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  2. When do you give up on your product?

When do you give up on your product?

Ben Titterington
6 replies
I've been trying to validate my idea for a couple of weeks now. Primarily by reaching out to customers using DMs on LinkedIn and Twitter. I've been very gently with my approach (no sales tactics) just asking for some friendly feedback and providing a demo url for the product. But I've not managed to get anyone willing to respond 😕. 
 Now I know I may need to try a few different techniques to gain visibility, but I believe my current approach has targeted 50+ real customers. And I think other approaches may lead to false positives, where people say the idea is great, but they aren’t personally going to buy it. 

I’m definitely not ready to give up on it just yet, but I’m wondering if others have come up with any metrics or signals that they use to ensure they don’t sink time into the wrong thing. E.g Visitors to email collection ratio, page dwell time, etc? And also, in a related follow up question if you have 3-4 completely different product ideas. Is there a consensus on if it's better to work through ideas sequentially or should you do a couple in parallel? Any comment, thoughts, or just shared experiences would help. Thanks

Replies

Richard Gao
Evoke
Evoke
I think if you're asking customers directly and telling them your ideas, "I'm not going to buy" it would be a pretty common response. However, it might not be what they truly feel. For some people (me included), they say that when they don't really know if they would buy it or not, or if they're concerned about getting further surveys or spammed afterwards. What I would do is rather than telling customers about your idea and what it solves, you ask them what their problems are, ask them what solutions they've tried for their problem, and ask them what they don't like about those solutions, and see if there is a trend. Avoid mentioning your product at all, since it could bias things positively or negatively. Your goal is to get market research, not potential customers.
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Matt Bilardo
@ben_titterington Hey Ben, I know you might be reaching out to many people at the same time but if you can, you may want to mention how you know the mutual contact. Perhaps you have worked with them in the past or you know them from somewhere else. I think that context would help increase your response rate. In addition, you can add the person on LinkedIn with an introductory message and context on mutual friend. This makes it a smaller step for the other person as it gives them a chance to respond without any obligation to providing feedback. Also, it gives them a chance to view your posts (I suggest you post relevant material on your LinkedIn). Reach out to them with your question one or two days after they accept the friend request. You may need to tweak this a little bit but I feel that your response rate will increase this way.
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Matt Bilardo
@richard_gao2 agreed with Richard. Also, if you are adding new customers on LinkedIn and messaging them for the first time, warm them up before asking your questions. You are more likely to get a response that way.
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Ben Titterington
@matt_bilardo - any ideas on warming them up? At the moment I say something along the lines of "Hi Matt, I'm building a new product and reaching out to marketers that I share a common connection with on LinkedIn, for some early feedback."
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Ben Titterington
@richard_gao2 Thanks Richard, I think you're right about talking about their problems. Although it's sometimes possible customers are not aware they have a problem (customer awareness). Also in my instance, it feels like getting my target audience in a direct conversation is less likely than my current approach. For context, the product allows businesses to easily create branded promotional games and quizzes - www.FunPowered.com . I see my target audience as medium to large businesses that are already very accustomed to using a wide variety of marketing strategies. 

It’s possible I’ve been blurring the line between market research & potential customers, but I had hoped that as my business was pre-launch people would be more likely to respond with feedback. I can create example pages using a couple of brand assets and send them out. Here is an example for Deliveroo - https://www.funpowered.com/feedb... 

The problem I hope I’m solving is an interesting, fun and quick way to market your brand, products & offers. I think I will change up my approach to see if that helps with engagement.
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Ben Titterington
@matt_bilardo Thanks Matt, I'll definitely give this a try. 👍
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