Trial and Error or Building an Audience first?

[The Questioner]

Hi guys,

I became aware of the forum a few years ago when I read MJ's great books, but have only ever read and never really participated in the forum. So this is my introduction.

I am 36 years old and live in Europe. I've been wanting to start my own business for well over a decade, but have always had the problem of jumping from one idea to another without ever really getting anywhere.
The last six months have been different. This time I really kept going even when there were problems. I have an idea for a line of products in an area that is becoming popular. It's a trend, but one that for various reasons I'm convinced won't go away anymore once it is here. There are only a handful of companies in this area at the moment and most of them don't actually do good marketing or don't have what I think are the right products.

So I think, that it would be good to act quickly now to position myself in the market before demand explodes (which is only a matter of time). Basically, all I lack now is a logo, the website and I still have to order the products (I already have a producer). So I could start in January.
The question I've been asking myself for a while now is: should I do that or should I first see if there is a demand for the products? For now I have improved already existing products using Value Skews. However, I don't know if the products really resonate with people and if they buy them. The products are relatively high priced and they would need to be bought regularly.

I feel like I've wasted so much time over the last few years that I tend to try to figure it out via trial and error. But that could also be really stupid as I have no idea if people will like the products or not. I could try to build an audience first. Then I would know from the start whether people want the products or not. If not, I could make adjustments to cater more to people's needs. But that takes a lot longer.

I hope, that what I wrote makes sense. What do you think? Should I invest the time and build an audience first to then give them, what they want, or should I just throw the products on the market and hope for the best?

Thank you.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

The question I've been asking myself for a while now is: should I do that or should I first see if there is a demand for the products? For now I have improved already existing products using Value Skews. However, I don't know if the products really resonate with people and if they buy them. The products are relatively high priced and they would need to be bought regularly.

Did you already say that you can perceive a demand (or a trend) in your area?

The only way to test demand is to advertise and product and see if people 1) Visit and 2) Convert.

Throwing up a website (try LeadPages.com) can be done pretty quickly if you want to test the market.

 

[Jobless]

Throw something out there. You don't need to have the products yet. Show a promise / a video / a description / a price and see the reactions.

 

[The Questioner]

Did you already say that you can perceive a demand (or a trend) in your area?

The only way to test demand is to advertise and product and see if people 1) Visit and 2) Convert.

Throwing up a website (try LeadPages.com) can be done pretty quickly if you want to test the market.

Great, thanks.
So basically that means that I build a website and then drive traffic to it, for example via Google Ads. So far so good.

But what do I tell people when they want to order a product? That it's currently out of stock, but that they can sign up for an e-mail list and be informed as soon as the product is available again?

How much should I spend on paid traffic per day and how long should I run the ads to get started?

When is the data good enough? Are there any reference points here (like 1000 click throughs ...)?

How high would the conversions (in this case people signing up to the email list) have to be to make it worthwhile to launch the product?

Thanks.

 

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