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Got a Business Idea? Use This Method to Determine it's Potential
Read Time: 2 Minutes | 12-26-23 Subscriber Count: 152
Collin Rutherford
December 26, 2023
So you have a startup idea. How do you know if it might actually a good business?
Before you dive in and start your business, it's important to make sure that people actually want it!
Story Time
Here's how I did this with my company, Greenbox Storage:
I had the ability to access the emails for every student at my school. So before I launched Greenbox, I decided to make sure it was worth my time. I created a survey and sent it out to the student body. I asked questions like:
If there was a service that picked up / delivered your items for summer break, would you use it?
How much would you pay to store a box while you're away from campus?
Have you ever used a storage unit to store your things while away from campus?
This survey helped me get a feel for the demand. Turns out, the result was "yes", there is demand!
You Probably Won’t be as Lucky
Unfortunately, you likely won't have the ability to email your target market to determine demand. Instead, you can to use the following tactics:
Use Google Trends
If you want to quantify the demand, use Google Trends. This is a cool service offered by Google to show the relative interest for a topic based on Google searches. Here’s an example:
My search for “home cleaning” has interesting results. The beginning / end of the month appear to be high-demand search periods.
Use a Landing Page
Another great way to measure interest for your service is to create a landing page and measure the traffic that comes to your page. Here’s what to do:
Create a landing page that describes your service. You can use Carrd to create a simple landing page.
Add a “sign up” button.
Make the “sign up” button lead to an email sign up page. Here, interested customers can submit their email address to receive correspondence when you’re up and running.
Spend some money on Google and social media ads to get website traffic.
Analyze the data and determine if people are interested! For example, if you have 1,000 website visitors and 75 email sign ups within one week, you might have found Product Market Fit! If you have lower traffic, there might be less demand for your offering.
That’s all folks! Have a great holidays :)
Cheers,
Collin Rutherford
PS. Sounds tasty!
