⏱️ How to Validate Your Idea in Just 10 Minutes...
6 Steps to Desktop-Validate an Idea (Super Fast): Google each one to gauge general interest and identify competitors. Use Google Trends to assess search volume and trends. Explore related queries for deeper insights.
Sift a lot of ideas super quickly
OK, so you have a couple of ideas, which one has the most legs? Or maybe you’re a techie still in the “dating” phase with a co-founder and you need to know if the ideas on the table have actual potential.
Either way, you want to get a quick sense of just how big this thing can go before you commit (and before spending money on research/validation).
6 Steps to Desktop-Validate an Idea (Super Fast)
- Google each one (or Bard) – don’t sigh, it’s the most powerful market research tool in history – instantly get 8 billion people’s input. Just enter a general search like “video app” or “ice cream hat” or whatever (don’t add too much unique detail, keep it very broad and generic at first) and see what comes up. How many people are talking about the general topic?
How many pages/SERP results are there for that topic (check the top-right corner, right under the Google logo where it says “About ….”). Can you spot anyone (competitors) doing something similar already?
Now check the “People also ask” section (usually mid-page) and the “Related searches” at the bottom – any of those in line with your idea? - How important is it? – head over to Google Trends and search each idea/term or variation of each one there (set it to the location(s) you’re thinking of targeting and set it to the past 12 months), to get an idea of which ones are searched and talked about the most.
Again, check the “related queries” section, both “Top” and “Rising” – are any of those in line with your idea? (For example, when you search “video app”, you can clearly see 63% of the market is looking for an app to download videos with, 16% an app to download music with and 12% for a video editing app.) - Check the actual volumes – if you have a Google AdWords account, head over to the keyword planner and enter those same searches again to get avg. monthly search volumes. Otherwise, use AnswerThePublic to search them (3 free searches a day) – on the results page, it usually gives you the actual monthly search volumes at the top. To go even more in-depth, search them in ahrefs’ keyword difficulty checker; the more difficult a keyword, the more popular the topic.
- Now, start drilling down on details – Head over to Reddit (or popular forums) and look for subreddits related to your topics/ideas (either the market, user or subs dedicated to that industry/field etc.). Search them for your idea, see if anyone’s talked about it yet and what they said etc. (Sometimes, searching via Google and just adding “reddit” at the end gets you better results.)
Do the same with the problem your idea is meant to solve – see if anyone’s complained about it. You can even post on there and ask people, “Hey does anyone else find that X.Y, Z is so irritating?”, and see what people say.
- Go social – Then go search all your topics on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. (or use a social listening tool) and see which posts are popular and read the comments below – that’s your market telling you what they want and don’t want.
- Scope out the competition – Lastly, check if anyone’s building the same/similar thing (you’ll pick it up from Googe or during the previous steps). In this case, having competitors is good – it validates that others think the concept is viable too.
Filter it: Now it’s simple. If no one is searching, thinking or asking for the solution, it’s probably a dead fish or so utterly unique, you’re going to have to “cultivate” the market (hard to get funding for this). And, if a lot of people are talking about it, building solutions etc. you know there’s already interest.
Got a sure-fire, free validation method to add to the list? Hit reply and let us know so we can share…