Speaking to the ideal target audience directly and getting feedback is the fastest way to validate a product idea.
In that sense, outbound marketing(Cold Calling, Cold Emails) and Ads are extremely effective compared to a channel like SEO. Therefore it makes sense to validate first before you try and sell it.
Cold Email is fine where you can get an idea of the user sentiment through the types of responses you get for the emails. However, my favorite is cold calling to the target audience to get feedback in record timing.
The first step is to list down a bunch of questions you want to ask the audience. These should mostly be around figuring out the behavior patterns of the target, their most pressing pain points right now and most importantly whether the problem solved by your product/service is really something that the customer would pay money for. (Before going out to market and testing the idea, we would have some assumptions that this is a problem worth solving and in return help capture value in the form of money.)
Here are two ways you can approach it.
- Mention you are getting some feedback from industry experts (personalize relevant to the situation) and start asking questions.
- Mention that you are a student doing research for your thesis and start asking the planned questions. This is 100x easier than all other options and most of the time people are willing to spend some time with you unless they are really busy. When you are a student, somehow people want to help you out. You can easily talk to 100 people from your target audience and gather real feedback in 2 to 3 days.
After speaking to 100 people and gathering feedback, your assumptions may even have proved wrong. Sometimes, you could figure out something completely different that makes sense as a product to the audience or even minor tweaks necessary in the product features, pricing, etc. You could also get a few people in the same batch to try out your initial product for free in exchange for a case study, or charge a very nominal fee to get rolling fast.
If you got something valuable, then great it’s time to go ahead and get the MVP(Minimum viable product) out. Otherwise, you saved yourself valuable time which otherwise would have been spent on working on a product that would never sell.