Testing and validating your business idea

• How can I test my idea without building the business first?

• How much effort should I put into testing my business idea first? 

• Will testing the business tell me how much profit I can make? 

This is the item that nearly every new business owner misses. Don’t forget to TEST your idea before you begin building it.

If we had a  magic wand, we’d be able to know if the business will work before we spend all the time, energy and money to test it in the real world. If it turns out to be a success, then yay, we build the business. If not, we don’t build it and we’ve saved ourselves a year or two and probably thousands of dollars minimum.

Luckily, there are numerous ways to test and validate your business before you commit to it and spend all that time and resource.

Some businesses are harder to validate than others, but the bottom line is that you want to validate your idea in as many ways as you can, knowing that the more affirmations you get, the greater chance that you have a winner of an idea.

Ways  to test your idea – before you build it:

• Run some online ads to see if people click on them. You can drive the people to a landing page that has mocked up images of your product or service, and explains all the benefits. Since you don’t really have the product ready to sell, explain that you appreciate their interest, the product is launching next quarter, and offer them something of value such as a discount code, free trial when it’s available, or a helpful downloadable guide so they don’t feel upset that they clicked.
• Measure the clicks on your ads, and also measure how long people stay on your landing page site.
• Give users a chance to enter their email address (which you can use to alert them when your product is actually ready to sell) to receive a hefty discount certificate for when the actual product is launched
• Consider starting a blog or online community about your product topic. If a lot of people are interested in your topic, it’s a good sign that they’ll be interested in your product too
• Talk to real live customers about it. Ask for their honest opinions. (NOTE: You will have to almost BEG them to be honest and to give you their negative comments if any, because it simply won’t help you if they are too polite to be honest. Beg them for real honest feedback.)
• If you have an email marketing list, send out emails showing off your product to see the level of interest. Remember, in our testing scenario the product hasn’t been built yet on a large scale, so you may have to use artwork or mocked up photos to make it seem real.
• Ask people about your product idea on Reddit and Quora. Those and other online forums and communities are great places to get feedback.
• Look for competitors. If there is some number of other companies doing basically what your business will do, it’s a good sign that the market itself exists. If those businesses have been around for more than a couple years, it suggests that they are profitable, a good sign. Healthy competition is a sign that the market is solid.
• Try to convince others to help you with your idea. If it’s a good one and you believe in it and you can communicate that to others, some will want to help you. Their willingness to get involved and do work before there’s a paycheck is a good sign.d
• The Coffee Shop Focus Group: Engage with strangers in a casual setting to gather honest feedback.
• Landing Page Smoke Test: Create a simple webpage to gauge interest through sign-ups or clicks.
• Pre-Sell Your Product: Offer your product for sale before it’s fully developed to test demand.
• Crowdfunding Campaign: Use platforms like Kickstarter to validate interest and secure funding.
• Social Media Polls: Utilize platforms like Instagram or Twitter to conduct quick surveys.
• Concierge MVP: Manually provide your service to a small group to understand user needs.
• Wizard of Oz MVP: Present a fully functional front-end while manually handling the back-end processes.
• Blog About It: Write articles related to your idea to attract and engage potential customers.
• Host a Webinar: Conduct an online seminar to present your idea and interact with attendees.

Here are some other good links on methods to validate and test your business idea:

Use our free online Business Evaluation Tool now – see how well your business idea scores:
StartABusiness.Center Business Evaluation Tool

How To Validate your Business Idea and move forward with it:
https://foundr.com/validate-your-business-idea/

YouTube – many validation videos here!
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+validate+your+business+idea

7 Hacks to Test & Validate Your Startup Idea
https://medium.com/swlh/7-ways-to-test-your-product-idea-gather-real-world-feedback-at-little-to-no-cost-72717dc252c8

Lean Startup Market Validation Steps (the fast way to decide):
https://www.productplan.com/lean-market-validation-10-ways-rapidly-test-startup-idea/

9 Steps to Validate your Business Idea for \$500 within 30 days
https://www.ryrob.com/validate-business-idea/

Lengthy but very good and in-depth article on How To Validate your Business Idea and move forward with it:
https://foundr.com/validate-your-business-idea/

Business and Product Idea Validation
https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/product-idea-validation/

10 Ways To Test A Business Idea for $50
https://ninjaoutreach.com/10-ways-to-test-a-business-idea-for-less-than-50-usd/

https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-validate-a-business-idea

https://www.shopify.com/blog/17844020-6-ways-to-validate-your-business-idea
Social media analytics similar to Google Trends

Online Market Feedback Polls & Market Research Tools:

PickFu
https://www.pickfu.com/

Market Research Tools (Mostly Free!)
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/market-research-tools-resources