How to test your IDEAS?

[Juhas]

Hi, I was wondering are there any good ways to test wheter your IDEA is good (there is a request for your planned product) or not.
One thing that gets into my head is crowdfunding. You can get the feedback from people - you will get money or not. If not, then there's chance that your IDEA is not good. But This way of testing has another variable - your presentation. Idea without a product has to have really good presentation.
The other problem is that if you happen to get the requested money, you have to award the founders somehow.

So do you have any other ways to test your IDEAS?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Guest24480]

My preferred methods are researching target market communities and generating traffic to a landing page.

Where are your potential customers hanging out? Are they communicating the pain points or needs that your product will be built to solve?

You can check forums, relevant subreddits, Facebook groups, social media, blogs, anything really. If there is a need for your product, people are likely talking about it somewhere on the Internet.

Once you find that there is at least a conversation going about the problem you're trying to solve, take all the feedback you received and cater your offer to that data.

Create a one-page landing page on Wordpress communicating your offer and make the presentation as good as possible, but make it concise. One page and no more than that. List out some benefits/features and communicate the nature of the solution. Just buy a $50 Wordpress theme if you don't have any web design skills.

Yes, presentation matters but the basics of copywriting and design should put you above the threshold of acceptable for testing purposes. Create a sign-up form and connect it to your mailing service.

Lastly, sign up for a Facebook business account and start driving targeted traffic to your landing page and collect email sign-ups. Cater your targeting to the data you've gathered in your initial research and split test a few different targeting options.

I followed this exact blueprint for validating the current idea I'm working on and got 500+ email sign ups within a weekend.

Now I am working on developing a prototype so I can get hard proof for the idea, which would be users and eventually paid sign-ups.

 

[Juhas]

My preferred methods are researching target market communities and generating traffic to a landing page.

Ok, so I understand that your way is:
- check potential client groups on facebook if they are talking about problem you want to solve (if not, this is probably bad idea)
- create landing page and get people from those groups to this landing page.

Now, here are some more questions.
What should be on this landing page? I mean - you don't have any product yet. Should it be some kind of promise: "Product will be available soon", or maybe preorder: "Pay now, get it within couple of months"?

What about software or physical products? They need definately more time to get created.