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Validating your business idea can be time-consuming and expensive. Discover how you can validate your ideas fast and cost-effectively.
Constant testing is CRITICAL in both business and marketing.
Want to launch a new business?
Test out a minimum viable product first before doubling down on the idea.
Want to launch a new product?
Again, validate an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) first and only double down once you’ve attained positive market reception.
Skipping the validation phase of something that you’d like to launch might potentially lock you in a daunting waste of money, time & resources that could’ve been easily avoided.
Within this article, I’ll be going over the simple & yet highly effective validation method that I use to pre-test services, products, and even entire businesses with.
First & foremost, prior to building anything, do some basic market research. This exercise will help you understand whether there are already established providers on the market that you can emulate & innovate from.
If you don’t find any competitors that are offering your exact solution, then try to look out for providers that might potentially offer something similar.
If you find them, use tools like the Facebook & TikTok Ad library to see how they advertise to the market.
Pay close attention to their copywriting & the graphics/videos that they use.
Note down their pricing.
If possible, try to speak to their customers to get a good idea about how they feel about the existing provider on the market.
Additionally, if possible, become a client of your competitor to gain a better understanding of what they’re offering & how they retain clients over time.
Gaining this critical information will save you tons of time when it comes down to “re-inventing the wheel”.
When Nike launches a new shoe, they typically avoid producing the actual shoe itself until a certain number of pre-orders have been hit.
This pre-order strategy allows them to test market demand with something as simple as a concept design, a landing page, and some ads.
This gives them the ability to validate an idea for pennies as opposed to investing millions in producing something that the market would potentially never want.
Think like Nike.
Now, of course, not everyone reading this is in the e-commerce space.
Some of you might be in SaaS.
Others in services.
And others in e-learning.
The point is that, regardless of the industry you’re in, there’s a way to pre-test ideas without A LOT OF RESOURCES & TIME COMMITTED.
Here’s an example.
Say you want to launch a new course on a certain topic.
Do you first dedicate several weeks to the creation of the course?
Or do you first pre-test the idea with a pre-order page and only once you’ve identified enough market demand, do you actually create the course itself?
Smart people do the latter.
This style of thinking can be applied to any vertical whatsoever and in most cases, the prerequisites for a successful test include nothing other than a website and some ads.
My favorite website builder when it comes down to validating ideas is none other than the Unicorn Builder.
I love the fact that you’re able to spin up a website that actually looks decent and is unique all in as little as a few minutes.
When pre-testing ideas, this gives me the ability to focus on what actually matters for an MVP to convert and that’s the copy & the video content.
Additionally, Unicorn makes it extremely easy to set up email capture & checkout pages with just a few clicks using their inbuilt Google Sheets & Stripe integration.
I actually filmed a full review of Unicorn some time ago which you can find here:
Additionally here you can also find my full list of my favourite 81+ growth hacking tools where Unicorn is also included.
In most cases, when pre-testing, you’ll likely be validating your idea against a cold audience that has never engaged with your brand before.
This likely means that you’ll be driving traffic from Facebook, TikTok, or Google Ads directly to your website.
Content Marketing works too with a cold audience but the issue is that it takes a few months at the minimum till you see results, therefore, if speed is your priority I strongly recommend you go with ads.
When launching the ads, make sure that your Pixel & Tracking is set up properly as they’ll be giving you the necessary information regarding whether your test was successful or not.
Once you’ve obtained enough information from your campaigns, you’ll then be able to sit down and analyze whether this is a business idea/product idea worth doubling down on.
Got conversions from your validation at a good CPA?
Double down on the idea.
Didn’t get conversions but got some good-priced clicks on your ads?
Try to optimise the landing page further.
Got no clicks whatsoever?
Ditch the idea and try something else.
A fact of business is that most of the things you will try to do will naturally fail.
Most of the marketing strategies you try out, will fail.
Most of the businesses you launch will fail.
Some will succeed.
But finding the ones that will succeed requires a series of failures beforehand.
This concept of pilot testing through the use of MVPs minimizes your losing position to just a few hundreds in ad spend, as opposed to losing thousands in both money & time.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you enjoyed this concept & strategy then I also invite you to check out our Growth Hacking course, The Growth Hacking Bootcamp, where we focus on the latest low-cost highly effective marketing strategies to date.
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