Don't launch your new idea without validating first!

If you don't invest enough time in really researching an idea for a new product or business or an online program and then you don't validate it, you are going to be launching your program to crickets and you are going to be spending a lot of time, money and heartache developing something that your audience doesn't want. Welcome to the latest episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. We are in a crazy time at the moment where a lot of businesses are thinking about how they can pivot their business or their product offerings to their marketplace. And so I thought this would be a really good episode to record because it's something that's on a lot of my clients minds and indeed has been on my mind as well. So in this episode I want to talk to you everything about coming up with a new idea for a business or a product or service or an online course, and then testing that idea, validating it with your marketplace before you spend one moment fleshing out the idea and developing it. I don't want you to spend hours of time, money and heartache producing something that you end up launching to crickets because you thought your audience needed it, but actually no one really wants it. So let's get on with today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob Da Costa. So picture this. You are walking your dogs or you're standing in the shower and you have a brainwave of an idea for a new product or a new business idea. You get really excited by this and you sit down and you start fleshing it out and then you put it into action. Fast forward after many weeks of work and late nights and you're finally ready to launch. You're really excited to get your product or your business idea out there. So you launch with a big fanfare, but sadly to little response. When we think we know what our audience wants, when we're absolutely certain that our idea is a surefire winner, when we believe that we know best what our clients need, we have to first test and validate our idea. If any of this sounds familiar, then please listen on in today's episode because I want to talk to you everything about coming up with new ideas, how to do that in a kind of scientific, methodical way, and then once you've got that idea, how to validate it with your audience before you spend one minute actually spending any time developing it. Now I'm as guilty as the next person about coming up with ideas and then just getting on and starting to flesh them out. About six years ago, when I decided to create my first online courses, I did absolutely no validation because I was so sure that people wanted to know how to start their own business, which was the theme of my course. I even came out with a snappy salesy title of how to start your own business and gain financial freedom within six months. And guess what? It flopped. However, undeterred and without learning any lessons, I moved on to my next sure file million pound making idea, which was all about selling. I was absolutely sure that everybody wants to know my secret sauce for selling. So I created my next amazing course, step by step guide for generating new sales for your business. And guess what? Another flop. Now, it wasn't that these course ideas were bad, or it wasn't even that the content was bad or that people didn't need it. It's just that I just didn't do any testing or validation to get the positioning or get the messaging right. Now, how many times was I going to repeat this mistake before I learned this lesson? I think two is probably two too many. And the lesson I need to learn is that we may think that we know what our audience wants, we may think we know best, but unless we go and validate and test our ideas first, we're going to be doomed to repeat this cycle of failure. And this applies to whether you're coming up with a new business idea, whether you're pivoting your current business slightly, whether you're trying to come up with an online course or program or a new product or service. And of course, particularly at the moment, this is really relevant and it's why I'm recording this podcast now, because we are in a period of time of uncertainty and we're in a period of time of lots of change. So if agencies are finding it tough at the moment, or if clients are canceling work, then we, of course, we need to be thinking about pivoting. I recently had an email from a live events company who does all the marketing for live events. And you can imagine their business has fallen off a cliff. So they are really thinking about how they can pivot their business and how they can serve their audience in a different way. And I talked about this in two episodes ago, so you can go and listen to my episode around surviving and thriving during the virus. But today I want to particularly hone in on the idea of coming up with a new idea, pivoting a business, or producing an online service or whatever it is. But any of those Areas that you might be thinking about apply to what I'm going to talk about today. So I may talk about product, but I mean business or online service and so on. So what I really want to focus on today is to discuss how you can turn an idea into a profitable revenue stream that you know, your audience wants and needs now. And as I said, it could be a business idea, it could be a new product that you want to integrate into your existing portfolio, or it could be a new product altogether, or it could be an idea for an online course or program. And everything that I'm going to talk about applies to those areas. Now, it's fantastic when we come up with those aha moments. Like I say, it could be walking the dogs or in the shower. That's certainly when I come up