Many entrepreneurs try entering the market every year, but most of their business failed due to a lack of proper planning. Over 45% of startups struggle because they don’t have the strategy to reach their target market. To run a startup successfully and attain growth in the future, you need to validate your idea systematically to make an impact on your target customers.
Some important steps to follow for validating any startup idea are:
Market Validation
Market validation is included surveys and feedback from your target market. It is a process to know about the interest of your target customers, whether your product is market suitable for the market.
Sharing your idea with the right people and taking advice from those who are already in that business is the initial step of validating your startup idea. You can also follow successful entrepreneurs on LinkedIn who have accurate information about a specific industry.
Analyze the competition:
Analyzing your competition can not only give you an idea of the successful routes but also help you find some areas they are lacking as you can focus on those areas. It is important to know your competitors very well.
Sometimes it can be hard to find space for your product in the market, and even if you made it in the market, you can’t to can be difficult to compete with the level of depth in the market that other companies have. By analyzing them, you will learn about their mistakes and how they overcame them as well as the strategies they followed for success. You can apply it to your startup.
Evaluate your Idea:
You should perform thorough research on your product to see if it is profitable because you can’t invest your own money all the time for you to sustain your business. You should find the USPs of your product and figure out why your customers would want your product or service. If you are going to launch your startup, you need proper planning that will make your business profitable.
Prepare Your Product Concept:
The purpose of creating a product concept is to finding key questions for testing in the market. These questions could help you relate to the problems that might occur to your target market.
Who is your customer?: There is a specific market for every business, so you have to make sure which one is the best for you and how big the market will get.
Why are you in the market?: by being aware of your target customer’s problems and validating them you will be able to validate and solve their problems.
How your product will help?: You can elaborate on the key features and the use of your product to your customers or represent a prototype to your customer and according to the feedback they give, you can improve your product further.
Interview with People:
It is very crucial to validate your startup idea as it helps you understand customer’s needs and problems, and it will give you some valuable insight. You can start with a list of questions to get valuable information. Make sure you can visit them for a natural face to face interview.
Some keys you should remember while interviewing any customer:
- Explain to them about your product, its use, and the nature of your business.
- Explain to them how your product is different and better from others.
- Ask them for their thoughts and observe their reactions and feelings about your product.
- If someone likes your product ask them if they would buy them or not.
- Lastly, thank them for their valuable time and tell them how they helped you to bring improvements to the product.
Review And Decide:
After you have got your answers, you have to review all feedbacks and decide what changes you should bring for your potential clients. Market validation helps you to get enough information and data to help a startup to validate and succeed.
MVP (Minimum Viable Product) Validation
The MVP or Minimum Viable Product is a technique to create or develop a product with sufficient features for early customers. The final product is only designed by considering the feedback of early customers on a prototype version of your product. The benefits of validating with MVP are:
- It has enough value for people to buy and use it initially.
- Early customers can have enough future benefits.
- Provides valuable information to develop your product further.
Idea Validation
With MVP you can easily validate your startup idea because building a prototype takes less time and effort than creating a fully-featured product. Moreover, you can create multiple prototypes, and using customer reviews you can compare them for better future development.
Some important features you should keep in mind while creating a prototype –
Simple and Consistent design:
The prototype you are introducing in the market should look like you already have established business. A simple design and user-friendly functionality product are important for brand building, improving conversions, and adding legitimacy.
Product Description:
As you are writing a copy to describe the product, you need to mention problems as well as the solution you are providing.
A/B testing:
A/B testing is a very important feature of validation as it allows users to compare and vote between two or many products.
By validation your product you will avoid spending time and money building something that nobody wants. It will help you get close to your customers and also help you understand the customer’s needs and preferences.
Digital Presence is a web development company that can help you understands the needs and preferences of your customers through digital marketing solutions. We analyze feedback and reviews to help improve your brand in the digital platform. Visit www.digitalpresence.today for more information.
