Ask IH: Is this enough for idea validation ?
Hi everyone,
I recently thought of an idea that I want to work on, but before I begin build I did some idea validation.
So what I did was that I created an Instagram account after which I designed a simple post which describes my idea and whoever is interested in the idea should comment "yes" below. I paid for an instagram ad to promote my post and I got a some responses back.
Based on your experience is this enough to consider the idea validated and to go forward on work on building the product ?
Hi shambekela,
How many impressions did the ad receive? Does the % of people who saw the ad and commented "yes" make you feel very confident that there is a big demand for what you were promoting? Did you receive any other meaningful comments, besides "yes"? I'm only asking this because I'm trying to lead you to figure out the answer on your own.
Generally, I wouldn't consider this as validation.
Firstly, social media advertising algorithms are designed so to push the ads in front of people who are likely to engage with them. This depends a lot on your targeting, but maybe your post was simply displayed to a few people who comment on almost everything they see (you'd be surprised how often this happens).
Secondly, an instagram comment is a very low-commitment engagement. Collecting someone's email is a better sign of validation. Collecting a pre-payment is the ultimate validation.
So what are the next steps to validate this better? Can you get in touch with those users who commented with "yes" and talk to them and better understand their problems? Can you create a simple landing page and link to that from your ad and collect emails or even pre-payments?
Good luck with your next steps & keep us posted!
/m
That's a... very interesting idea to validate a product, but I don't think it really counts.
What would be much, much better is to follow up with the people who replied 'yes' and ask them more specifics. How would they use it, how much would they pay for it?