with them. But I really want you to pause at that point and not rush headlong into spending time developing the idea before you've done your research. So let's just start this topic off by talking about coming up with those ideas, or once you've had that aha moment, how to actually go and research it. And some of this is obvious and some of it is a bit more scientific, but I guess the key message here is to just slow down. Like I said, we have those moments where we think, oh, my God, this is such a genius idea. I know everyone's going to want it. And then we launch headlong into developing that idea and it's then not successful, or over time, the idea kind of becomes less appealing to ourselves, so we lose some steam. So I don't need to make any of those mistakes. And what you really need to do is go and research, test and validate before you spend any time actually writing it. As I've said now, of course, not every new idea comes from an epiphany moment. Sometimes we know that we need to come up with a new idea, and so we need to sit down and do some research. So you might be thinking, oh, I know I need to pivot, or I know I need some new revenue streams, but I'm scratching my head about what they could be and how to implement it. So if this is the case, well, both cases, really, you need to take a scientific, methodical approach to coming up with these ideas. So the very first thing you want to do is Google. Use Google. It's your friend here. Google the idea. Google, a phrase that you think someone might type in. Does that idea already exist? And if it does, then, well, that's probably good because it shows you that there's some demand for it. And if it does, then is your idea a different variant from what other people are already doing? Is there room for you in the marketplace or is this market already saturated in. This amazing idea that you had isn't so amazing after all. And of course, if you Google it and you don't find anything on Google, then, you know, I would be slightly concerned if I were you, because if no one's created it before, it could well mean that there's no demand for it, or you're a complete genius and you've come up with something that's going to make your fortune. But sadly, I suspect it's the former of those two. So be careful with both of these scenarios, because if the market's already saturated with your idea, then you have to find some way of providing something different. And as I said, conversely, if no one's doing anything similar to your idea, then I would be cautious that actually there's a reason that nobody probably wants it. So that's the easy starting point really, to do some Google research. But I would also apply a bit more sort of data analysis to this. So one of the things I would do is look at my analytics on my website and see which content has really resonated with my audience. I would do some analysis on the content. I would group the content into appropriate themes and then decide which of those themes you can convert into a product or a service or a course, and maybe pick two of them to develop further before you narrow it down to the one thing that you're going to do. Now. You can also do exactly the same with your email automation system. So if you've been emailing an audience for a while and you have a reasonable size list, then if you use something like Mailchimp or Active Campaign or ConvertKit, as I do, then what you want to do is analyze the emails that you sent over the past year or so and look at the ones that had the most opens and the ones that had the most clicks. And again, group these into themes and chunk them up into one or two themes that you're going to pursue. And then look at the correlation between the emails and the analytics, because these will give you clues or, or breadcrumbs into which direction you should head. So that's a really quick summation of how you can go about testing your idea before you start developing it. And the really key with both the testing and the validation phase is that you don't spend a lot of time actually fleshing out your idea before it's passed the testing and before it's past the validation. So make sure you use Google to research. Make sure you use your website to look at what content has engaged the most with your audience and make sure you look at your email marketing to see which emails got the most opens and the most clicks. And you will probably find some correlation between the three of them. And if you do and it's positive correlation, then that is a clue that that is an area that you should focus on. In other words, if you find that there is already some people doing something similar but your idea is slightly different, you, you've looked at your analytics and your email and you've seen that actually people are interested in those ideas, then that is a good clue to move forward to the next stage. Now obviously if you have your aha moment, you can skip straight to looking at your website. But if you're trying to come up with an idea, the approach of using your website and your email and then using Google is a really smart way to see which ideas would probably fly. It's really important here, and I've spoken about this many times before, that we make sure we are selling painkillers to our audience at the moment rather than vitamin pills. So let me just remind you of what I mean by that. So if I've got a headache, do I want to buy a painkiller that will get rid of my headache or do I want to buy a vitamin pill that might in the longer term make me healthier and perhaps prevent me from getting headaches, but in the short term it won't cure my headache? Well, if two vendors are selling one vitamin pill and one a painkiller, I'm going to go to the