Tame Perfectionism: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Shipping Faster

Perfectionism is one of the biggest blockers to entrepreneurs, and it’s usually based in fear.

The problem is something we all deal with, especially if you’re trying to put your work out there. We hide in perfectionism, unable to confront the fear of judgement or failure. And if we stay blocked, we deny ourselves learnings and growth.

The solution is understanding there are no fails, only learnings. Read on for my tips on how to tame perfectionism and overthinking to help advance.

Perfect is the enemy of good

There’s a classic line: “perfect is the enemy of good”. It’s often tweaked in business to “… the enemy of done, or shipped”. I remember when I first heard this, back in my startup employee days, it was a lightbulb moment. It so perfectly captures the sentiment needed here. We must actively avoid perfection if we want to get anything done. Perfect is an ideal concept, not a realistic place. Yes we want to strive for our work to be high quality, but not at the expense of getting it out the door.

MVP thinking: don’t waste resources on something nobody wants

Another helpful startup idea is that of the MVP: Minimum Viable Product. The phrase is borrowed from minimum effective dose in medicine. In other words, what’s the minimum needed to get the job done. In terms or products, services, or whatever you’re working on, try to identify the minimum business offering required to solve the problem for your target audience. Especially in the early stages, skip the flash. Make it decent and good enough to get the job done. Then get it out there to the people so you can start collecting feedback as soon as possible. Then you can add features based on feedback, so you know it’s validated. Don’t waste resources on something nobody wants.

Feedback is the goal: there are no fails, only learnings

Feedback is the goal. Remember there are no fails, only learnings. Having seen this revelation play out for my clients and having lived it through my own experience, believe me when I say you eventually become eager to publish just to see how it goes. Yes you’ll get some negative feedback but you’ll also get the good. I now look forward to that spectrum of data that’s telling me what my audience is thinking and feeling (based on how they’re reacting).

The quicker you learn, the faster you grow

Once you develop the practice of shipping your work with less hesitancy, you get used to the quick feedback loop. You’ll become less worried about what might go wrong if you put your work out there, more excited for what you’ll learn in the process. The more you ship, the more you learn. The quicker you learn, the faster you grow. Continuous learning is the key to growth.

Hopefully one of these tools was what you needed to hear to begin the unblocking process. To question perfectionism, to see it’s hindering effect. And to reframe the underlying fear of judgement and failure into excitement for the possibility of learning.

The Validation.Run Vision

A world where people know that businesses ownership is the most effective way to grow wealth. And that starting is now easier than ever, thanks to technology.

The Way We Do Business Is Now Changing Exponentially

Like most things right now.

The rise of technology in particular seems inevitable. Its hard to imagine humans at any moment, putting down the more efficient tool.

The rise of technology is forcing innovation. It's super clear in our current work lives. People are at odds with their roles and the systems they operate within. Many legacy systems are struggling to keep pace.

The industrial revolution gave us infrastructure and productivity measures but also constraints. The age of information is bringing us connection, and with it, the opportunity for empathy.

In The Future, You’ll Either Be A Robot Or An Artist-Entrepreneur

Do you want to do, or do you want to create? Either is fine. Be clear about which one you want.

It’s in our nature to create. Evolution is baked into our nature. But there’s peace in simple doing. And it opens up the pursuit of mastery.

The bad side, you may get left behind. The good side, you could find a super unique job that fills you with joy and you'll be free to create as you see fit.

Entrepreneurship Is The Only Way To Make Significant Gains

You're not going to get rich doing a 9-to-5 desk job in the post-industrial work world. Even high earners like brokers and surgeons pay for it through personal and social costs. Those roads are still tough.

It's time to stop exchanging time for money in a salaried job. Instead, we entrepreneurs solve problems to make money. Problem solving depends on expertise, not time. It could take 5 min. to solve something but the work becomes valuable because it unblocks flow.

If you’re not wealthy and want to change your story, starting a business is the most efficient way to do so:

• At least you’ll be investing in yourself, to up-skill and learn

• The downside is that it still seems complicated to most people

• The good news is that we have better tools available to us now than ever before

They say you need money to make money. Well, it appears to snowball once you get started.

