how to validate your business idea
Validating your business idea is a critical step that many people miss before they spend the time and energy to get their business up and to run.
However, you always want to make sure your idea is a winner before you get too invested in the company. Validating your business idea is the most critical step that you can take. Unless you take the time to test the market for your ideas, you won’t have a stable and long lasting business.
The biggest argument for idea validations is to help you avoid wasting your money on an idea that won’t be profitable. If you want your business to make money, then you have to make sure that there is a market for what you are selling. When you take the time to research your idea, you can avoid making costly mistakes.
1. Utilize Google
Google Trends
Google Trends is a great tool that you can use to help you determine what the trends are for your particular niche, which can help you validate your idea. The tool allows you not only to see if your niche is growing or shrinking, but it can also provide you with seasonal trends.
Google Keyword Planner
You can use this information with Google’s Keyword Planner to determine the search volume specific keywords get. While this won’t tell you whether or not you’ve chosen a profitable niche, it will tell you if your niche is being searched for online. If your particular niche shows a high number of searches, it is highly likely that your niche is worth diving into. It also shows that you can build an audience through organic traffic.
2. Use Moz.com to Research Keywords
Keyword research is one of the most critical activities that you can do to validate your business idea.
Moz.com is a software as a service (SaaS) company that sells inbound marketing an marketing analytics software subscriptions. Their Keyword Explorer tool can help you streamline and improve how you discover and prioritize the keywords that consumers might be using to search for products and services in your particular niche.
It will show you monthly search volume data, give you an idea of how difficult it will be for you to rank for each keyword, provide you with an estimated click-through rate, and give you a score that represents your potential to rank in the search engines. All of this information can give you a better sense as to whether or not your idea can be profitable.
3. Use Buzzsumo to See Trends in Social Media
Buzzsumo is a powerful online tool that will allow you to find out what content is popular by topic or on any website. In order to validate your business idea, you need to know what people are talking about and what content is popular. Rather than spending hours scanning the various social sites to determine this, you can utilize Buzzsumo by inputting specific search criteria and analyzing the content to find out what is already working in your niche.
Buzzsumo searches across multiple social sites to gather information on the topics that are getting the most attention. It also looks for the people that others are listening to the most and provide you with insight on who you need to follow, and on what your potential competitors are doing, which can go a long way when it comes to validating your idea.
4. Gather Feedback
One of the best ways to validate your business idea is by gathering feedback from potential customers. You can use sites like SurveyMonkey to gather feedback on your thoughts. Take some time to create a survey and then share it on your social media networks, and send it out to trusted professionals and former co-workers. This will allow you to gauge the need, interest, and gaps in specific industries.
