Validate Your SaaS Startup Idea: Step By Step Guide

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You have an idea for a startup? – SaaS

Congratulations! You have just jumped into the line of aspiring business owners.

We frequently see business owners who approach us with product ideas but are unsure about where to begin.

“It is the implementation that is valuable, not the ideas.”

Your own assumptions and intuition are insufficient. Before beginning the main development of any SaaS, Web, or mobile app idea, you must have it strategically validated.

Admittedly, no business owner ever begins to design a product without receiving approval. However, if everyone succeeded and struck the target, the number of startup failures would be significantly reduced.

The process of gathering “YES & NOs” or “Will it work?” responses to your suggested SaaS startup idea is not validation.

Actually, the strategic validation’s primary goal is

  • Enhancing the product
  • Verifying the client profile
  • Finding weaknesses in your concept
  • Assessing superior substitutes
  • and determining whether the market actually needs your goods or not.

Our task is to authenticate the existence of actual, eager, and well-paying clients who are prepared to pay in advance for your SaaS solution.

First, Build Your Mind For Right Validation –

  1. Give up thinking that your SaaS concept or service is infallible for a moment. For the purpose of the validation process, just cease assuming this. Proceed with the thorough validation by assuming that your SaaS product has the improper concept or solution. Because you will undoubtedly begin to create flaws if you simply believe that your idea is unbeatable.
  2. Friends and family frequently claim it is a terrific idea, so do not take them at face value.
  3. The majority of entrepreneurs proceed in this manner: they create a landing page and use advertisements to drive visitors to it for their SaaS product that is not yet in production. “Emails” are what they record as well.

While acquiring their addresses does not guarantee that they will purchase your product once it launches, I acknowledge that email is a valuable resource in today’s society.

Rather, you ought to create the landing page for the MVO (Minimum Economical Viable Offer), not the MVP. A Minimum Economic Viable Offer is when you persuade a user to pre-pay for a product that is not yet built. You will then receive appropriate validation.

This will distinguish between “actual buying intent” and “lukewarm interest.”

The only real validation comes when ten people promise to pay you money if you develop this thing. — WP Engine’s Jason Cohen

Tip: Users can request to save their credit cards without being charged at this time. In this manner, you will obtain a list of actual potential clients for your next SaaS offering. It, in my opinion, provides stronger validation than merely email opt-ins.

Never want someone to visit your landing page from one of those pricey advertising campaigns and give you their junk email address in exchange for your “Free Signup” offer.

“Make the SaaS product that people adore; life is too short to make things that are useless.”

So How Should You Do The Validation

Idea validation and MVP (or MVO, as I like to call it) validation are the two stages of the validation process that I would recommend you divide into.

Idea validation:

1) Do the patent check

You believe your idea is original, which is why you are eager to develop your product.

However, do not forget to quickly look for patents related to your SaaS idea to see whether it has already been filed.

It is something you will never want to happen to your own product.

2) Identify competitors

Finding your present competition is not a difficult task. You may find them online in a lot of different ways.

When you Google your industry or term, a lot of businesses will appear in front of you. To be honest, the most of them would advertise to gain your attention.

Go to Crunchbase or Angel.co and type your competitor’s product and you’ll get some decent information about them. Including their current and past investments.

If your offering is more akin to software or a CRM, Capterra, GetApp, G2Crowd, and PCMag can be quite useful in locating your rivals.

3) Check if it’s a trending or drowning idea

Examine the changes in the Trend.

Let us say you are developing a SaaS email autoresponder product. Additionally, you want to find out whether or not people are discussing it. whether there is an upward or downward tendency.

Head over to Google Trends and put your product idea. Like, “Email autoresponder” in the search bar and you’ll get a chart telling you if it’s going up or down right in front of you.

Additionally, you can contrast two or more different or related sectors, such as “Email Automation” vs “Email Autoresponder.”

saas_validation_-_email_autoresponder

4) See if you have a decent audience size to sell or not

Keyword Planner helps you determine how many Google searches a specific keyword is receiving. It also aids in determining whether or not your SaaS concept has a pool of possible clients.

Enter your keyword in Google Keyword Planner, and presto! Your target audience’s online presence can be determined by looking at the data.

Startup_validation_-_email_autoresponder_keyword

5) Can you do it faster, cheaper and better

There is no need for another common product on the internet. Unless something better or less expensive is available, people do not change their service providers every other day. Furthermore, you cannot take your rivals’ clients if you do not provide them with an improved product.

Therefore, you must determine the gaps and opportunities that your product could address.

Allow me to propose a few methods for locating potential chances.

Go to your niche review sites like GetApp for SaaS software products. See, what people are talking about in reviews on your competitor’s product.

startup_post_-_email_marketing_tool_review

Quick Tip: Remove the reviews with three stars. Those are usually the most critical reviews, full of helpful criticism and suggestions.

6) Complaints are your opportunities

Similar to the earlier tactic. Be aware of the problems that prospective clients are having. Go through the critical evaluations on the software comparison and review aggregator websites. If at all feasible, make an effort to speak with the irate clients of your rivals to expand on the conversation.

Tip: Give them a complimentary membership to your beta testers club.

7) What technology you should use to make it better

Surveilling your rivals is the most enjoyable endeavor.

BuiltWith is a dated tool for spying on a website’s or app’s technology.

Let’s say you want to spy on Airbnb’s technology. Here are the technologies Airbnb using on their Web App.

8) Talk to a sample group of people

Ask them what they love and dislike about the solution you are offering them if you have a sample group of customers for your upcoming SaaS product. You can meet them in person or over the phone.

They will typically respond positively to you and show you kindness and generosity. However, avoid being overly kind and asking if they want to pre-order your merchandise. At that point, people will begin to provide you a lot of constructive criticism. Since Money Is Important.

