Facebook ads to test market?

[Itsmeantonios]

I have a product idea but I have no idea if anyone wants it. All I know is that it doesn't exist, or, at least I can't find it easily. It's not a new product, but an improvement on an existing one.

Is doing a test facebook ad campaign for my product a good way to see if there's any interest? I don't know how to use that platform but I will learn it if it's a good way to find out if there's a market for my idea. I'm looking at the screen for the ad campaign right now and don't understand if I would want Conversion or Traffic or Engagement or what, but I can learn. I don't have a website or anything. I just want to find out if anyone would be interested in my product...if they are, then I would build a facebook page, a basic website to sell the product, have it on amazon, etc. After being sure I can actually build the thing lol.

Thanks!

 

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[OverByte]

You have to send them somewhere from your facebook ad... Can you create a landing page describing the product? Then you can send them there and see if they join an email list to be notified when ready or get updates about the product development (sounds like you'd be developing the product?). If you can do that you could run traffic objective to get clicks and see how many people show interest. This is a tough road though if you don't actually have a product yet, you'd have to paint a pretty compelling picture to get people to sign up for a notification, like showing a mock of the final product and basically completing a product listing with a disabled buy button and indicating the product is "coming soon" and signup to get an early bird discount or something. If you pitch it like some vague idea don't bother sending traffic to the site.

There is a section in unscripted about soft validation that gives some techniques.

 

[Itsmeantonios]

You have to send them somewhere from your facebook ad... Can you create a landing page describing the product? Then you can send them there and see if they join an email list to be notified when ready or get updates about the product development (sounds like you'd be developing the product?). If you can do that you could run traffic objective to get clicks and see how many people show interest. This is a tough road though if you don't actually have a product yet, you'd have to paint a pretty compelling picture to get people to sign up for a notification, like showing a mock of the final product and basically completing a product listing with a disabled buy button and indicating the product is "coming soon" and signup to get an early bird discount or something. If you pitch it like some vague idea don't bother sending traffic to the site.

There is a section in unscripted about soft validation that gives some techniques.

Right! The soft validation section. I'll need to reread that.

It's a physical product that I actually have no idea how I would get it mass produced, though as I mentioned it's just a modification so maybe instead of building a whole product I could just build my modification.

I can easily enough build a prototype out of store bought materials though for proof of concept. No idea about actual commercial production though. Deal with that when I get there I guess.

Is there not a way to use Facebook ads that would just have it create an email list of everyone who clicks on the ad or something just to give me proof of interest or sales leads? I'm still looking into it...I could design an ad easily enough I think, but a website idk. I think stuff like Wix and others create a site super fast and easy but if it's expensive....I don't know.

 

[jmin]

Right! The soft validation section. I'll need to reread that.

It's a physical product that I actually have no idea how I would get it mass produced, though as I mentioned it's just a modification so maybe instead of building a whole product I could just build my modification.

I can easily enough build a prototype out of store bought materials though for proof of concept. No idea about actual commercial production though. Deal with that when I get there I guess.

Is there not a way to use Facebook ads that would just have it create an email list of everyone who clicks on the ad or something just to give me proof of interest or sales leads? I'm still looking into it...I could design an ad easily enough I think, but a website idk. I think stuff like Wix and others create a site super fast and easy but if it's expensive....I don't know.

You could run lead generation ads just to get user information. But with a product, people might want to see more details about the product before providing any information. A simple landing page wouldn't be a bad idea.

Have you considered Kickstarter? That could be a good way to gauge demand without actually moving into product development. You could run ads which direct people to the Kickstarter page.

 

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[The-J]

Doing a test FB campaign is a great way to see if there's a market.

Keep it simple: choose your smallest viable audience, and run an ad with the strongest possible promise.

Use your landing page to collect emails, or run a presale page where you cut them off before checkout saying that the product is not yet available. Then collect their email. Gauge demand based on email submit rate. Calculate how much you could make if you could convert 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, or 20% of the people who submit their email, and based on that, you should know if your offer is likely to be profitable.

Testing an idea really isn't complicated: you just have to be willing to (1) spend money and (2) hear feedback.

And you don't need much money to do this. Enough for maybe 200-300 clicks. That's a few hundred bucks at most but that is money VERY WELL SPENT on interacting with your market for real.

Tips to not waste money: 1) optimize for the email submit not for link clicks; 2) make an ad that catches people's attention with the visual and piques interest with the copy.

 

[Kid]

Ads alone would tell you if people are "interested" in product.
From business point of view they are just window shoppers.

Take a look at my post in this thread with better method to test the market
Is there a way to pre-sell to an Amazon product that hasn't been made yet