Discovering the right users for a SaaS product.

Targeting the wrong people for validating your tests is just as bad as not validating them in the first place. I usually choose my participants based on set criteria and how appropriate they would be to validate the tests. Here are some of the pointers: Conduct screening to only include the right demographics: Include a series of multiple-choice questions and shortlist users representing your ideal target group. Also, try and include people who are both familiar and unfamiliar with your product for a more genuine review. Accessibility factor: You should also consider how certain people with disabilities would interact with the product. To understand this, try and include people with disabilities to give you an honest opinion on the usability. Avoid experts with the design skillset: By including people who work as professional designers, you would get more of an expert opinion instead of a layman's perspective. This would complicate your testing even more. Therefore it is best to only include people who are completely unrelated to the field. Keep recruiting new users: Recruiting new users for each testing stage will give you a detailed perspective on how users interact with different layers of design. Participants from previous tests tend to become familiar, so recruiting new users is a solid way of conducting iterative testing. Personally, I automate this process by using an online tool called @qualaroo . It's a customer feedback tool that you can use to create a screening survey using advanced targeting modes and easily pick out the relevant participants for your testing. I've been perfectly happy with it for the past six months, and my product testing has also shown some great improvements. Hope it helps.

Spread the word. Find people who share your passion. Follow them, learn from them and most importantly help them. Even if you're existing audience or the people that are close to are not your specific target audience, they might be able to help you to get closer to your target audience. For instance, if your followers on social media are not per se the audience you're building for, they can still provide get feedback and their interest or excitement can help you to connect with your target audience.

Create a basic click-through demo of the product on Figma. Broadly club your potential customers in loose persons. Reach out to 4-5 people from each persona. Show them what you have built and ask them probing questions about their life, problem they face, how they currently solve their problem. Talk to Listen ratio should be 20:80.

Create a bunch of CPC ads targeted at different interests / groups, run them for a week or two, see what gets better CTR. Gather emails, ask them for a quick interview, ask them who they are and what they liked in your ad.

Thanks for raising this question. I'm having the same struggle. How to validate the validators.

If you’re or you’ve face similar challenges in the past, that’s the first way to validate, then you can run some surveys… just my thoughts though