The wealth of the U.S. is 80% inherited

This means most rich people didn't work or build the assets to get there. They do a pretty good job of maintaining it though.

True freedom:

• being comfortable enough to make as much (or as little) money as you want

• to eat whatever you want, to travel wherever you want, and all whenever you want

How are the rest of us going to get there? By solving specific problems and charging for the solutions. Working for yourself is the best way to break out of the old system and take charge of your income.

Owning your own business is pound-for-pound the most efficient path to significant gains.

Learn the skills and develop the knowledge to get where you want in life. We each need to take matters into our own hands: no one is going to hand you your freedom. The best investment you can make is in yourself.

Business opportunities appear when gaps in the market are exposed. The bigger the gap, the bigger the innovation, the bigger the change, the bigger the payoff. Start by looking at the moments of frustration in your own life. If you think of a solution you could develop this into a business to help others with the same problem.

It only seems like an audacious task because until very recently it was.

Simple Technology Is All We Need

The internet has changed the game.

We can find information in an instant and communicate with people around the world. But most important: we can find the others! No matter what your particular brand of weird (❤️) is, you can find the others online who’ll join you.

Simple technology gets us insight into new opportunities, even before building anything.

Don't Waste Your Resources Finding Out The Hard Way That You Built A Thing Nobody Wanted

Get the right data to help you make a better decision on which projects to pursue. Get a head start with insight into your target market. Find out who are they, what messaging is resonating with them. Confirm if they perceive the problem like you do. Check your assumptions.

Learn where they’re at. Put yourself in their shoes. Work to understand how they’re dealing with the problem you’re wanting to solve for them. Start by listening.

The messaging is key. We’re all humans trying to connect.

Don’t Get Left Behind

Validation.Run is our service to test business ideas. We have resources to help you prepare for the business journey. Our clients have launched new products with awareness and pivoted to better versions. They've also gone back to the drawing board, avoiding becoming another statistic.

Use us to measure demand from real customers. Learn the best messaging that resonates with them. Put yourself in the best position to launch. Grow your wealth, grow yourself.

Are you ready to run with it?

Simple Growth Strategy Framework

Here’s our business growth strategy framework, in a simplified form.

Use it as a template for new business, product ideas or campaign ideas. It includes the 3 pillars of growth strategy: namely having a critical path, forming hypotheses for marketing initiatives and a employing a testing methodology to organize the chaos.

Simple Growth Strategy Framework

[Project Name]

Positioning

• What it is: …

• Who's it for: …

• Why it matters: …

Acquisition Channels

• Main: …

• Supporting: …

Customer Journey/Sales Funnel

• Beginning/Awareness: …

• Middle/Evaluation: …

• End/Decision: …

Growth Goal & NSM (North Star Metric)

1. … (this quarter)

2. … (next quarter)

Objectives (max 3)

1. … (laddering up to current Growth Goal)

2. …

3. …

4. … (future work, on existing or future growth goals)

Tasks

• … (laddering up to Objectives, includes Hypothesis and priority score)

• … (go on Ideas Backlog, waiting for future relevant Objectives)

• … (ICE Score for prioritization of ideas: Impact, Confidence (in hypothesis), Ease (inverse of lift))

Hypothesis Format

Since observing A, we think making B change will result in C outcome, which we’ll measure with D metric/success criteria.

This is basically all you need. All of marketing can be encapsulated in the above framework.

Website Conversion Setup in Google Ads (Summary)

1. Create event in GTM

2. Create event and conversion in GA4, mirroring the event title from Step 1

3. Add custom conversion in GAds Goals settings, pulling in what you just set up on GA4

4. Select conversion in GAds Campaign settings

Landing Page Best Practices

Build A High Converting Landing Page With Everything You Need

This article shows you how to create an effective landing page by incorporating proven best practices and drawing inspiration from the classic narrative arc. Outlined below are all the key elements customers look for when making a purchase, presented in a familiar story format, to spark ideas for your own landing page design.

