Got a business idea? Great! Got no confidence or money to start working on it? Not to worry. You are in a marvelous position. Some people struggle to come up with a business idea in the first place, especially one they resonate with. Your situation is not a problem at all. Do you know what would have been a problem? Investing your time, effort, and money into bringing your business to life, only to realize you have no customers – no demand for your products or services. That would be disastrous. And it is preventable!
Right now, what you need is validation that your business idea will work in the assumed target market. Once you get that validation, it will also serve as motivation to establish momentum for business development. The truth is that you can check the validity of your business idea rather cheaply. And this small investment will tell you whether or not you should proceed with or abandon that business idea to move on to more promising ventures. Is it not inspiring that you can save your time, effort, and money? I have already discussed customer interviews as a means of validating business ideas, and now we are jumping into conducting demand tests.
Let’s take another example business for this blog post. How about a cleaning company?
1. Build a landing page (or website)
Here is something that is not always straightforward to people – you do not need a ready product or service to market it! Why? Why would you hire a dozen cleaners, put them in uniforms, buy cleaning gear, and train them all for two weeks? They will sit around as your phone stays silent if you have not tested demand. It is a waste of precious money! Forget about hiring, buying gear, and training for now. That is an investment for the future – the time when you get affirmation that there are customers out there seeking a good cleaning company. Check first. Pray to have that worry later.
Instead, your first step should be to test demand using the internet. Build a nice-looking, simple website, or even just a landing page, so that internet scouts looking for your service are convinced enough that you can solve their problem. The key is to make your website or landing page look like you are already in business for some time like they can trust your services. That means you should have convincing info, such as a section about your company, one listing your services, an order form, and a contacts page (at the minimum). Wix.com offers fantastic free sites for this purpose, but there are many other providers you can try. Just remember, no money needs to be invested at this point, and this should not take you longer than 2-4 hours.
2. Create CTAs and remove all obstructions
Alright. So now you have your business website, and it is looking rather promising. At this point, you will need to put yourself into your customer’s shoes. Imagine you are a customer looking for a reliable cleaning company and you discover this cleaning company’s website. Whether you reach out depends entirely on how easy it is to do so. Therefore, the CTAs (Calls To Action) on your business website should be immaculate.
The human attention span is extremely short. If someone has to click through many pages and read a bunch of text before they can reach out to you, they may drop off before they do. Aim to convert your potential customer as soon as possible. That way you will have a much more reliable demand test, ruling out that there could have been some problem with your website that led to low conversion. Once you have your CTAs in place, test them all by yourself and ensure they are working, and that you are getting notified if a customer reaches out.
What could the CTAs be? You could have a booking request form on your home page (or at the top of your landing page). You could set up an order form to pop up after a few seconds of the user browsing your site. Your contacts page should be complete: email, phone number, social media, and any messengers you use. Make sure your customer has a selection of contact details to pick from. Some people like to call, while others may like to reach out on WhatsApp, for example. You can even have a site basket, where the customer can add the services he wishes to purchase, and submit their phone number for an order confirmation callback.
3. Ensure value backup
Prepare yourself for success – both in life and in business validation. What if you do see an inflow of customer requests for your service? What will you do now? Do not get me wrong. This is great news if it happens! You have a problem on your hands that people can only wish to have – a business idea in the process of validation. At this stage, you can either tell your customer the service is fully booked and not available yet or prepare at least one part-time cleaner beforehand.
In the first case, think about getting their phone number to confirm a different time and offering a discount. Then you will have to search for cleaners and move fast. Do not be too picky at this point. In the second case, you will already have at least one cleaner ready whom you can activate. Again, perfection is not everything here. You can work on perfecting your cleaners and business as you roll along. But it is always better to have some backup for the value you propose, if possible.
4. Market and measure
And finally, our last step. Your validation scheme should now be ready – time to advertise and test. This is when you should consider how much money you can allocate for this validation experiment. Naturally, you should not spend a wad, but spending too little may not give you sufficient data to analyze the demand for your proposed product or service. Remember, this is the cost you are paying to be confident that your business idea will be a success with customers. You are buying a level of certainty. If the experiment is a success, fantastic! If it fails, well you just saved yourself a lot more cash than you would have invested in a non-prospective business.
How much to spend? Probably no less than a few hundred dollars, but no more than $500. Think of the number of impressions you want – that number should be in thousands. When it comes to advertising, you can select from a variety of ad platforms, including Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok. They all have decent analytics tools for when your campaign ends and you need to tally up results. Ultimately, you should choose the platform based on information regarding which platform your potential customers may use most. Once you choose your ad platform, design an appealing ad for your website to catch interest. Remember, you are solving a problem that concerns human emotions. Bounce off that. What would make you click your ad if you were in the shoes of your potential customer? Perhaps:
“No time to clean? No problem! Call us and your home will be clean in no time.”
“Need a regular, reliable cleaning service? We got your back! Contact us today!”
“Looking for professional, tactful cleaning services for your office? We have what you need. Book cleaning now!”
Just a few ideas. Maybe you can come up with better ones. I have not tested them.
There you have it – another awesome way to validate your business idea. I heard about this one from many people and tried it myself. It is extremely exciting! If you try this out, please drop your personal business validation story below. I love hearing those! If you need help, reach out! And if you are an expert too, do not hesitate to add to my post in the comments regarding additional effective practices.
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