as a touch screen and an automatic card shuffler will have nothing in common, but words like new & build & design & prototype might.  Also manufacture, though you are not going to manufacture a whole line of products, but i have seen people go for that one a lot. They seem to think manufacturer followed by whatever they are looking for is the magic carpet ride on the Internet.

Sorry I am not smarter on this one, but if I come up with something brill I will let you know.

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duncan drennan (25-Jun-08)

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## Dave A

> Sorry, if I am not helpful, but I don't know anything about your field, and feel intimidated around anything mechanical or electrical.


I suspect this might be why your thoughts on this could be the most valuable...

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## duncan drennan

> Sorry I am not smarter on this one, but if I come up with something brill I will let you know.


Thank you so much for your input Alta - feel smart, because it is the kind I am looking for! I'm not searching for "the right" words (there are none), just trying to figure out what words other people would use ('cos they are probably different to mine).

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## Karenwhe

Duncan,

If I was you I would sub-theme the site to the engineering verticals you are interested in and go long tail.

But that is only a thought and you would of course need to have lots of content.

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## duncan drennan

> But that is only a thought and you would of course need to have lots of content.


I'm slowly building content via my blog, and that is working very well.

One of the reasons I am asking this is because I am going through a (slow) process of redoing my web marketing (in terms of my main service and website) and I want to build funnels and direct people into them via Adwords. That requires some sort of understanding as to what people might search for.

All the comments, thoughts and suggestions really do help. Thanks to all of you who have commented so far!

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## Yvonne

Duncan,  I have been giving this a lot of thought as there was something that I was interested in, but would assume that it would be too expensive to seek a professional consultant that it would be unrealistic to even try, let alone to focus on what "words" I would search on.

I would think it needs to be as simple as possible.

Would you be interested in using my "interest" as a test case, if so send me an e-mail - perhaps we can do it as a "joint" venture!  Note I am not seeking any financial backing.

Yvonne

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## Karenwhe

> I'm slowly building content via my blog, and that is working very well.


Will you be selling your services from your blog or your site? Because if you are dealing with engineering I would assume you have a main site and the blog should be a supporting factor in you SEO efforts and profile building efforts.

Now who you are selling to also makes a major difference. To take what Yvonne said into context, if you are talking expensive (and engineerings solutions should be..... it goes with the territory), it is likely that you are talking to people that have a lot of money, that would fall under medium to large sized companies.

If that is the case, then you have to have an appropriate site and your traffic should in theory to go there not your blog and then your blog should be an seo tool and a place for people to learn to know you better a place where you show what one calls the "human face".

Marketing to medium and large companies unfortunately is not the same as small companies. They are a different animal and are still looking for the corporate look and case studies and much more stuff of that nature.

To get an idea to what I mean you may want to take a look at this http://www.inwords.co.za.

But imho, you are not ready yet from what you are saying here, to either put a site nor to work on seo because your thoughts are still at the foundation phase. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, but remember that if you do something it will start ranking and then you have to start all over again if you thought process was not finalized yet at least at what we call "first draft" or "initial market analysis".

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## akhanna01

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