Conducting an Industry Analysis
for Your Internet Marketing Plan

Trade Journals

It's hard to be specific about where to find an industry analysis. Start is with the dominant trade journals for your particular industry. How do their columnists and analysts see the online future for the industry? Look especially at the first issue of the New Year when pundits are called upon to pundicate about the future. Try to include some statistics about the size of the market in your industry, the amount of goods and services sold on and off the Internet, and projections for the future. Unfortunately, some trade journals just haven't moved into the Internet age. They are deeply threatened and don't understand it.

Investment Industry

A second place to look is the investment industry. Teams of researchers working for brokerage houses and information services comb various sectors looking for stocks to recommend to their clients. Since lots of money is involved, the research is careful and insights can often be rewarding. Also check magazines such as Fortune (http://www.fortune.com), Forbes (http://www.forbes.com), Red Herring (http://www.redherring.com), and Upside (http://www.upside.com)

Internet Analysis

For a specifically Internet look on various industries read The Industry Standard (http://www.thestandard.com), E-Commerce Times (http://www.ecommercetimes.com), and Iconocast newsletter (http://www.iconocast.com). I also read Dana Blankenhorn's insights in ClickZ (http://www.clickz.com) and A-Clue.com (http://www.a-clue.com). Firms specializing in Internet research sometimes analyze whole industries -- and hope to sell you the report. One leader is Forrester Research (http://www.forrester.com). The E-Commerce Research Room at WilsonWeb.com (http://www.wilsonweb.com/research/) scours the Web for such analyses in many sectors. It's difficult to be exhaustive since the literature is mushrooming, but it's a great starting place. It pays to read widely looking for nuggets of online strategies found successful in other industries that could be translated into your own.

Once you've done your research, summarize the trends you see in a few points. You don't want to write a lot, just enough to clarify current directions to show that your strategies are working with the direction of industry trends rather than at cross purposes or lagging behind.