What should you ask your target audience during market research surveys?

Welcome to Day 4 of the Idea Validation Challenge!

This challenge is for those who have a great business idea, and they want to make sure it will WORK before you invest time and money into it!

It is also for people who already started a business, and they want to revisit their target audience to increase their reach.

Join the conversation at our Facebook Group:

HOW ARE WE GOING TO FIND YOUR FIRST CLIENT?

By going out and talking to people!

If you are anything like me, you may be hyperventilating right now.

Talking to people about something you have not even started yet is very hard. You are making yourself completely vulnerable to criticism, rejection and to people trying to talk you out of whatever this crazy scam is.

But here’s the deal: if you do not go out of your comfort zone and ask people what they think, you will NEVER truly understand the needs of your target audience.

Multi-million dollar corporations have miserably failed and foiled because they failed to understand their market’s needs. You will not be one of them.

Plus, chances are, those people who say you have a great idea in your hands will be your best advocates, and you can always tap on them for more feedback about whatever product you are creating. And that, my friend, is an invaluable resource.

LET THE MARKET RESEARCH BEGIN

So how do you go about finding out if your presumed target audience would actually buy into your idea?

3 easy steps:

Take your list of target audience types from yesterday and write the name of someone you know next to it who matches that criteria.

Write down a list of questions. This is important: you will ask everyone the same questions so that you can compare and contrast answers and compare apples to apples. Let’s say you want to start a travel blog. Here are some sample questions you might ask:

Have you been on a leisure trip lately?

How did you choose the destination?

Did you Google the place before you booked it?

When you Googled it, what information were you looking for?

Did you find the answers you needed? If yes, where did you find them and tell me more about that. If not, why not?

Notice we are not asking “Would you read my travel blog?” We are trying to dive deep into their experience with your specific area, and letting them tell us what was good and bad about it. Out of the struggle will come the light. Which problem are you going to solve for them?

Ask them to chat over the phone. Yes, it must be over the phone or in person. When you speak to someone (like TALKING) their mind is allowed to wander as they speak, and you end up finding out things they would have never written on a text.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT

Follow the 3 market research steps, and call AT LEAST 1 person and actually talk to them.

After the call, write down some notes. Do you have a better idea for what the PROBLEM you are solving is?

Then go to the Facebook group and post your answer with the hashtag #day4.