Consider our prospect is the unexpected hero, thrust into this journey (problem) where they need to reach the promised land (solution: a world where their problem is solved) and they'll get there with weapons (features) that we provide along the way. If you know The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or any other classic tale, then you’ve experienced the narrative arc.

1. Excitement

"Above the fold" section. Requires immediate spark of interest. Needs to inspire confidence. Exhibits clear positioning.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Who is this for, who is our hero?

• Who is this not for (antihero, or the alternative state of the hero)?

Main heading (H1): What are you offering them? (Must pass "the Mum test": if you told your mum what this is she’d get it right away).

Subheading (P): Why does any of this matter? (Call out our hero. Why they should care must be obvious. Tease the promised land where they have the solution.)

CTA: Ensure it's close to the "magic moment" of peak value realization. E.g. "Unlock The Treasure"

Question the visitor is asking themselves:

• What's all this?

• Why should I care? (Is it relevant?)

2. Connection

Introduce yourself, relate, be human. Explain why are you the right person/offering for the job.

Options for this section:

• Call out the big and relevant change in the world!

• Include supporting/reinforcing statements that expand upon positioning statement.

• List out features and solutions, the tools to get our hero to the promised land.

Question the visitor is asking themselves:

• Is this right for me?

• Are they speaking my language?

3. Proof

Everyone is skeptical. Evidence can be offered up in many ways. Social proof is the main one.

Provide evidence of other hero's you've helped reach the promised land

• Case studies from customer stories

• Testimonials, preferably with video

Question the visitor is asking themselves:

• Is it legit? (Luckily there's a relatively low threshold on this. The landing page and offering simply can't look shady.)

4. Conversion

This is where you get the person to take action. You must offer up all the detail they need to make the decision. Try to address as many questions and objections they may have.

Best practice:

• (Most offerings, especially simpler offerings): simple on-page intake form including integrated purchase. No navigation off site.

• (Alternative for more complex offerings): simple pre-order or sign-up form on-page

• Ensure the CTA is close to the "magic moment" that illustrates “the hero's calling”

• Consider other signals like a "100% satisfaction guaranteed" badge, or "Money back guarantee" offer. In reality, most people won’t ever claim these. If they do, pay them back.

Question the visitor is asking themselves:

• How much is it?

• What’s the catch?

• What are the next steps? (What happens after I submit the form?)

5. Support

People always need to know where they can get help. Preference is almost always to reach a human.

In order of preference:

• Phone number

• Direct email

• Contact form

• FAQs (Preferably addressed in the body copy)

• Chatbot

Small Town Business Ideas: The Savvy Entrepreneur's Guide for 2023

In the quest for entrepreneurship, finding the perfect niche often leads one back home. Small town business ideas present unique opportunities for savvy entrepreneurs. Yet, to make them profitable, they need to be rooted in understanding and meeting community needs. This guide walks you through the steps to identify and launch a thriving local business.

Think About Your Community and What It Needs

Before scouting for business ideas, take a moment to reflect on your town's unique requirements. What services or products are locals traveling to other towns for? A good business idea often arises from meeting these localized demands. Listen to your community, attend local meetings, or simply chat with neighbors to gain insights.

Understand the Area: Demographic and Psychographic Makeup

Successful small business ideas for small towns stem from an in-depth understanding of the community. Are the majority retirees? Young families? Knowing this will shape the type of businesses that will thrive. For instance, if your town has a lot of young parents, a daycare might be a high-demand service.

By the way: demographics are the numerical ways we classify a population (e.g. age, gender, income level). Psychographics are how we describe populations in terms of attitudes, beliefs and aspirations. A good rule of thumb here is that zip codes are themselves demographics, but psychographics transcend these boundaries. Don’t get too hung up on these, they’re just models to help us assess markets. If you had to pick one, psychographics tell us about what people care about and therefore get us closer to really helping our target audience (by solving meaningful problems for them with the products and services we offer).

Brainstorm Ideas That Resonate With You

Whether you're considering business ideas from home or storefront concepts, ensure the venture aligns with your passions. Jot down ideas and question, "what are some good business ideas for a small town?" Your personal investment in the idea will drive its success.

