Have a great business idea? Here's how you validate it.
Jeff McDermott
Venture Building | Startup Studios | Fund of Funds | GP Stakes | Venture Capital | Real Estate | ALTS for all
Idea Validation
You know what I’m good at? Coming up with crappy ideas.
I bet you’ve had a few yourself.
You’re out taking the dog for a walk when genius strikes. You’ve got the best idea anyone has ever had. You rush home, open Evernote, and perform a full brain dump.
I’ve done this countless times. I’ve also spent money developing those ideas. Lots of money!
The biggest problem? Those ideas sucked, and no one wanted to buy/use what I built.
I could have avoided spending my money and time on those ideas if I had just taken a minute to validate my idea first.
Validation Done Right
The concept of validation gave birth to a number of people creating “coming soon” landing pages. These pages gave the visitor a few lines about the product and asked for their email in order to be notified when the product was live.
The problem with these pages is that although collecting emails does prove some interest in the idea, it doesn’t prove that those people are willing to pay for it or use it.
We don’t learn anything about those people, except for the fact that they liked the sentence or two you wrote. We don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, or even the reason why they need the product.
On top of everything, by the time you’re actually ready to go live, all those emails have gone cold, because you haven’t kept them updated. So you launch under the impression you’ve got 500 potential users, and you end up with 10.
I first read about this shift in “validation thinking” after reading Joel Gascolgne’s post on how he validated the idea for his (now very successful) web app Buffer.
Instead of just collecting as many email addresses as he could, he spent time creating a dialogue with those who did sign up.
Through many emails and Skype chats, he discovered what people actually wanted out of an app like his, instead of just building what his initial idea was.
In place of a “coming soon” page, he built a landing page that made it look like the product already existed, included pricing and plans. This way, the only sign ups he received were from people who were willing to pay for the service.
He still let them know before they signed up that they hadn’t launched yet, but only after they were making the commitment to pay (by clicking the sign-up button).
The outcome of this process is that when you’re finished, you’ve got a base of people who you know are willing to pay for your product, and who you’ve been in constant communication with.
Makes way more sense than 500 cold fish emails and a great big guess at what the product should offer, right?
How Do I Validate My Idea?
Regardless of how you do it, it’s all the same result. You need to talk to people. You need to find out if they need it, and if they do, exactly what it is they need. This is called validated learning.
Today, I’m going to show you how to build a landing page that looks like your product already exists, complete with pricing plans and features. I’ll explain why in a minute.
Many services around the web allow to build plug and play landing pages, but they’ll cost you. Sites like LeadPages or Unbounce do this quite well.
But if the point of all this is to validate the idea before we spend any money on it, why would we start by spending money? The short answer, because we need to do what it takes to make sure that moving forward with this idea makes sense. Spending a little up front to save us thousands down the road is the way to go.
Our New Idea Validation Execution Plan
- Brainstorm on what the core functions of the app/platform/product/service will be and then ask potential users for feedback. AKA the Lean Canvas
- You need a simple landing page (I suggest WIX or Ontrapages) since they are free. Keep it simple and no selling, just some history about you and the product/service…
- Set up a Free Mailchimp account to collect info
- Set up a new list in Mailchimp
- Set up a Free survey monkey account
- Here is an example of some starter questions
- Make sure to ask for the sale or at least a commitment as the last question as the goal is to convert these survey takers into potential customers/users
- Do data mining to curate contact info for the test group and any other client segments that you think could give you good feedback. Utilize Facebook Groups, Quora etc.
- Do some online research to find out where your customers hang out online and engage
- You can run ads on Bing, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other platform where your customer base may hang out.
- PAID SERVICES BUT WELL WORTH IT
- Software and Vendor recommendations
- www.writercartel.com to create your landing page content and video script
- www.paighambot.com to curate your test list (great for b2b!)
- https://contentmarketer.io Email platform
- https://www.pickfu.com/ to build your test group and email them instantly
- https://seedling.io test group
- https://hatchli.io/ free idea validation forum
- https://www.gutcheckit.com/solutions market research
- https://www.cint.com/solutions/access/ focus group creation
- https://www.needls.com/ to drive traffic to your landing page
- https://aytm.com/ Market research
- https://people.fish/ Market research
- We recommend that you survey at least 500 people but the more the better and our goal is 85% positive feedback to move forward and a minimum of 200 potential users/customers
- Create offers for survey participants/testers (free upgrade, free month etc.) for beta testing
- Create email copy, landing page copy and follow up sequences. Utilize a virtual assistant for these if you are not good at creating content or questionnaires or you can utilize one of the resources above.
- Automate the process as such: Drive traffic to the landing page/survey utilizing your curated test group, advertising through Facebook, Bing or other online outlets. You can also set up a private Facebook group and invite your test group to join which is a great free tool.
- The landing page redirects to the survey page utilizing your buttons/call to action features.
- Website has offer or gift if they join the beta group. Set up Call to Action button which collects beta users contact info.
- Contact info auto populates Mailchimp list that you set up to collect user data for future use.
- Set notifications for every survey taken, data collected etc. sent to you via email
- Execute testing plan
- Review feedback with our team
- You want to make sure that your survey questions focus on 3 key points: Product market fit, the basic business model and the 1-2 core features of the product or service that you plan to take to market
- Tweak, test, apply, repeat until you get it right on all aspects
- Your goal is to have 200 potential paying customers/users for pre-orders with 85% or better positive feedback on all 3 aspects
- Let your new clients know that you are still in development and you will refund their money upon their request if they wish to make a purchase or order.
By now you should have a fully functioning landing page for validating your idea with pricing.
You next step is to start driving traffic to the site, see above resources
Here are a few key points to keep in mind while going through your validation exercise:
· A/B test your landing page – To get the most people signing up for your product, you need to try different variations of your landing page. Try changing the value proposition, features and pricing plans. Record which version does better and stick with that one.
· Talk to the people who sign up – Don’t focus on getting as many people as possible to sign up, instead, value the people who do sign up. Reach out to them and start a dialogue. Find out what exactly it is they are looking for. Then try changing your landing page based on their feedback and see if it improves conversions.
· Change your idea – Don’t be afraid to change your idea. If you speak to 100 people and they give you feedback on what they are looking for, don’t get defensive and stick by your original idea. Embrace feedback and change.
Here are some great videos for you to see the process in motion.
Prototyping a Service based business
new business development
2 年Great!! Thanks posting