one that's selling the painkiller. And right at the moment our clients need painkillers, they don't need vitamin pills. And there is room for vitamin pills. So it's not completely binary, black or white. But you need to make sure that your idea is solving a pain for your clients and is not something that you know would be good and healthy for them, but it's just not on their radar at the moment to buy it. So don't be selling a vitamin pill. That's one of the reasons why so many products and ideas fail, because they're selling something that they believe their audience needs. But the clients, it's not one of their top three pains at the moment. So they're just not interested in buying it because what they're trying to do is find solutions to their top three pains. Okay. So that's painkillers, vitamin pills. Go on my website you can see a blog post that I've written on that's a really popular post that outlines that in more detail. But this process is all about identifying those pain points and providing painkiller solutions to your clients. Pain points. So now you've established that your idea's got some merit and it looks like there could be an audience and demand for it. Before you dive headlong into producing the product, you need to do some validation. And this validation will tell you two things. Firstly, it will help you validate if your idea is a goer or not. And it will help you refine your idea and get the messaging right. And secondly, as part of this validation process, you're going to pre sell your idea to at least some of your audience before you start writing one word of it. And that's a really important point, and that might be surprising for some of you. But part of the validation process is to get some people in your target audience to say, yes, I'm interested in buying that. Or better still, yes, I want to buy it. Because if some people have bought the product, they're not just telling you that they're interested in it, they're actually putting their money where their mouth is and saying, yes, I want to buy it. So two key outcomes from this process are telling you if your idea is a goer or not and helping you refine your idea. And secondly, making some pre sales before you've even started writing any of your idea. Okay, so the idea of the validation process is to give you reasonable certainty that you will have a growing sustainable audience that's willing to pay for your service rather than wasting months of time building a final product that nobody wants to pay for. And the end result of the validation process is confirmation that your idea is viable by achieving a certain number of pre sale orders or a waiting list of customers. Now, validation isn't a guarantee of success and it definitely isn't easy and it's not sexy and it's sometimes it's a bit tedious. And it's not as simple as putting up a waiting list message on your website and hoping that people miraculously discover it and click on the button and fork over some of their money to buy it for something that doesn't exist, that doesn't work. I've tried it. So think of it this way. If you follow the testing and validation process and it turns out that no one is interested in your business idea, product or course, then consider how much time, money and heartache you're going to save yourself by establishing at this early stage before you've invested too much energy into your idea. So hopefully you agree with me that you should slow down to speed up and validate your ideas first. So let's just now dig in a little bit deeper into the validation process. So first of all, I think you need an email list of around 200 active contacts, or if you're going to speak to people, you need a list of at least 60 people that will be willing to talk to you. So if you don't have either 200 contacts in your mailing list that are kind of responding and opening emails, or a list of 60 people to talk to, I suggest that before you do any kind of product development, you focus on building your list. I mean, this is such an important topic that I talk about every day with my clients and I'm going to record a podcast on it, and I've done one before. But you need to focus on building your mailing list. It is your most valuable asset. People spend too much time trying to generate cold leads that might be interested in buying their product or service, but they kind of don't focus enough on their war on their warm mailing list, because those people haven't bought when I wanted them to buy. So. But that, of course, people buy at their own pace, not at your pace. So that your own mailing list is really important and something you should be focusing on. And of course, that is a topic for another podcast. So from the research that you did using Google and looking at your analytics and also looking at your mailing list, the first thing you need to do is write a short description of your business, your product or your course idea. And this is going to be one to two, maybe three maximum pages long, nothing really detailed, not don't start creating landing pages or anything else. This just needs to be like a word or a Google Doc that's text based. It almost wants to look to the reader like it's in its early stages. You also need to create a short survey that's going to go with this document, this description that you want to send out to your audience. And I use Google forms for this, but you can also use SurveyMonkey or anything else. So a short survey that's gonna ask your readers a few questions about your course. And one of those questions will be do you want to buy this product, service or course? So once you've done that, the next task is to create the emails that you're gonna send out to your audience. And the