Retail and Beyond: Exploring All Avenues

Main Street retail might seem like the go-to, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Delve into other areas such as ice cream shops, fast food spots, or even entertainment venues. Do you want to mainly serve tourists passing through or the local contingent? There will be pros and cons to either.

The best small town business ideas sometimes lie outside traditional concepts. Does your town even need another gathering spot? Or, can you offer a service to other businesses and go B2B (Business to Business).

Evaluate Ideas: Highest Impact plus Lowest Effort

The best businesses solve significant problems with minimal friction. List your ideas, then score them based on A) their potential to meet a local demand (impact), and B) the ease of execution (effort). If you have an idea on your list that scores high impact and low effort, you have a contender.

Validate Within Your Zip Code or County

Small business ideas that stick are often those that resonate locally. Before investing heavily, run a quick test campaign. It’s now straightforward getting data from real people to measure demand for a new business idea. You can be hyper targeted and only test within a certain zip code, county or region if you’d like. You’ll also learn about ideal positioning in the process, which will feed into your initial go-to-market strategy.

Access our Playbook to do it yourself, or schedule a call and we’ll handle the heavy lifting.

Our testing process will yield insights around the cost of acquiring new customers and competition from other brands. Which leads us to…

Calculate Costs and Delve Into Financing

Break down potential costs, and then scout for funding avenues, whether that's savings, small business loans, grants, or even venture capital. One popular question is, "What is a good business to start with $1000?" Whatever your budget, it's essential to have a clear financial roadmap. And if your budget is actually $1000: definitely grab our playbook to start testing on your own. There are many ways to measure free (or low cost) market validation.

Begin With a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Building an MVP is the next step in testing the waters. The main point is that we want to avoid investing heavily in something nobody wants. So we test at each step.

Offer a simplified version of your service or product, gather feedback, and refine. Keep going until you’ve clarified everything you need to feel almost certain this is the right thing to do.

Perhaps launch a pop-up shop or offer your service on a trial basis within your region to gauge interest.

Feedback is Key: Protecting Your Reputation

Word of mouth is the golden ticket in all marketing. And in tight-knit communities, the importance is amplified. Prioritize customer feedback. Remember, the most successful small businesses often have strong reputations anchored in trust and quality service.

Branching Out: Embrace the Digital World

Identified a business idea with potential beyond your town's borders? Go digital. Launching an online storefront or offering services online can expand your reach.

Conclusion: Commitment and Continuous Refinement

In the realm of business ideas 2023 and beyond, one constant remains: the need for dedication and agility. Whether you're exploring businesses to start from scratch or refining an existing one, the journey demands hard work and constant iteration. Embrace the challenge and turn your small town business dream into a reality.

"Gumshoe" Test Campaign

This is a story of the Gumshoe test campaign. This case study covers inputs for our methodology, test campaign setup and launch details, some interesting learnings, outcomes of the completed test campaign, "phase 2" which was about doubling down to get more registrations, and our final recommendations and remarks.

In case you're new here, we offer turnkey testing to measure demand and clarify the target market for new business ideas, products or campaigns. We help savvy founders, heads of innovation and agents of change.

Gumshoe is proposed to be "a fun tracking device for monitoring your child’s whereabouts". The creator is Mohammed Billoo, a mechanical engineer and family man.

The Gumshoe test campaign is a success story for Validation.Run, as it became the #2 best performing campaign we’ve ever run. Mohammed elected to run a second round of the campaign to generate even more registrations. We're all thrilled with the results and Mohammed is now continuing development with the knowledge that his idea has measured interest.

Context On Campaign VRC023

We ran the original classic campaign from late-April to early-May. It's a 3-week turnaround which includes 2 weeks to run the actual test part of the campaign, bookended with setup at the beginning and reporting at the end. Our entire methodology is standardized to maintain the efficacy of our data.

We've done a lot of work to streamline the whole process as well, to make it as efficient as possible. Gumshoe was our 24th campaign and our immediate growth goal is to run 100 campaigns. We're already able to see a normal distribution in the data we've collected, which matches other benchmark data that we pull from trusted industry resources. So when we say your idea is exhibiting demand above the benchmark, you know that's real.

