It is an age of emerging business with a significant number of startups, home-grown businesses, and small-scale enterprises being established. Regardless of industry, you can also establish a successful business with the resources and a unique idea. Your idea is what makes your business stand out among all. If you have a perfect idea for a business; it is pretty tempting to embark on the process of building it right away. But you also need to ensure that the business is going to be successful or else it is going be a painful loss.
How to Test a Business Idea?
Here are the six effective steps to test and check whether your business idea is potential enough.
1. Contemplate Your Idea
Any idea can be good but before its implementation, contemplation is needed. Contemplate your idea and try to imagine whether it is possible to flesh out a proper business or potential company that the world needs. Will there be ample customers for the business? How is the market for the business? There are many avenues you need to consider before establishing a fully-fledged business. So, don’t make any waste in haste.
2. Minimum Viable Product
Lean startup models are great for developing a business based on specific products and services. The most important part of the model is to come up with a minimum viable product (MVP). MVP refers to the simplest form of idea that can be sold as an actual product. Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur and author, Eric Ries has offered a detailed explanation of the matter based on the principles of Lean Six Sigma. This can help to test and market the product early in the development process of the business. You can get real feedback from the target audiences.
3. A Group of Critics
The best critics of the market are your customers. If they do not approve of your idea or product, you are not going to make any penny. So, when your first prototype or test service is ready, make sure to show it to potential customers. It will help you understand whether customers address the problem in the same way you do. A senior technical manager at Amazon, Wayde Gilchrist said, “You need to find out if this is a real problem for a majority of your target market or just a few.” But first, you have to select at least 50 potential customers or clients to run the test successfully.
4. Tweak Settings to Suit the Test Market
Based on the feedback gained from critics and customers, you can tweak a bit that helps to suit the test market even better. An initial business idea and mock-up are a good idea to embark on the journey but it also requires fruitful adjustments that allow gaining more prospects on the business. The more work you do in the test phase, the less adjustment will be required when the business is launched in the market.
5. Create a Test Website
Once the word of business is out in the world, your target audience and market will require more information regarding your business. If they like the idea of your business, they are more likely to show it to their friends and other folks. Therefore, make sure to build a simple website with a landing page that showcases your product and also promotes it over social media. Make sure to add a CTA for interested people which will enrich the mailing list for your business.
Final Thoughts
No business is successful without marketing and so, you need a marketing plan as well. Also, try to adopt an experimentation mindset that helps to adapt to the market. After the test phase, you will have a clear foresight of your business.
