How do you test the market demand for your crowdfunding innovation?

In our experience, it is important to expose the idea with a crowd of enablers and supporters. The feedback received in person builds in the support system and also first takers of your crowdfunding campaign. So make sure, you are visible before hitting the crowdfunding campaign.

Conduct detailed interviews with a diverse set of people from your target customer demographic. Gauge their interest levels, pricing acceptance and feature priorities for your concept.

Your target backers may not be your target purchasers. They may be people who understand the problem you are solving, who will back your campaign but aren't purchasers of your product. Start by identifying your target backers. The challenge for running a survey to find out their interest, is the size of the survey to make it statistically significant. You will only get directional feedback, but this is still useful.

yes, platform helps. When we launched bootcamp for crowdfunding of student ideas, it got hosted on a website dedicated for raising crowdfunding. You can either create your own platform of find a crowd-funding platform that resonates with your product and its target audience.

Landing Page with Explainer Video Create a coming soon type landing page with an explanatory video. Drive targeted traffic to it via digital ads. The visitor engagement metrics reveal how compelling your value proposition is.

Prior to a campaign launching, we recommend setting up a landing page where people can sign up to find out more about your business and your campaign. The landing page isn't a copy of your website, it's a place to sign up, with enough context and proof points for people to sign up. Don't ask for too much information, otherwise, people won't sign up. As a minimum, ask for their email and first name. You can always get more information later, as you build a relationship and trust with your potential backers.

Waitlists and Pre-orders Add a signup form allowing visitors to join a special updates list or place pre-orders for your new product even before the crowdfunding campaign kicks off. This signals real purchase intent.

Create Prototypes and Run Beta Tests Develop early product prototypes and provide exclusive access to select groups for beta testing and feedback. Iteratively refine product-market fit.

Attend Relevant Events Showcasing your product at trade shows, conferences and networking events attended by your target users gives valuable face-to-face assessment opportunities even before formal launch.

When testing market demand, research the problem your product or service is solving. If you Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo it will find you data on the market size, and often broken down for your geography. Try to find the most recent data, as the market may have significantly changed post COVID. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) also shows how fast the market is growing. Now use this data to identify the Total addressable market. How big is the market, how much of that market could you reach, and what market share do you think you could get? This should help you identify your potential market demand, that you can now test with people in your target market.

Getting strong positive signals on some or all of these validation tests gives the green flag to move forward confidently with a wider crowdfunding launch and invest in scaling production capacity early on.