Creating a digital product has you excited about the potential for passive income. You have an idea that you KNOW is going to be a wild success. How confident are you? Taking the time to validate your product idea is the key to success!
Why bother with this step?
There are plenty of books in the Kindle store that have no more than a few courtesy purchases from friends and family of the author.
Countless courses full of quality content have negligible enrollment.
The Successful Digital Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon
Many content creators start with fervent enthusiasm for their product, they have an idea and they create what they think will sell.
This is NOT the way to succeed with a digital product. Taking the time to validate your product idea BEFORE you spend valuable time and effort creating it, is an essential step that most learn the hard way. You don’t have to and it’s easier than you think to do.
Validate your Product Idea
A Google search will yield an incredible array of options and recommendations for validating your product idea. The options can feel a bit overwhelming. New skills and technology may be required to put them to use.
Don’t retreat to the familiarity of creating your content or seek artificial comfort in unfounded confidence that you KNOW what customers will buy. Do your homework, pick a strategy and execute. In this article, I discuss 4 options you can consider.
Use Validation to Improve an Existing Product
Dig you launch a digital product but it didn’t generate the sales you desired? Taking a step back and using validation techniques can help you determine what changes may be needed to drive sales.
Of course, marketing strategy is a key topic here, but investing time and money marketing a product that your audience doesn’t want to buy, isn’t going to work.
Taking a step back and validating that your product is something your customers want and are willing to pay for, is a good idea before doubling down on marketing efforts for an existing product.
Product Validation Approaches
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Create a Minimum Viable Product
A minimum viable product (MVP) is a “version of a new product which allows you to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” This definition provided by Eric Reis, author of The Lean Startup points to the importance of spending the least amount of effort needed.
You may think that you need to create an actual product to use this approach. However, even creating a single page with a description of your idea (include a high-quality video for even greater appeal) and a sign-up form can help you determine customer’s response to your idea.
Take it one step further and ask why the customer is interested in your product. This approach can yield valuable input as to exactly what your customers want.
Consider providing a link to a survey or creating an automated email asking those that like your idea for more information. Nurturing a relationship with customers interested in your product is a high reward activity.
A minimum viable product (MVP) probably takes less investment of time than you think, but yields valuable results. This article gives 10 examples of successful products that used a MVP to validate their idea.
2. Create a Coming Soon Page
One excellent example of an MVP isn’t even a product. Create a coming soon page describing your e-book, course or toolkit. Describe the pain points it solves and create a compelling argument for why your specific approach or content is the solution. Allow visitors to the page to provide their email address to get more information or be notified about your product when it launches.
A coming soon page allows you to test the waters and gauge interest in your product. It is easy to change and update this page in order to determine what message your target audience responds to best. This article by Neil Patel goes into detail about coming soon pages and how to optimize them.
You likely selected your product to solve a common question, problem or pain point. If you are a member of groups, listservs or other online communities/social media relevant to your product topic (and you should be), these are fertile grounds for product validation. When the question or problem is expressed, you can easily share your page and build you interest list.
From this list you can start to gather important information about what your target customers want and can create a successful product. Validate your product by telling people about it!
I used this approach for RD2RD and created a coming soon page. I had identified that sharing digital resources was a pain point for RDNs. More times than I could count, I saw requests like “Does anyone have a (handout, form, policy, tool, etc)?” on listservs and social media.
Many RDNs were willing to share their resources and others even sold resources on their individual websites. A barrier to wider adoption of selling digital resources was both time and technology. My landing page highlighted these barriers and offered a description of a new option, a marketplace that offered convenience and broader exposure for RD-created digital products.
3. Analyze Your Competition
While it goes without saying that your product will be superior and more desirable than anything else out there on the market, you need to survey the competition. You’ve seen those home shows where a couple is completely unrealistic about the value of their home. They mistakenly think specific choices they’ve made will appeal to a wide audience. Watching a seasoned real estate agent deliver the unwelcome truth can be a painful experience.
You need to do the equivalent of a comparative market analysis for your digital product. What else is out there on the market? What is the price? How often is the topic searched for?
Don’t stop there, browse the social media accounts of competitors. Just as you might attend an open house of a property in your neighborhood or look through pictures a home similar to yours online, this is the exact approach you should take to validate your product idea. Learn as much as you can about the market. How can you expect to develop a successful product without understanding your competition and the market?
I took this approach for RD2RD. There wasn’t a specific “competitor” marketplace available for RDs. However, I looked to other similar marketplaces. One in particular that provide me with the most valuable insight was TeachersPayTeachers. Teacher authors buy and sell resources they’ve created for their own use to each other. Everything from first day of school desk signs to math curriculum for the entire year. This marketplace has been incredibly successful.
4. Pre-Sell Your Product
This approach may seem intimidating. Selling a product before you’ve even spent time developing it seems risky. However, this approach allows you to see if your audience is willing to PAY for the product you are developing. It is the ultimate technique to validate your product.
Perhaps you’ve built an email list via your coming soon page and with relevant freebie opt-ins. You can offer an early bird price and provide a specific date in the future when the product will be available. If sales/interest in your product don’t warrant development, you can refund purchases and save yourself a great deal of time developing a product.
One of the added benefits of pre-selling is that it forces you to consider the marketing aspects of your product. You must consider how you are going to nurture the relationship with your email list, develop a plan for your launch and perhaps even host a webinar or other marketing approach.
Alternatively, it may have you identifying key leaders in you niche and reaching out to determine how you might be able to get your product in front of their audience. These are lessons and strategies you will need to have a successful product.
Final Thoughts
Once you’ve identified a product idea, take time to validate that your product is something people are willing to pay for. Consider a coming soon page, research your competition and even pre-selling your product. These actions will both offer you insight into your customers wants and allow you to build and launch a product that you KNOW will sell!
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