Mechanical Turk For Customer Validation?
I just finished reading The Mom Test after listening to the podcast on IndieHackers! I have an idea that I wanna validate but with this Corona Virus, meeting in person might not be feasible.
This got me thinking about other ways to use resources out there to get customer feedback. I have used Mechanical Turk in the past (during college) for assignments but have recently read some academic papers that used it for customer validation. I was curious about the community's thoughts on using this to find problems in the market.
I know a major drawback is not being able to see the physical responses from people so you can drive deeper but I thought this could be a way to do initial customer testing and then leverage it later down the line.
Has anyone tried this method?
Hi Ayush,
When I was doing my MSc I actually ran cognitive psychology experiments on MTurk and Psychology students and got better results from MTurk! (using catch trials and other "boring" mechanisms to validate your data :)
The problem I have with your idea is that if you need to pay someone to give you feedback, maybe that pain is not large enough to warrant a solution, moreover, you should practice your marketing and sales skills before building.
My 2 cents hope it helps!
Jonathan
Hi Ayush,
We've built a product that's somewhat analogous to this - https://inqu.is/
It doesn't work every time though; there's a few variables that will dictate success (industry, who you're targeting, etc).
Happy to talk you through what we've found, if you'd like. (And I mean just a chat, no sales pitching...!).
Best,
Rob