Following on from yesterday’s niche site post, let’s go back and assume Anon1 isn’t talking about niche sites.
Here’s his question:
How do I know if my original idea is a solution the market needs and is willing to pay for?
Is it Just via A:B testing and keywords basically?
Now, I’ve maintained that the best way to “hack” business is to create a novel solution that your market needs.
In other words, take a problem and solve it in a better way than your competitors do.
This begs the question, “How do I know my solution is what the market needs and is willing to pay for?”
With niche sites and other idea-based economies (so websites, videos, info products etc.) there are very few costs associated with just trying stuff out and seeing what sticks.
I covered that yesterday.
But what if you’re creating a physical product, starting a school or otherwise creating something that’ll take a lot of time, money and effort to research and build?
Then you’ll want to do some sort of market test to see that your solution is one that the audience wants.
Let’s discuss some ideas in this article.
What’s Your Problem?
The reason I bang on constantly about creating your own projects is because you’re the best target market you could ever hope for.
You know your needs and desires as a person and audience. Unless you’re the wackiest weirdo in the world, there are obviously people who are the same as you.
Also, you’re trying to fix your own problems. You know the level of motivation you have and you have tried other products in the area and so know their strengths and weaknesses.
Add it up and there are plenty of solutions for you to try – and you can document them and prototype them for your own benefit. If you never make a penny, then you’ve still solved your problem, so the cost is effectively none.
This is also the best way to get yourself from consumer to producer and a way to diversify your interests in order to deliberately find problems. to explain that last point, if you look around at yourself and think, “I only have a computer, iPhone and clothes… I can’t do any of those things better than a tech giant,” then you need to get more interesting.
Alright… so, there we go as far as the easiest audience possible. Let’s move on to other ideas for finding solutions to problems and testing them against the market.
What’s Wrong With The Competitor?
When I’m copywriting or doing business strategy stuff, I have a list of things to research before I start.
One of those things always involves checking out the state of the market, and importantly, what’s wrong with the competitors’ offers to customers.
There’s almost always something wrong that nobody is addressing, and customers normally talk about it pretty openly. A lot of the time, there’ll be a lot of things that are being done wrong.
It only takes one or two things being done wrong to create a better offer. So this is where you start.
What’s going wrong, and can you create a version that doesn’t make the same error?
Easy Questions To Ask Of A Product Prototype
In the business-to-business sphere, you have a couple of basic questions: Does it save time/money?
If your product can do those things, then people will buy it. If it can do that job better than the competitors, then a lot of people will buy it. It’s a simple cost/benefit situation.
The same extends to business-to-consumer, but people buy stuff for reasons other than saving time or money. So you need to look into a few more questions. Questions like:
- Does it solve a unique problem?
- Does it save time?
- Is it easier to use?
- Does it make money?
- Or save money?
- Does it look better?
There are also a range of values-based questions that’ll matter to your target market:
- Is it ethically sourced?
- Are the materials recyclable?
I saw one Kickstarter a while back where someone was making flip-flop sandals out of recycled bamboo pulp or something. They were quite expensive but because the biodegradable/ecologically friendly value resonates with hippies and beach dudes, that Kickstarter raised a ton of money.
(It actually made me want to learn more about crowdfunding, to be honest.)
These ethical/market-based questions aren’t all that sophisticated, but they can provide a product idea and a marketing campaign blueprint, so it’s worth seeking them out.
Final Thoughts
There’s nothing esoteric or particularly technical about creating novel solutions. Think of yourself as a problem solver.
Even if you’re not your target market, you can do this. Think about a problem someone you know has suffered with. Chances are you’ve proposed solutions to them. How did you go about that?
You probably went about the task by saying, “What’s the problem? How is it solved? What solutions are out there, and if they don’t work, then what would you do next?”
It’s a similar thing with business ideas, articles and the like. Take a product, flip it on its head, find where there are incremental improvements to be made and see what happens.
Do this with the idea in mind that you can make life cheaper, easier or more fun for people, and you’ll find solutions easily enough.