Use Instagram to Validate your idea

You may have a great business idea, but one of the worst mistakes that you can do when starting a business is moving forward 100 miles an hour without checking to see if people even want the service that you are trying to offer them. It’s called validating the market. Sure, you may think that it is a really great idea, and your mom and your boo are cheering you on. You’ve posted some hints about your idea on social media and your network really wants whatever your business entails, but you might be completely wrong. I have come across many really awesome and driven people who believe that they have a great idea and they start setting up a website and they begin creating their company without testing their product or getting feedback. Or ordering thousands of products and materials from China before seriously validating the idea.

Different Ways to Test Your Idea for on a Ramen Noodle Budget.

There is no one right way to test your idea. Testing could be as simple as sending out a survey to see if people would pay for the service or product that you want to provide. You could ask how much people would be willing to pay for your product.  Create some mock ups, small batches, Landing pages and actually sell your product or service and see what that process is like and what people respond to. You could also test by giving away a couple of free products to people and see what they think. They can give you feedback on whether or not they would ever spend money on it and how much they would be willing to spend. Most people don’t do this and gladly skip over it because it’s hard to receive feed back, it could and will kick all the excitement about the idea out of you,  but it’s a necessary process.

Remember! Ideas are worthless and EXECUTION is absolutely everything! It’s time to start organizing your ideas so that you can create a profitable and successful business with your company.

What’s your business Idea?

How will you capture peoples attention?

How will you change their current behaviors?

How can you get them to share what you are doing and build your tribe for you?

How are you going to make money from this product (or service) and who is going to help you scale the business?

How can I quickly determine my target market?

These are just some of the questions to ask yourself when figuring out the basics of your business plan.

The next part if figuring out how to test my assumptions quickly and to keep testing it.

How can you test it in 24 hours? in a week? in a month?

Now that you have started deeply thinking about your business plan you need to start testing your product before throwing your time and your money into a idea that possibly nobody might want. You might think it is an awesome idea to create an alarm that you have to turn off by using a password, but the rest of the world may not find any interest in that product. Some business ideas are really easy to test, you just ask around. However, some business products might take a little more testing if they are more complicated. Think about how you can test the product before investing your time and resources into a dying idea.

My favorite recommendation to rapidly test…Use Instagram-

Create an ghost account or a series of accounts around your idea or product, see what versions people respond to, colors, ideas and themes. Set a goal, I can move forward with this idea if within 30 days I have this many followers on my page.  Here’s an example, say you want to launch a shoe company, create a shoe lovers page and engage people on Instagram by targeting “shoe” hashtags, post pictures of different shoes that you love that are similar to your concept, maybe even throw some of yours in the mix, see which ones get the highest amount of likes and questions on where to purchase. That can help you quickly test out some theories that you may have, without costing you anything actual money.

Describe your idea quickly and concisely!

Start thinking about how you are going to explain your business to people who are unaware of what you do on Instagram without giving the entire idea away. Think about how to describe the service or product you provide in a way that everybody can quickly understand your vision. For example, if you have designed a new breathable piece of swimwear that will help protect you from the sun then you can say exactly that! Don’t make things more complicating by saying, “I have designed a product to defend against the dangerous hazards of the UV rays that consist in the sun. My product will allow for a safer protector while out on the beach.” You will not get exactly the response you need to validate your idea, because you really didn’t say what your product was at all. Start thinking of how you are going concisely explain your product without being too complicating or vague.

 

Pictures and video! It’s easy, vivid and you can use different things to talk about that problem, memes, testimonials from other people, friends and family that have similar issues.

Hashtags- Create a hashtag and start tagging people’s post on Instagram that are related to your business idea to hep bring traffic back to your page.