Inputs To Our Methodology

Start With What You Know

Mohammed's experience with hardware products, especially around embedded systems, coupled with his perspective as a parent has clearly led him to this idea. We think it's good practice to start in a niche you know well. As a member of the target market, you're already at an advantage having experienced the pain points that you're seeking to solve.

No Assumptions

It's also good practice to check your assumptions and biases around what ideas will work. There are many complex variables that go into business success: like market conditions, competitors and alternatives to name a few. The point of our process is to measure what we can, to gain at least a bit of control in this situation. We're using a more scientific approach to get a measure of what real people think, instead of just guessing.

The #1 Question

The first question we ask of all our clients is "what's the #1 thing they're looking to learn from your target market?" This helps us understand where the client is at in terms of expectations, and also what they're literally seeking to learn in the process. It's a great place to start the conversation.

Mohammed had 3 design features he was considering for the final product and he wanted to get an idea of how to prioritize these:

• Easy for Parents to Affix

• Stylish Enough For Kids

• So Secure It Won’t Be Removed

We set out to answer this specific question in the process of running the campaign.

See here for a “Whiteboard Session” explaining our methodology in more detail.

Setting Up & Running Our Classic Test Campaign

It Begins And Ends With Positioning

The next step is a discovery phase where we set out to define the positioning statement. We find this is the most crucial piece of our test campaigns and any marketing initiative for that matter. It's where you define what the thing is, who it's for and why they would be interested. If you don't have this locked down, you risk being off-target with your marketing efforts. Aside from measuring general demand through our process, we are specifically looking to validate positioning for the new idea. The goal is to have data backing up your assertions on who your targeting and why this is a fit for them.

How We Test

Once we have the positioning statement nailed down we get to work on creative assets and the ad campaign itself. The summary of how we run tests is that we use targeted ads (Google Search) to drive traffic to a landing page with the new offer. We then look at the engagement data through this mini funnel, including registrations on the page, and compare against benchmarks to derive our measure of demand. If a campaign does very well, as it did with Gumshoe, we'll see immediate registrations and high engagement data.

Gumshoe example Google Search Ad

Gumshoe landing page with offer and CTA

After we've built everything and received client sign-off, we go live. The test runs for a minimum 2 weeks because that's the amount of time it takes Google Ads to complete its learning phase. It's bad practice to make any changes to an ad campaign during this time frame, as it will interrupt Google in learning how best to serve your ads.

Immediate Signups, Good Signals

Gumshoe flew out of the gates with a CTR (Click Through Rate) above benchmark and its first registration on day 1. At this stage we were cautiously optimistic.

Fast forward to day 6 and now we're cruising at around 2x the CTR and 3/4 of the CPC (Cost Per Click) benchmarks. We're also getting some definition on the importance of the 3 design features Mohammed had asked about. Ok, now we're getting excited!

Always Interesting Learnings

Every now and then, we get some real oddball insights through this process. Another reason to check one's assumptions. Due to the nature of the ads we had built, we were seeing searches being made for "child tracking device hidden" and "subcutaneous GPS for kids". Not at all what we were intending or even looking for, but still insightful.

Perhaps this is more proof of my theory that the most innovative products sit at the intersection of impressive and creepy. It's bleeding edge stuff!

Outcomes

Success

The original test campaign closed out a success. We clocked Curiosity (CTR) at 108% above the benchmark, Cost (CPC) at 22% below the benchmark, and Demand (CVR - conversion rate) at 21% above benchmark. All good signs!

Performance gauges from the report summary page.

Mohammed also ended up with 31 registrants. These are all real people interested in learning more about Gumshoe.

The signup form we use to capture these expressions of interest has an open text field that people can add to if they chose. It provides qualitative data direct from would-be consumers and forms another signal that we use.

Customer development has already begun and can continue as Mohammed engages with his new audience through product development updates and requests for feedback.

