4 steps to validate your idea & build something people want
Episode #59
Hello friends, welcome to GrowthShot #59. Today’s theme is:
How to build something people want- all in less than 250 words
Let’s dive in
Brought to you by:
Friends,
The first step before building anything is to pre-build & validate - the outcome of this experiment is to identify key problems in the market & validating your idea.
Ask yourself How do I make a product I KNOW will sell?
Step 1 - Identify WHO you’re trying to sell.
To do this, identify people who you already are in touch with. If you’re a marketer, you probably know more about the pains of marketers than say a developer. Leverage your existing advantage.
Step 2 - Next, identify what do you users NEED, WANT and BUY
Lurk online & conduct social listening, check reviews on G2, Capterra etc & make a list of
(a) pain points in their use-case
(b) what do they hate about the current way of doing things
((C) what would happen if this pain were to go away
(D) what outcome are they trying to achieve with their use-case,
(E) how will this outcome be better if the pain they experienced in their use-case were to go away
(F) what tools are they using to alleviate their pain right now and what sucks about them
Step 3 - Next, create a list of potential solutions.
Use heuristics to dial it down to 1-3 solutions. These heuristics are a good starting point:
(a) Is the problem a nice-to-have or a must-have
(b) is this market part of a global trend
((c) Is it easy for people to tell their colleagues or friends? Can they try it out immediately?
(d) What is the frequency users will use this to solve their problem? Is it daily, weekly, monthly, or annually?
(e) How easy is it to get to the target audience? How big is the market?
(f) Who are the players right now? How big are they?
Step 4 - Zero down on one solution
Share your solution hypothesis in forums and with people. Speak to these users and pitch your hypothesis - congratulations - you’re now doing user interviews and building something people want.
As you do this more and more times, you’ll find patterns after iterating and find out what it is to exactly build for those people - and better you even have your first “waitlist” of customers ready.
Download this GrowthShot
If you’ve made this far…
Consider supporting this small, bootstrapped business:
Optimize your SaaS landing page - Turn your regular SaaS landing page into a user-acquisition magnet in 3 days ($249)
Become a patron - Show your support by subscribing to GrowthShots for as little as $7/month
Put your SaaS product & growth marketing on autopilot - For a fixed monthly fee, all your SaaS product marketing copy will be taken care of. Book a call and we’ll scope out your 80-20 growth marketing levers to pull