If you’re a budding entrepreneur, you’ve probably woken up from a nightmare that went something like this: you spend hundreds of hours and $150,000 setting up a live event…and no one shows up. Or perhaps you spend two years slaving over a book…and no one buys it.
As a startup, how do you know when your marketing ideas are worth carrying out?
The nightmares above happen every day. They happen when startups carry out ideas before evaluating them.
Many companies believe that growth hacking is the “Speedy Gonzalez” technique that will attract new audiences to your service or product. However, even growth hacking required planning, evaluating and a process. Nothing is as easy as it may seem when it comes to true marketing and growth.
You’re a creative entrepreneur, and you are likely to be the BIGGEST FAN of your idea. You visualize it in all of its perfection; you can’t imagine it being anything other than a smashing success. After all, it appeals to you, and you’re just an average Joe like the rest of the global market, right?
Maybe.
Marketing is process, not an overnight job. Growth is a process and growth hacking is also a process. Did I mention that this is going to be a PROCESS?
Your enthusiasm is an asset – it’s a major part of what will empower you to “sell” others on your idea. However, no matter what brilliant idea you have, resist the urge to jump into 5th gear without any research or evaluation.
Because if you do…your nightmare of falling into the failure pit can, and most likely WILL, become daytime reality. (Not like the television stuff, but more like your broke-bum-cousin-living-on-your-couch kind of reality).
So why should you validate your startup ideas?
- Add precise focus to your target audience and yield the highest profits
- Learn about your “buying power” (How much are customers willing to pay for your product/service? How much do they value it?)
- Estimate the profitability of your product or service before the marketing campaign even starts
Here are a few ways to evaluate your startup marketing ideas and avoid failing:
- Harness The Global Power of Google Trends
The best thing about Google Trends is that it allows you to see how search terms related to your business are trending. Plus you are able to see a forecast of the future!
For Gbox, we chose the keywords “video selling” and received three different reports from Google Trends:
- Interest over time
- Regional interest
- Related searches
The real power comes in to play when you combine all three of these reports into one. This will help you determine what the market needs are and what you need to plan for.
You can use Google Trends to check for trends as far back as 10 years, and you can compare different search terms, as well. Play around with it and discover all kinds of relevant information about your target market!
- Amazon Best Seller (Be one!)
Amazon best sellers are awarded based on the number of sales and review scores; each book is required to sell “copies” daily. It will take some work – but it’s totally do-able!
At Gbox we saw the value of having an international best seller. It opened doors for us in terms of getting new business served to establish our credibility in the video technology realm. If you need inspiration, just take a peek at other best sellers on Amazon. What are they doing?
It’s simple to perform this research. From the search box on Amazon.com, select “Books” in the drop down menu and then type in a key phrase that deals with what you are trying to carry out. From there, look for the option to narrow your search to “Best Sellers.” We performed searches on keywords like “video technology” and “video marketing.”
The goal is always to understand which books the target audience is purchasing. We want to learn about their behaviors around information purchasing so we can make informed decisions.
By taking note of which books had the most comments written by our core audience, we learned that our audience was reading a lot of different types of books within the “make money online” niche.
So is your marketing campaign idea found within the best seller categories? Here are some important questions to ask yourself as you are going through this process:
- Listen to what people are saying about the different best sellers in certain categories. What do people like about it? What are people not liking about it?
- What makes certain best sellers a success? What are people voicing about the product? Are there stories?
- How can you improve something? Or add a twist to it if it is selling really well?
Lets switch gears now. What if your idea is not within the best seller category? No problem.
- Find possible campaign ideas and topics that are performing really well. Choose one and create a complimentary topic around it.
- Visualize success and reverse engineer the process of current best sellers. Why are they best sellers? What got them to the top?
- Conversion Rates Matter!
The easiest way to test a marketing campaign idea is through a landing page. The landing page serves as a test, telling you whether something is worth spending the time and money on a full campaign.
Let the landing page determine if the idea is worth your time.
If people are opting in at a 50% rate then the campaign is worth carrying out. Use the emails you collect to build your list and market a campaign catered directly to the customer’s experience and what they really want.
We use LeadPages.net to carry out our campaigns and measure conversions. This is a quick and effective way to find out if our audience wants to hear more about a specific topic. If they don’t care for it then we switch up the content/topic and test again!
Here are some examples of LeadPages we have used to test different marketing topics (How To Create a Profitable Video Business That Runs on Autopilot was definitely a WINNER!).
- Survey The Hell Out Of The Internet!
How can you find out if someone likes your ideas or not? It’s simple! Just ASK (your target audience, of course). People love sharing their opinions. Best of all — you can gain this valuable information without touching your marketing budget.
Ask questions through your social media channels and watch all your connections engage.
There are two types of questions you should be asking. There is the long form (50 to 100 words) and there is the short-form (5 to 10 words).
Ask questions like:
- “How would you describe your product or service to your best friend…in three words or less?”
- “What types of products do you enjoy buying?”
- “How often do you buy _____________?”
- “What are your goals in the next 12 months?”
Change these up to relate them to your audience, topic or brand. The sky is the limit!
- You Are The Customer….What Does That Mean To You?
In order to really understand your customer you have to be the buyer yourself. Here is a list of questions you will want to ask yourself before jumping into business:
- Why would you buy your product or service vs. others that are out there?
- Is your product or service more of a need or a want? What is the problem it is solving?
- Why should you buy your product or service?
- Is there a seamless experience when it comes to buying your product?
Answering the above questions will empower you to make informative decisions as you:
- Develop viable personas for your business
- Create and enable the communication process for your buyers
- Validate and move forward confidently in your marketing campaigns
Now that’s a wrap! Another failed marketing campaign? I don’t think so!