Confirmed Positioning

Perhaps most importantly, we got clear data validating the specific messaging used to offer up this new product idea. Not only do we now know how to describe this new offering and for who it's for, but we also now have a scale of how important the launch features are to these parents:

• “Easy for Parents to Affix” at 593 impressions

• “Stylish Enough For Kids” at 412 impressions

• “So Secure It Won’t Be Removed” at 288 impressions

It seems simple in hindsight, but it's powerful to prove through experimentation that "GPS tracker for kids" is the way to go.

Doubling Down with Phase 2

New Goal Of 100 Registrations

Since the campaign was such a success and we were generating leads at 60% below benchmark CPA (Cost Per Acquisition), Mohammed elected to run a second phase to build up his new audience even more.

We didn't make any substantive changes to the campaign. We only made a handful of keyword changes to dial it in even more. And we added a checkbox on the signup form for people to claim a free prototype if they wanted. A great idea from Mohammed, boosting the feedback loop to support his product development.

We ran the campaign for 4 more weeks and ended up with 115 total registrations!

Conclusion & What’s Next

We achieved what we set out to do in helping Mohammed measure demand for Gumshoe and clarify his target market. We also generated a list of real people asking for his offering! He now has a clear advantage regarding his distribution strategy.

Mohammed can build in confidence. He has a direct line of communication to the parents, the people he's building this for. He can take their feedback and put it right into product development, accelerating delivery and satisfaction for everyone.

But the deeper benefit is avoiding becoming another statistic: "No market need" is one of the top reasons startups fail. You can spend a fraction of traditional business costs to get the right data, in weeks, not months. And then use this to make an informed decision on how to proceed with your next business opportunity.

With our methodology at your disposal, there is no excuse for wasting time and resources on a hunch. Let us know when you’re ready to run with it.

Lean Market Research: How to Test A Business Idea

Test your business idea

Market research, or validation, is a crucial but often overlooked step in the process of starting a new business or project. It's much simpler than you'd think, especially with the help of modern digital marketing tools, which means there is no excuse for skipping this step.

You don't want to risk becoming another statistic. Plus, the clear benefit is that you'll start strong by learning about your target audience, which should be an ongoing thing for any business.

The basics of market research

• Market research is traditionally about surveying people who are ideal candidates for a new offering. The problem is, focus groups are proven to be ineffective

• "No market need" is the #1 reason startups fail, accounting for 40% of false starts. Don't become another statistic.

• We have the validation.run methodology that uses digital marketing to derive a measure of demand from your target audience. it also identifies them further in the process. But it uses realtime action from real people actively searching for your solution or something similar. This might be the biggest different from traditional options.

• Testing your positioning statement is key. This is all about who you're targeting, what their problem is, what your solution is and how it's different from alternatives or competitors out there. When you nail this, you can start marketing your offering. But you need to confirm this, otherwise you'll never know who you're addressing and what the real issues are that you’re hoping to solve for.

• Knowing how audacious a task it is to build a new company, why not do everything you can to safeguard yourself. Take the measured approach, use a touch of the scientific method, use the tools we have at our disposal to their fullest potential and try your best to quantify your audience’s demand and their association to your offering.

Our methodology of lean market research

1. Clarify positioning statement

2. Keyword research: working to understand search intent

3. Ad campaign to test

   1. Curiosity (CTR)

   2. Specific messaging options (ad performance)

   3. Implied cost (avg. CPC)

4. Landing page to summarize offering

   1. Measure demand (CVR)

   2. Messages from leads (customer development)

5. Reporting to bring it all together

Access our Validation.Run Playbook: See step-by-step how we implement the Validation.Run methodology of lean market research to measure demand and identify the target audience for new business ideas.

Outcomes of effective market research

• The first question we're always looking to answer is "does anyone even give a damn?" then, assuming that's a "yes", the second question is "ok, who are these people and what's their situation?"

• Once you know this you can start to reach them with effective marketing

• Know the right verbiage to really connect with them. After all, you're going to build something for them.

• Figure out the best acquisition channels (pick one to focus on) to bring in new customers

• Continue testing, iterating, and scale from here.

Considering how simple and helpful it is to properly validate your business ideas, hopefully many more people will consider it as a good place to start. We're building the free resources so you can do it all yourself. And if you want us to do all the heavy lifting, take a look at our offering.

