Validating a digital product idea for your list makes a lot of sense if you’re going to be launching a product with your list as the key sales channel and target market.
The easy way is to say, “I’m going to make something for my list and sell it to them.” You can get buy in (or not) and then you have an open line to sell to them. This is by far the easiest way to validate and sell your digital product (if you have a list.)
But what if you want to launch a product not for your list? What if you don’t have a list?
What if you want to get a better sense of the market size for your product concept online?
Some dimensions for validating your idea
In that case you have to look at a couple key dimensions of validating:
- Strength of demand (price sensitivity)
- Amount of demand (market size)
- Problem severity
- Outcome desirability
- Trust (will the promised outcome be fulfilled?)
- Product utility (What job will this do? Does it solve the problem? Does the problem matter? If its an aspirational product, does the outcome matter?)
How to reach who for how much
The first thing we want to do is get an accurate sense of how we can reach who. If you have a market and no cost effective way to reach them, then it doesn’t matter if the product is “valid.”
We can start to get a sense of cost to reach different market segments by reviewing the channels we can use to target who. More on that tomorrow.