4 Ways To Validate Your Idea

It may seem obvious but having a problem to solve is the key to getting idea validation.

If you have no problem to solve then you won't have an audience of people who are willing to spend money on your product.

The IH community has given me a lot of ideas so I want to give back to those who may need help with idea validation.

In "This Is Marketing" by Seth Godin he states:

"It doesn't make any sense to make a key and then run around looking for a lock to open. The only productive solution is to find a lock and then fashion a key. It's easier to make products and services for the customers you seek to serve than it is to find customers for your products and services."

And that is what seems to be happening over and over again in the maker community. You create products first and then look for the customers.

It's very backwards.

This leads me to my first tip.

Look for problems in the comment section of blog post, forums, facebook groups, etc.

Most of the time the comment section has ABSOLUTE gold.

That's actually how I found validation for my idea Cartfuel.

I was looking for a way to make one-click upsells happen in Webflow.

So I went to google and came across this post: https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-1897

As you can see there are tons of people who want this functionality.

AKA there is a problem that needs solving and I'm gonna solve it...

Which gives me an advantage when it comes to acquiring my first customers.

Tip #2:

Cold email.

I know this is intimidating at first but if you don't cold email your future customers how will you know if they need your product?

Of course, you don't have to do this, but I find a simple email will go a long way.

For example, I found a guy who needed CartFuel and sent him an email.

As you can see the email is simple and gets straight to the point. No need in explaining who I am because they care about the solution...not me.

People DON'T care about you. They ONLY care what can be done for them.

As you can see there is power in brevity.

Tip #3:

Reverse image search. Sometimes, you won't get a response if you reply in a forum or facebook group.

In this event I would grab their picture and reverse image search.

Most of the time Google will spit back a user who uses that image on other places.

Like LinkedIn for example.

You can then find what that person does for a living, find what they are interested in to get a better idea of who this person is...

What do they do for a living?

What other forums, facebook groups or communities are they apart of?

I'm sure you get the idea but you want to use reverse image search to see if this person or other people in similar communities have other problems that need to be solved...

Do this a few times with different people and you'll get a good idea of who your future customer is AND what type of problems they need solved.

Tip #4:

Facebook groups.

Facebook groups are HOT and you can create one BEFORE you create your product.

The idea here is to create a group for a specific niche that has a problem.

The cool thing about groups is you can create one on anything and people will join.

Pick a niche that you're interested in and create a group.

People are vocal in open communities when they have problems in a specific niche.

OR

You can post in other groups that are in a particular niche.

You want to give value before posting.

No spamming. Pure value and then ask people what problems they are facing in xyz industry.

I prefer to own my own group since you can make the rules and promote whatever you'd like.

The other benefit of owning your own group is you can ask people for their email to enter the group and then sync that email with your autoresponder to keep them in the loop/ask questions to understand how to make your product better.

With each of these methods the goal is to find out if there is a problem and how you can solve that problem.

Business is nothing more than solving problems for people.

Solve specific problems and the money will follow.