We hope you join us in giving appropriate time to testing before committing substantial resources to the wrong path.

How To Start A Business

Good news, you don't need to read a whole library of business books on how to start a business. But from our perspective as digital marketers, these are the bare essentials to get any business off to a great start.

A note on permission marketing: modern marketing has changed from generic ads to personalized messaging. The modern day consumer is savvy and has Google at their fingertips. You need to learn their real problems and build a solution to solve. Not the other way around: you don't want to be a solution in search of a problem.

Find your idea

Not just a good one, a great one. You need to find a business idea you will be willing to fight for.

The famous advice is to “scratch your own itch”: which means to start with a problem you personally struggle with and know well. You’ll have the advantage of already intimately knowing the context around the problem/solution paradigm. But that’s when the blinders should come off. Ask others who have this problem how they deal with it and what an ideal solution would look like.

Train the idea muscle. As with anything, you can train yourself to be good at having great ideas. It’s a numbers game. We need to get comfortable with generating ideas en masse, such that the subset of quality will consistently show up.

Validate with lean market research

This is our specialty. At the intersection of SEO (search engine optimization) and growth strategy, we’re using Google Ads as a proxy for the market to measure demand and identify the target audience.

We can run a test campaign for you, or you can download our playbook for free and do it yourself.

If you want the free version of this methodology, start with a social media account. Don’t worry so much about branding. Instead focus on the positioning statement. Testing via organic social will take much longer, maybe several months, before you start to see real traction. But it's free!

Ads simply accelerate the process of finding crucial insights about your target audience. In either case we’re working to learn A) if anyone is interested in our offering, B) who they are and what their deal is. Such that we can craft the offering for them, addressing their deeper concerns.

Try not to rely too heavily on any one platform, since they could change an algorithm or policy without notice. It's good business practice to develop assets you wholly control. We’re aware of the irony of relying on Google Ads, but we’re also working under the assumptions that many people use Google to find things, and since Ads are Google’s main source of revenue they won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Be open to all testing for traction in all acquisition channels. The aim is to find You may see a level of interest in testing through one marketing channel (e.g. ads, organic social, events, etc),

Build an MVP to start iterating

This MVP stands for minimum viable product, an element of lean startup methodologies.

If it's a system or product you’re thinking about selling, start with spreadsheets and no-code automation. If it's a service, do it all manually, yourself. The goal here isn't to take over the world, it's to learn from your audience.

You want to stay in the trenches of customer support and success for as long as you can. Go talk to your (prospective) customer and listen. Ask short, open ended questions and let them do all the talking.

Take insights from your audience and fold that into product development. Craft the solution over many revisions to suit your audience’s needs.

Don't quit your day job

One of the main differences between a small business and a large one is that the owner decided to stop pushing for growth.

To start a small business, you run through this process and once you hit your goal you can coast. To start a large business, don’t stop until you hit Mars.

We don't all need to be the next Bezos or Musk. $1,000 extra per month makes a huge difference to most people. There are many examples of people working on lean businesses that do just this. And most of these founders, side hustlers and indie hackers are still holding down a normal 9-to-5 job.

Incorporate and make it official

Think about what you really want in life and start with that end in mind. Is it more freedom in some capacity, a creative outlet, early retirement, investing, travel, funding a hobby, quitting your job? Use the five-fold why technique.

It’s probably not a shiny new business card that’ll bring you fulfillment. Plus, you’ll need a good reason to burn the midnight oil and work weekends.

But once you're making enough extra cash to consistently cover your household overhead and goals, then you can go all-in on this new business idea and wrap up other income generating activities. Only after you accomplish all of the above would we recommend going through the next steps of incorporation.

Remember the world of business is rapidly changing. Despite the complexity this brings, we also now have many new tools to help out. The internet, software and lean startup methodologies are accelerating the iterative learning process. So start with a problem you're already familiar with. Validate using lean market research to measure demand and identify the target audience. Start small with an MVP and iterate to greatness. Don't quit your day job, these projects are more flexible than ever before. Then finally, and only if you really want, make it official and go big.

