Validate an Idea for Under $50 with Paid Ads
Entrepreneurs constantly come up with great ideas; in fact, if you talk to one for half an hour there’s a good chance they’ll come up with 2 or 3 business ideas within that short conversation. But having an idea and launching a business are two different things.
Entrepreneurship used to be primarily for those who could afford to sink some money into a new venture. The internet has lowered the barriers of entry for creative entrepreneurs, and there’s a lot to be learned from experienced entrepreneurs and business owners who have inexpensive and time saving methods for testing the potential of an idea.
An easy way to short circuit the earliest part of the validation process is by testing an idea using the specificity of paid advertising on Google Adwords or paid ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or other similar networks. 10 years ago, if you wanted to know whether people would buy a product, you had to put a lot of work into design and production and take big risks right from the beginning. Now it’s much easier, and some of the smartest minds in the world (found in tech inclined ecosystems) can get the thumbs up or down on whether it’s worth creating a product in just a few days and very little expense.
Here’s how they do it…
- Create a Landing Page
- Direct Traffic to your Landing Page via a Targeted Ad Campaign
- Dig into the Data
- Paying for a Product: The Ultimate Validation
Create a Landing Page
In the past, to create a landing page you had to design and code them yourself (or hire a developer to do it)no matter how little content you’d actually be hosting on it. Fortunately, services like LeadPages and Unbounce make it easy to create a landing page in a few minutes that you can connect to your existing website. If you don’t have a website yet, you can use a basic Wordpress or Squarespace site that takes about 10 minutes to setup, and connect your landing page to it. Some landing page services like Launchrock will even host the page for you, and most of the services have a free option or trial period so you don’t have to spend any money until your idea is actually validated.
When you’re creating a landing page it’s important to keep things simple — you’ll want to include a logo, background image, tagline, and description of your product, along with a form where a visitor can enter their email and name to get more information. You don’t have to become an expert on them, but if you haven’t spent much time creating them it doesn’t hurt to look at some good examples of a key value proposition.
Direct Traffic to your Landing Page via a Targeted Ad Campaign
Facebook is easily the most granular of all paid advertising opportunities, meaning that you can target by age, gender, education, interest, geography, etc. You can also use Google Adwords, and Twitter and LinkedIn aren’t far behind. Facebook and Twitter give detailed and easy to understand breakdowns of how many people you can potentially reach as you add segments, so you can keep your target audience narrow enough to get good, relevant traffic to your landing page.
Then, cap your budget at $50 (you can specify how many days it should run), and check out with a credit card or PayPal. Although Facebook sets the cost per click (CPC) based on the competitiveness of the demographics and categories you choose, $30-$50 is usually enough of a spend to reach ~5,000 people, which is more than enough to test to see your idea is appealing to the type of customers you have in mind.
You’ll also want to make sure you match your ad’s language to the key value proposition on your landing page. Kissmetrics has some good advice and examples of ad copy that you can borrow from, and Unbounce explains how to match your messaging from ad to landing page in clear, simple terms.
Dig into the Data
Once your campaign runs you can look at the data to see how potential customers are engaging with your ads, and if they’re submitting their email on your landing page. On Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn there is a dashboard with information, but you can also pay attention to emails as they are coming into your list, and you can use Google Analytics to look at their behaviors including time spent on page and other behaviors.
Depending on your idea you may want to structure your validation in one of a couple ways:
- Are people willing to sign up for a beta? Getting emails is your most powerful validation short of actual paying customers.
- Does a simple survey with questions about features reveal whether people would purchase your product or service? You can use Typeform, SurveyMonkey, or another similar service. This is particularly helpful if you have an idea but aren’t yet sure how you might want to execute it.
Paying for a Product: The Ultimate Validation
One additional thing to keep in mind is that true validation doesn’t come until someone actually pays for your product. You can run all of the landing pages and surveys you want, but until a credit card payment goes through it’s hard to know if people are willing to use your product or service to solve their problem or add to their work or personal life.
While it’s something to be cautious about, some startup founders and entrepreneurs try to get the answer to that question before they actually have a product. Adii Pienaar outlined this process back in 2013 when he described how he made $4,000 selling a product that didn’t exist yet.
Whatever you do, make sure to validate your idea before you start spending time working on it. Pouring money in can seem like the biggest risk, but your headspace and creativity are critical, and before you start working to solve a problem it’s important that you isolate as quickly as possible who you’re building it for, and if they want it.
WeGreenlight.com is a platform to help you validate your ideas, get feedback, and launch with early adopters. Join us and let’s help you launch your idea successfully.
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