5 Ways to Validate Your Business Idea Before You Launch It

You don’t want to invest time and money in a new offer only for it not to sell. In this article, I’m going to walk you through 5 ways you can find out if people will buy your new product or service even if it doesn’t exist yet. By going through a validation process for your ideas before you launch them, you know that when you do there will be people eager to get their hands on them.

Hit reply now

For a quick and easy idea validation run it past the people on your email list. This is your target audience – they are invested in you because they gave you their address and they open your emails. They have a good idea of who you are and what you’re about so they are perfect potential customers.

Send an email about your product idea, explain that you’ve come up with it following feedback from them, your community, and let them know what the benefit to them will be. If it’s a book or a course, give them three or four key things they will learn from it. For a product or service, outline what it will do for them. And then tell them to ‘hit reply now’ to let you know they are interested.

If you get a flood of responses, you know you have a good idea.

For a quick and easy idea validation, run it past the people on your email list. This is your target audience. They have a good idea of who you are and what you’re about so they are perfect potential customers. #Youpreneur Click To Tweet

Run a dry test

Dry testing is a technique I picked up from the infomercial industry. You’re selling a product you are not ready to deliver yet.

It’s simple to set up.

Create a landing page for your new offering. As with the hit reply now test, you need to outline the features, benefits and desired outcome for your customer and put a ‘buy now’ button on there. Track the clicks on that button to gauge interest in your product. If you have a WordPress website there’s a very simple plug-in called Pretty Link which allows you to track how many times someone clicks on a link.

Have a pop-up box appear when someone clicks on the ‘buy now’ button asking them to put their email address in to go on the waitlist for when the product is available. You’re saying to people going to that landing page that you intend to do something but you haven’t finished it yet.
You can figure out whether there’s demand and if it will be worthwhile you developing that product. If you get enough clicks, go ahead and do it and you’ll have a ready-made list of interested people you can go back to.

Using Facebook Ads

Are you using Facebook ads? They are extremely targeted and reasonably priced. You can be very specific about who you want to see your ads down to where they live, how old they are and what their interests are. This makes it ideal for reaching your target market.

You can test different ads using different text and images and once you have used your budget for the day, Facebook will turn them off. It’s easy to stay in control and experiment to see what your ideal customers respond to.

The Ballsy Presale Test

I walked you through a dry test earlier, the ballsy presale test takes it a step further. You set up your landing page with your buy now button except when someone clicks on it you actually take an order. Payment will be taken, you will collect the funds and then you need to deliver very quickly.

It’s very important that you make it clear to people on your presale test page that this is a presale launch.

It is a very ballsy approach and you need to let the people who have parted with their money know when they will gain access to whatever it is you’re selling.

Take a deposit

If the ballsy presale test made you feel a little nervous but you like the idea of that level of commitment, here’s a slightly different approach. Instead of clicking on the button and paying full price for what you are offering, you ask people to put down a deposit.

This is a useful way of testing a new membership. Get people excited about being first to take a look at what you’ve put together for them. By putting down their deposit, they secure their spot when you open the doors.

Those are my 5 ways to find out if a new offer is going to sell. You might recognise them if you’ve bought from me in the past so you know they work!