first email you're gonna send is just saying to your audience, will you take part in this survey? And if they come back and say yes, you then send the next email which says, here's a short description. Please have a read of the product description and then complete the survey. That's going to take you two minutes. And then the next, the third email is going to be a chaser email to those people that didn't respond but did say yes. So using your email list of 200 or your phone contacts, if you're going to call them, you want to divide your list into groups. So for emails, it's going to be three groups of 50, and you may end up using more than three. But we're going to start with three groups of 50 or three groups of 20. If you're going to be phoning people. And what you're going to do is you're going to send your email, the ones I've just outlined out to group one, and you're going to chase those that didn't respond a few days later. And then you're going to use the feedback in the survey from Group 1 to refine your messaging and change that product description, the 1, 2 or 3 page product description, based on the feedback that you've had from group one. And then you're going to rinse and repeat this process with group two. You're going to take the feedback from group two, refine your messaging in that one, two or three page document, and finally send it out to group three and do the same thing. And similarly, if you're making phone calls, phone the first 20, see the common themes, refine your proposition, send it out, and then speak to the next 20 and so on. Now, of the people that responded, so that's the people that said yes, they will do this. If 10% of that audience indicated that they were interested in buying, then you validated your idea and you can move on to fully fleshing it out and developing your idea and then focusing on your sales and marketing strategy to get that idea out to a much wider audience. So let's just explore that again. So let's say I've got 150 people that I've asked to take pace in this survey. That's three groups of 50. And of each of the 50, maybe I had 20 of them or 25 of them come back and say they were happy to complete the survey. So now I've got a sample group of three groups of 25, so 75 in total. And if 10% of that, 75 indicated that they wanted to buy the product. So that's seven and a half. Then I validated my course. And of course if you only got six, then that's probably good enough. But if you only got one, then that isn't good enough. Or if lots of people fed back that they weren't interested and you got zero, then you know that your course hasn't been validated and you need to go back to the drawing board and use the feedback that you received, even if it were negative about that idea, to either come up with a new proposition or refocus the proposition that you've been researching to get it right. And as I said, look, I know this can feel like a tedious and laborious process and perhaps even one that is impede your excitement to getting that aha moment launched. But trust me, if you follow this process, you're going to come out the other side confident that your audience likes and wants your idea rather than assuming that they need it. And that means that you can confidently go into launch phase and development phase, or you need to go back to the drawing board. Either way is fine and either way you will have saved yourself a lot of time heartache. Trust me, I know this. I have spent or wasted is probably the right term. Loads of time being excited, diving headlong into developing something and then launching it and having no success. And sometimes it's not that the idea is wrong, sometimes it's the messaging's not quite right. And this validation process is putting all of this in the hands of your target audience and therefore hearing from them what they need, hearing from them how to get the messaging right. And therefore when you've refined this and it's a goer, you know that you're going to have, you know, a success on your hands. So this is just definitely one they slow down to speed up moments. And as I said, the reason I'm recording this this month is because I feel like although this is an important topic all the time for anybody that's generating new business ideas, new product ideas or new course, IDE is particularly relevant at the moment where a lot of us are being forced to pivot what we're doing and we need to go and listen to our audience to understand that. And you can go through this validation process fairly quickly in order to get your idea out to market as quickly as possible. So follow these steps, test your ideas first of all. And once you've got a sense of what the right approach should be, create your short description. Create your survey, create a series of emails and send them out to your audience as I've outlined in this three cycle approach to validate your idea. Okay, so that's enough for me today. It's quite a short episode, but I think it's packed with really tangible value and things that you can start implementing at the moment. If you have any specific questions about this, do drop me an email now. I've also created a really in depth 27 page guide on how to do testing and validation including the email templates and survey template that I have mentioned in this course. So if you want to grab a copy of that, the link will be in the show Notes and as ever, I love hearing feedback from people who are enjoying the podcast. So please share the podcast with your friends far and wide and if you enjoyed the episode then please consider leaving a review as well as that really helps the podcast reach a wider audience. Till next week. I hope you have a good week and I will see you then. Sam.