9) Serve your upcoming product in the best possible way

Sometimes it is difficult to put ideas into words.

The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” may be familiar to you.

And that is Bull’s eye if that image were an animated explanatory video!

In his book “4-Hour Workweek,” Tim Ferriss also discussed creating landing pages for your product, even if it has not been developed yet. Increase traffic to that page to see how many people click the “notify when available” option.

Try implementing Qualaroo pop-up app to encourage the visitors to sign-up or take part in your validation survey.

10) Drive targeted traffic

It is an entirely different effort to drive targeted visitors to a product landing page.

Some naturally occurring, or free, sources of focused traffic include as follows:

  • Targeted Facebook Groups
  • Twitter Search
  • Linkedin Groups
  • Niche Forums

Additionally, if you are willing to run some traffic from targeted ads –

Try:

  • Facebook Ads
  • Twitter Paid Promotions
  • Quora Advertising (Untapped and unabused)
  • Google Ads

At this point of validation, I will not advise you to run LinkedIn advertisements because it will be very expensive. Despite the fact that the traffic is targeted.

11) Email potential customers

Elon Musk pursued bank executives via cold email in an attempt to secure an internship. When he was a job search in his twenties.

From the outset of online marketing, cold emailing has generated controversy. But when executed properly and thoughtfully, it is one of the most effective marketing gimmicks.

You might begin a drip campaign of cold emails to your selected prospects. Avoid approaching them abruptly and demanding payment in advance for a product that is still in the development stage. Ask them instead about any issues they are having with their present SaaS supplier or about any features they would like to see added.

Tell them that is a premium invite only for them and that you would like to provide an invitation for them to experience their upcoming product.

MVP (or MVO) Validation

1) Define metrics for success

Because you can never tell if you are doing something correctly or not without understanding your success metrics. It is critical in these early phases to move at the appropriate speed and direction. Thus, while validating your startup or business idea, understanding your success measures is essential.

2) Define your customer persona closely

The first stage in MVP validation should be defining the consumer persona because you will undoubtedly make mistakes if you do not know who your target market is.

Building and defining the client profile for your SaaS product may be done in a variety of ways.

Facebook Audience Insights: Although an advertising account is required, you should use this service if you have not before.

Place the product of your rival in the interest area to observe the demographics of that group.

facebook_audience_insights_tool

Examine the interests of your prospects, including their purchasing patterns and brand affinity.

facebook_audience_insights_data

Additionally, their employment, educational, and relationship statuses

facebook_audience_insights_data_2

Pro Tip: Use a lookalike audience in Facebook ads to target the lookalikes of your beta users.

Use Your Instinct – Since you are developing a product for a market, you are in a better position to determine who your target market is. Simply take a seat, remain composed, and carefully fill out the buyer persona..

Reverse Engineer – Backtrack and study the users of your opponents from software review aggregating sites like Capterra.

3) Product Goals

With your MVP in hand, establish your objectives and assess whether you are accomplishing them. Make the MVP as near to the finished product as you can.

4) Document your assumptions

Keep a record of the presumptions you have established or gathered during the validation procedure. Ultimately, the information included in the data tells the entire tale.

5) UX hypothesis

You have no idea what kind of experience people will have with your SaaS application. Examine each and every user interaction and event that occurs within your application. There are several strategies and tools available for monitoring user behavior on an app. A heatmap, button clicks, and scroll depth are a few of the events you should monitor and use to support your hypothesis.

landing-page-_startup_post

Track -> Document -> Analyse -> Optimise

6) Features required to sell the product

Even while you believe the features are good, they might not be sufficient to make a sale. It is imperative that you pay attention to your beta testers and include any features they recommend. They are, after all, your trial consumers and, in the end, the ones who purchase and utilize your goods.

Note any suggestions made by the beta testers and users.

7) Build a landing page that converts

Publish a landing page that is optimized for conversions that describes your product and encourages people to sign up for the beta.

This MVP landing page also has an animated explanatory movie that you may use. and begin promoting this page in order to connect with the intended audience.

8) Stay Motivated

When no one else was purchasing, Jack Ma was purchasing goods from his own firm, Alibaba.

How To Bring The Idea Out Of Your Mind – Sketch and Build Mockups:

If you want to put your concept out there and see it come to pass. Sketch it! Build some mockups before going to your SaaS development agency [By the way we do develop SaaS and mobile apps for startups and business enterprises.]

saas_product_sketch_mockup

Create a sitemap of the product – A sitemap is a great approach to outline every feature of the final product before production ever starts. It offers a well-considered design for the development process.

Use a pen/pad to sketch the interface – The best ideas rarely come to you when you are glued to your laptop screen. I would suggest that you use a pen and pad to draw out the interface. Put your laptop away, find a seat, and spend a minute creating anything on paper with all of your imagination.

Use BalsamiqProto.io (for mobile) or services like Invisionapp to connect the flat designs so that the user can click/tap on the buttons and transition from screen to screen. It provides a ‘real enough’ experience to the early users of your SaaS app.

Summary

  1. Decide what you want to be validated. Instead of aiming for MVP, try validating the product for MVO.
  2. Check for patents before beginning the idea validation process to make sure you are not omitting any ideas or stealing someone else’s.
  3. Check the market to see if there is a sufficient demand for your product. Determine who your rivals are. what they are carrying out. And check to see whether your product can close any gaps.
  4. Create a buyer persona and list your desired outcomes for the product. Recruit some users or beta testers to try your MVP and provide some helpful criticism.
  5. Create a product explanation landing page and send relevant visitors to it. Optimize and convert the page.

I hope you find the guide helpful and that it offers some practical, doable recommendations. Continue to be driven and diligent!

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