Assessing the viability of a product’s potential customer base is a crucial first step in launching a new venture. Building something you’re confident the market will embrace only to see it tank upon release is a painful experience for anybody involved.

Lack of market research leads to the development of many items. As a result, almost 40% of all products are unsuccessful. There are several techniques available for verifying the viability of your product concept. Consider these eight tips if you’re just getting started with product validation. How you go about things will vary based on the specifics of your company strategy. The critical distinction between PRODUCTION AND PRODUCTIVITY is that production involves making or making something, whereas productivity measures how much is being made.

Define “product validation.”

Putting your idea to the test with real people is what we call “product validation.” Before releasing a product to the market, market validation research may help ensure success.

Verifying the quality of a product.

The first thing you should do when starting a new business or product is to get it validated. Large corporations frequently use large organizations for product research and validation. In contrast, lean product validation is commonly used by e-commerce startups on a shoestring budget. To be “lean” is to determine what kind of product can be made on a tight budget.

Eight product-validation techniques

• Earn some money by selling your wares
• Check out the competition.
• Survey the Current Market for Interest
• Initiate a survey for client comments.
• Commence a crowdsourcing effort.
• Check for enthusiasm via online forums
• Make a landing page before a product is released.
• Engage in face-to-face interaction with clients.

Earn some money by selling your wares

One of the first and perhaps most essential steps in validating a product is selling some of it. The ultimate success metric has to pay clients who recognize the worth of your offering.

Your company is just a bunch of guesses until you start being paid for them. Even if you spend a lot of time networking and getting to know potential consumers, you won’t be able to grow your firm until you start receiving payments.

Nimi Kular, co-founder of Jaswant’s Kitchen, a family business selling Indian spices and cooking kits, has extensive expertise in evaluating new concepts. As she says, “Money is the only thing that can verify a product, although market research, surveys, and comments from friends and family may correctly steer you.”

Kular used to sell the first versions of their product at local events. When we started selling at exhibitions, total strangers would buy our stuff. That’s when we realized we had created something that helped people and that they were willing to pay for.

Check out the competition.

When just starting with a concept or hunting for things to market, research may be invaluable. Risks may be reduced, and assurance in your idea can be bolstered by researching the market before committing too much time or money to it.

Second, you’ll need to learn how much interest there is in your product right now to launch a successful company. One approach to ensuring demand for your goods is closely studying the competition. Check out their actions and compare them to your own.

The existence of equivalent products demonstrates a need for yours in the market. Discovering how long rivals in this industry have been operating will provide insight into the viability of breaking into it.

Your established rivals don’t mean your product won’t sell. Kular says, “Don’t become disheartened when you see competitors that have already developed enormous enterprises. The existence of these competitors will tell you a lot about how similar or distinct your product is to the competition, which can help you identify gaps in the market or choose where to direct your efforts.

The following are some approaches to assessing the competition:

• Joining their mailing lists
• Following their blogs by signing up for their RSS feeds
• Engaging with them on social media
• Buying anything

An SEO audit can reveal the volume of visits to a competitor’s site and the keywords for which it ranks. An SEO tool like Ahrefs may be used to research a competitor’s audience make-up and PPC success.

Survey the Current Market for Interest

A further method of verifying your product’s viability is to examine search volume and demand. Look at client interest now that you better understand the competition.

To get started, you may use Google Trends. This instrument may determine how often individuals are looking for your goods. Using Google Trends, you may see if the product you’re working with is on the increase or in a category experiencing stagnation. The worst thing you can do is enter a falling market.

In addition to SEMrush, you may also utilize Ahrefs. This keyword tool will help you discover the most searched-for terms associated with your product.

To reach clients who may not know the names of our items or search for them directly, Kular says, “We provide recipes on our site.”

She elaborates, “For instance, we first imagined people could be looking for spices or spice mixes,’ and we concentrated on those keywords, but over time we found that if people don’t even understand that a product like ours exists, they won’t search for it in that way.”

“We reckoned out they were extra likely to look up the names of the over items or recipes they required to consume, which may transport them to our crops as a new method to cook those foods.”

Initiate a survey for client comments.

Once you know your customers, you need a way for them to tell you what they think. The quickest and cheapest approach to get input on your minimal viable product is to conduct a survey (MVP).

You can make your survey confidential using a service like Google Forms or Survey Monkey. Don’t only rely on your immediate circle of acquaintances and acquaintances for criticism; go out and ask others you don’t know well to weigh in.

Kular suggests you “be inventive” when employing this strategy and “be prepared to have chats with friends or relatives to assist you in locating your perfect customer.”

Commence a crowdsourcing effort.

A crowdfunding campaign is an innovative way to gauge interest in your idea. Crowdfunding allows you to set a deadline and devote your full attention to the movement until you’ve reached your financing target.

To begin a campaign, you need to identify the appropriate service. Though well-known platforms like Indie go and Kickstarter exist, numerous newer ones have emerged in recent years.

Check For Enthusiasm Via Online Forums

To further confirm the viability of a product concept, you may also use social media. Every day, millions of individuals take to social media to share their thoughts and opinions on the products they’ve just purchased and how they’re using them. The people that follow you are the ones who know you best and can provide you with feedback on what they want to see from you.

Fashion and beauty companies like Cadence use their online fan base to generate new items. Cadence’s CEO and co-founder, Stephanie Hon, told Modern Retail that the company often receives requests for new colorways via social media.

For future product lines, she says, “it combines with what we’re presently on track developing,” which is lovely confirmation for the company. Getting a lot of inquiries and being able to respond with “Oh, just wait a few months” is incredibly thrilling. You may count on us to listen intently at all times. This is on the horizon.

Here are two examples of how companies may utilize social media to increase product credibility:

• Listening in a social context. What clients say on social media can be analyzed for insights, and ideas can be rapidly validated.
• It’s a one-on-one conversation with the speaker. Followers may be polled for product ideas, live Quash can be used to learn about users’ pain points, and MVPs can be tested immediately after release.

Make a landing page before a product is released.

Create a mini-website highlighting your USP and an email subscribe form to test the waters. By luring visitors to your website and gathering their contact information, you may learn whether or not they are genuinely interested in your goods.

Shopify’s password-protected prelaunch page provides a simple solution. Set up your prelaunch page to collect email addresses by following the instructions in the link. If you use Shopify Email or similar software like Klaviyo, your store’s subscriber list will automatically be updated.

Engage in face-to-face interaction with clients.

Kular is also confident in recommending a nearby flea market or art fair visit. Having this information at our disposal was invaluable in the early stages of Jaswant’s Kitchen. She remarked on how useful it was to quickly and easily get responses from possible buyers.

Customers’ reactions to your goods and willingness to spend money on them may all be gauged through face-to-face interactions.

Discover local flea markets and artisan fairs that are a good fit for your business. Try out a few alternative pricing tiers early to determine what works best for your product. Create a list of inquiries to consumers, such as their preferred hues and brands of rival items.

Conclusion 

Kular is also confident in recommending a nearby flea market or art fair visit. Having this information at our disposal was invaluable in the early stages of Jaswant’s Kitchen. She remarked on how useful it was to quickly and easily get responses from possible buyers.

Customers’ reactions to your goods and willingness to spend money on them may all be gauged through face-to-face interactions.

Discover local flea markets and artisan fairs that are a good fit for your business. Try out a few alternative pricing tiers early to determine what works best for your product. Create a list of inquiries to consumers, such as their preferred hues and brands of rival items.