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Use Forums and Surveys for Market Validation

JSM

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Use free forums and surveys to have your target market validate and make changes to your idea for you. Without spending a dime.

You don't even have to be an active member of the community. I created my account on the forum I used to get my idea back in 2015 and had 7 total posts on it. I hadn't been on that account in years. The members of the forum still filled out my survey for NOTHING in return.

I used SurveyMonkey (the free version) to create a 10 question survey to ask what I needed to know to fine tune my idea and find out more about my target market and what they wanted. I'm sure you could use Google Forms too as an alternative. I took the link of my survey and made a post about it on a popular forum in my niche.

When making your survey keep in mind that you only get to ask 10 questions with the free version of SurveyMonkey. Ask questions that you need to know the answer to and that will help you further develop your product and marketing strategy. Don't ask questions that are unnecessary or will take too long to answer. Short and to the point will ensure that you get plenty of responses that you can work with. Keep in mind that with the free version of SurveyMonkey you can only take 100 responses but that should be plenty to work with.

Good questions to ask:
Age?
How often do you buy ____ product?
How much do you normally spend on ____ product?
Rank the most important factors you consider when buying ____ product.
What do you like most about the ____ product you currently use?
What do you dislike about the ____ product you currently use?

As of right now my thread has 225 views in less than 24 hours and I have gotten 51 people to fill out my survey. I am hoping to get to the max allowed and then post a similar survey on a different forum in the same niche. If you have a large social media following in your niche you could use that to your advantage and reddit would also be a potential place to look for responses.

Hopefully this will give others an idea for another way to validate their product before they spend too much time or money on it. I'm sure you could also use this strategy for idea extraction. This might not be a new concept but I figured I would post about it because it has worked for me.
 
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bbar97

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Thanks for the info! I actually considered this for an idea I have but I figured nobody would want to fill out a survey for nothing in return but I guess I was wrong! Looks like its back on the customer validation train for me!
 

Andy Black

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SurveyMonkey is cool.

I remember sending AdWords visitors to a survey and asking them a few questions. I was going to create an eBook on UNIX Shell Scripting and wondered why they wanted to learn it. I could also see where all the responses on a map of the world.

Most were Computer Science students who had to learn it for their studies, and most of my visitors were coming from India. It made me think I likely wasn't going to make any money with that idea and gave it a bullet.


I presume you have to be pretty careful posting a survey into a forum if they don't know you? Can you imagine how that would go down in TFLF?
 
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bbar97

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SurveyMonkey is cool.

I remember sending AdWords visitors to a survey and asking them a few questions. I was going to create an eBook on UNIX Shell Scripting and wondered why they wanted to learn it. I could also see where all the responses on a map of the world.

Most were Computer Science students who had to learn it for their studies, and most of my visitors were coming from India. It made me think I likely wasn't going to make any money with that idea and gave it a bullet.


I presume you have to be pretty careful posting a survey into a forum if they don't know you? Can you imagine how that would go down in TFLF?

True, but I definitely think this forum is held to a much higher standard than any other I've been a part of. Other forums seem to be more lax, so I feel like at worst I would be ignored.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Andy Black

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Timmy C

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Just so happened to be doing something similar over the last couple of days for idea extraction on reddit.
8 responses and 5 emails provided.
Capture.JPG


Anyone tried doing this via a facebook ad or something similar?
 

Andy Black

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Just so happened to be doing something similar over the last couple of days for idea extraction on reddit.
8 responses and 5 emails provided.
View attachment 29165


Anyone tried doing this via a facebook ad or something similar?
I ran Google Ads to a survey many moons ago. I got some very insightful responses.
 

Drive2Riches

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Use free forums and surveys to have your target market validate and make changes to your idea for you. Without spending a dime.

You don't even have to be an active member of the community. I created my account on the forum I used to get my idea back in 2015 and had 7 total posts on it. I hadn't been on that account in years. The members of the forum still filled out my survey for NOTHING in return.

I used SurveyMonkey (the free version) to create a 10 question survey to ask what I needed to know to fine tune my idea and find out more about my target market and what they wanted. I'm sure you could use Google Forms too as an alternative. I took the link of my survey and made a post about it on a popular forum in my niche.

When making your survey keep in mind that you only get to ask 10 questions with the free version of SurveyMonkey. Ask questions that you need to know the answer to and that will help you further develop your product and marketing strategy. Don't ask questions that are unnecessary or will take too long to answer. Short and to the point will ensure that you get plenty of responses that you can work with. Keep in mind that with the free version of SurveyMonkey you can only take 100 responses but that should be plenty to work with.

Good questions to ask:
Age?
How often do you buy ____ product?
How much do you normally spend on ____ product?
Rank the most important factors you consider when buying ____ product.
What do you like most about the ____ product you currently use?
What do you dislike about the ____ product you currently use?

As of right now my thread has 225 views in less than 24 hours and I have gotten 51 people to fill out my survey. I am hoping to get to the max allowed and then post a similar survey on a different forum in the same niche. If you have a large social media following in your niche you could use that to your advantage and reddit would also be a potential place to look for responses.

Hopefully this will give others an idea for another way to validate their product before they spend too much time or money on it. I'm sure you could also use this strategy for idea extraction. This might not be a new concept but I figured I would post about it because it has worked for me.
:praise: VALUE post! Thank you. :bullseye:
 
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