Best tools to measure demand for your ideas

Think tools like ahrefs and semrush to do keyword exploration are great but imho there's probably less expensive ways such as:

• Get evidence that people are paying (or willing to pay) for a similar solution (competitor products, forums, subreddits)
• Speak to 5-10 prospect customers (in return for a gift card or something else) and do customer development (test your assumptions, ask probing questions, extract painpoints)
• Join communities (Subreddits, Discord chats, Facebook, and LinkedIn groups), then observe and engage with the community
• Be on the lookout for workarounds/solutions people have built and have talked about to solve the problem (in YouTube videos, blog posts, etc)
• Build a landing page, post it on these communities and see how many emails you can capture
• Use Twitter's advanced search and look at viral tweets and their comment threads around your problem space (some problems might be phrased as a request for a startup/product i.e "I wish there was ...", "There should be ...", etc)

Nothing really beats getting something out there and testing it, however janky it is (can be a Figma prototype or something you put together with a few no-code tools)

I don't think that Adwords is outdated, but I am pretty sure that measuring demand that way got harder and more expensive.

I like to do keyword analysis, e.g.:

• Google Alerts for specific terms, phrases, keywords
• Alerts for Reddit via F5Bot
• Google Trends
• Checking Ahrefs Keyword Explorer (paid)

I've used pre-sales to decent success in the past!

I think this is really the best way to go about it for most companies. If your product is exciting enough for a company, they'll be willing to pay up-front for access to a beta of your product.

The trick is to frame it right. Here's how I phrase it:

We're looking for companies that are excited enough about this opportunity to join our group of Early Adopters. We'll be working hand-in-hand with Early Adopters to make sure that they are getting real results from the product, and all of our Early Adopters will be helping us shape the direction of the product so it's an ideal match for your company. We're looking for a one-time, $1,000 payment in exchange for three months of access to our beta, which comes out to about $333/month. The beta begins in two months.

Also, if at any point during the beta you decide that the product is no longer a fit for you, we'll give you a 100% refund, no questions asked. We're looking to make this risk-free for you and your company.

With this approach, you're asking for an up-front payment, which a company is only going to accept if your product is exciting enough for them. In my opinion, this makes it a far better litmus test than seeing how many email signups you get, or really any other metric.

I've shared some real-world examples of pre-sale conversations I had with customers back when I was starting Software Ideas, you can find those here.

Hope that helps!

The best way to measure demands IMHO is the customer development. And it can be done completely free.

Very valuable information shared here! Thanks everyone

I'm sure these tools are helpful but after you've found an idea the best way to validate is launching a landing page where people can put in their email IMO.