What's the fastest way to validate customer demand?

Erica Lee
6 replies
If you're in ideation stage of making a product, and all you have is a landing page. What's the fastest and best way to validate the demand/market for an idea that isn't built yet (as a non-engineer and without experience in marketing)?

Replies

Zendog Labs
you took the right first step and started building a concept page before building the product. consider adding a lifetime deal + money-back guarantee to your page and then go out and distribute it. what you try for distribution largely depends on your target audience x product x pricing strategy. could be organic social, paid social, sales, etc. you don't need to be completely efficient when you get started but there should be a realistic path to distribution in which your CTLV:CAC is attractive, usually starting somewhere at >2 or >3
Erica Lee
@zendog Thank you for the advice! You're very right - I should know my target audience first and then find the best path for distributing. My target users would overlap a lot with those who would be 1)familiar with using dating or friends app and 2)motivated to move around and explore different locations. I think based on this, my first step of the distribution path could be organic social!
Zendog Labs
@eunca i would run paid ads on Tinder, Insta and maybe TikTok to start. Just note that your target demo is still massive (dating + travel are HUGE). Organic social will take too long to show results (unless you do short-form video content that has the potential to go viral - whatever "potential" means)
Erica Lee
@zendog Thank you so much for the valuable advice again! I thought about nurturing audience on my own, but you're right. It's hard to know where to start and travel/digital nomad/dating/friends is such a huge market! Making a viral content and spreading it to that market seem to be the best option.
Pravin Halady
Which group of users do you think need your service (benefits-with-friends) the most? Moms? Seniors? Students? Small-business owners? Go talk to them one-by-one as Paul Graham suggests in this essay. http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
Erica Lee
@pravin_h Thank you for sharing the article! I like the point it makes that as founders engage with their potential users, they have to figure out which spectrum of users get more excited about the product :)