The Importance Of Positioning When Testing New Business Ideas

The importance of positioning cannot be overstated. For startups, running businesses or ideas. The positioning statement is that snippet of internally defined text that addresses who your target audience is, their need, your solution and its main benefit, any competition or alternatives, and how you differ from them.

The formula

The best formula for generating a positioning statement comes from Arielle Jackson. I recall when a client once shared the above link with me and once I saw the breakdown, I knew it was the one. It has everything you need. I immediately started sharing the link out to all my other clients and marketing friends.

For (target customer) who (statement of need or opportunity), (Product name) is a (product category) that (statement of key benefit). Unlike (competing alternative) (Product name) (statement of primary differentiation).

For testing purposes and relevance

The main thing we’re trying to learn in testing business ideas is if the new concept is relevant. The first question we’re asking ourselves is “does anyone even give a damn?” Assuming that’s a “yes”, then the follow-up question would be, “OK, who are these people and how urgent is this for them?” You know good positioning when you see it. Or maybe you don’t even notice because it’s so seamless. But it’s that moment when the right messaging hit the right person at the right time and they responded with the right actions. It’s a measure of relevance.

Help from keyword research

Google search is a revelation. Never before have we had such power in our hands. The power of information. And we’ve adapted very quickly to its utility.

A lot can be gleaned from how we use search as a tool. For instance, have you ever notices when you’re trying to find something with Google, it can take a few tries to get it right? You need to find the right keywords to submit as a query to the all knowing machine. Google becoming a verb illustrates the universal appeal.

One of the main reasons we use Google Ads in our testing is because of this kind of search intent. People come to Google for answers. It’s different to when you’re scrolling on social media, likely just killing time or chilling out.

Between what people are typing into Google and what we’re offering through ads is this study of relevance. When we show the right messaging to the right people and they engage with our ads by clicking on them, then we know we’re on the right track to actually connect with them.

The sheet method of iterating on different options

It’s not easy developing a sound positioning statement. There are all the variables in the formula, plus you need to make them fit in a way that makes sense. One simple way I’ve developed to iterate through all the options is by mapping it all out in a spreadsheet.

I jot down the formula as the top row and lock that in place. Then I write the different options I’m considering in the columns for each variable of the formula. This works well since you have the chronology of each variable in the formula.

What often happens when I work through this process with clients is that they blaze through most of the variables but then get stuck on a specific one. It’s important to go with your gut when thinking through these, otherwise you’ll go down the rabbit hole on any particular item.

Test your positioning to validate

The beauty is that once you have a contender for your positioning statement, the next step is testing it. You can also test the variables. And this is the whole point of validation.

Positioning statements evolve over time

Don’t get married to any particular stance laid out in your positioning statement. It should be thought of as a working document (another bonus of the sheet method). As you refine your targeting and messaging, you’ll refine your overall positioning. Expect this to happen.

Especially in terms of segmentation

Your positioning will also expand to address segmentation in your target audience. This too is natural and essential. Segmentation is key in marketing. While we recommend trying to remain focussed in terms of an overall niche, you will likely still end up subdividing your positioning to address segmentation within your audience. These will be subtle tweaks to better address the needs of sub-targets.

Wrap up

I'm not kidding when I say I've spent the bulk of my time for a campaign or new client working on positioning. In a way, it's the whole focus of marketing. During our testing methodology we do our best to make use of the available tools (ad platforms, keyword research, competitor research) to make an educated guess on what it could be. It's up to the people, the target audience and real prospective customers to tell us if it's working. They do this with their actions and how much they engage with a test campaign. Luckily we learn quickly what's working and lean into that. Positioning evolves with ongoing input from your customers. After all, the thing we're creating should be done in concert with its intended recipients.

Validation.Run’s positioning statement

For savvy entrepreneurs who need to test their next business idea, Validation.Run offers lean market research to measure demand and identify the target audience. Instead of doing it yourself, wasting time on the wrong idea or risking becoming a statistic, Validation.Run gets you the right insights to help you decide how best to proceed.