Introduction
The best way to ensure you’re giving and receiving value for your course is by researching to give your prospective students what they expect to see, and by ensuring that there are students that even want that course in the first place. How will you achieve this? By validating your course ideas.
Are you struggling with validating a new idea like a course community, maybe a coaching service? Well, in this lesson, we’re learning all the different ways to validate a new idea. We’re going to talk about surveys, research and editors, so that way, at the end of this validation, you can feel really good that you’re going to go all in on this new service.
In this lesson, we’re learning all about business validation. We’re going to learn what does it even mean to validate a business idea? Why validate? We’re going to go into a how to guide with some market research and then some of the benefits of validating. Then we’ll go into an example and finally we’ll summarize all our top tips.
Here are some challenges course creators may face when they don’t validate their online course idea
- They may not do proper market research
- They may not understand who their target audience are
- They won’t be sure that the course will make sense
- They may spend money on ads that don’t get to their target audience
- They may spend time researching on courses they don’t need
Video Lesson – Learn How To Boost The Chances of Success Before Investing Time and Resources
What Is It?
Validating is all about testing new ideas to ensure that they’re going to sell and you’re going to earn money before you start building it. Before you spend six, twelve months recording content, researching, writing samples, updating your website, creating funnels, you’re going to want to validate your new idea.
Why Use It?
It will boost the chances of success before investing time and resources. Create a course, a community, a coaching plan, whatever it is you’re doing, so you will want to make smart bets. Also, by validating, just spending a little bit of time upfront, you could save a lot of time and money later on.
How-to Guide
Market Research
Let’s get into a how to guide with some tips on how you can conduct market research.
Conduct Surveys & Polls
One of the first things you could do is to conduct a survey or a poll. Now, this could be people you don’t know. It could be your blog audience, YouTube channel or Twitter. You could even pay for their services. You could go ahead and submit some questions to certain kinds of people and you’ll get back answers. It could even be your Facebook community with your friends and family.
Now that’s not exactly who you’re selling to, but it could give you back some really valuable feedback again. Those surveys don’t have to be ginormous. They don’t have to be 15, 20 minutes, surveys, five pages, 10 questions each. It could be really simple surveys, one page, five questions and it depends on what you’re teaching,
So you can ask one or two questions to qualify them. Like, are they even into this kind of stuff? If they are, then go ahead and ask them, would you do this? Do you have this problem? And then, mix it up, not just multiple choice but also a couple of open ended boxes, because that could give you some good keywords that you’re not even thinking about right now.
Use Keyword Research Products
You’re going to want to use Keyword research products. These could be SEO tools or Google searches. You might just want to test on a bunch of different search engines, Bing, Yahoo and Google, just to see what’s coming up.
Remember, you can even search in other systems, like Quora or Reddit or your favorite community just to see what’s going on out there, to see if that word that might be a problem that you’re about to provide a fix for if it’s out there, so conduct those keyword search and see what’s coming back.
You could build a little Google doc, a little Word doc, see what words resonate. Maybe there’s a variation of a word, maybe you think it’s one word, but everybody that’s experiencing this is using a different word. So you’re going to want to do that. By the way, these words later are going to help you with ad campaigns or sales pages.
It’s really smart to start learning the words and their variations. Of course, it also depends on your country or industry.
You’ll hone in on those words. The dialect, is it informal? Is it the fancy, official word that’s in the dictionary? Or does everybody call it a different word? You’re gonna want to just get smart on those words and see what’s coming back. What’s out there? What’s the volume of these words that are out there?
Review Social Media Comments
Next, you’re going to hit social media, Twitter, Facebook, all these different Facebook groups that you’re trying to do so that you can see some responses. Maybe other people are asking about the same problem. What are people responding back that the first person didn’t ask about? You can also go and ask your own questions.
You can go in those groups without getting in trouble and just ask, “who’s struggling with this?” or “what are the best resources to get to this thing,” these are all things that are part of the service that you’re going to offer. You’re going to help them with some journey. You’ll want to search for those words and see what kind of comments are coming back from real people.
Are there solutions out there that are pretty much good enough and you’re not going to be able to make it better? Or, hey, the solutions that are out there are kind of weak. By the way, that’s your jam and you could totally rock it. So if you could do it better then go for it,
Analyze Competitor Results
You’re going to want to analyze the competitor results. You’re going to find out what’s out there today, what courses are doing this, or what communities, coaching programs or webinars are out there that solves the problem that you’re about to provide a solution for. So you’re going to see how many competitors, and how good they’re working.
Are they scattered all over the internet? They’re not really even solution providers, they’re alternatives.You are about to provide the real, answer and real solution for these problems. Maybe they’re substitutes, but nobody’s hitting that problem dead on.
That means people are paying for this problem. If there’s a few competitors, that’s cool. Especially if you take it and you apply it in a slightly different angle and slightly different niche, a particular problem, your personal style.
Then the question is “how intense are those competitors?” Are they just substitutes or are they rocking and dominating a market? Is there space for you? You’re thinking about how long it’ll take you to get some market share there?
Pre-sell Your Course Idea
Another idea is to pre-sell your idea. You might make a course sales page and say, “hey, sign up for this if you’re interested and be the first one to know when this course idea launches.” By doing that, you could pre sell it at a deep or a moderate discount, so that you’re just getting people to say, “hey, I’m willing to sign up for this.” You can provide some terms, like, “hey, in the next six months, I’m about to launch this course.” Sign up here if you’re interested and you’ll get 50 percent off.
It’ll be at this price. So these are all really interesting ways for you to find out if there’s interest in your solution that you’re about to build. If you don’t want to even if you’re afraid to commit and get people to sign up and that’s okay. You could just do a landing page that just lets people indicate interest.
You could potentially let people do that survey or on your fan page on your social media, you can ask for it. Then you can even post it out there, like, “hey, here’s my sign up page with a very simple sign up page.” You can use, “hey, if you’re interested in our future course, our future community, our future webinar, you can provide some high level details.”
You don’t have to build out a whole giant sales page, get copywriters, and it could be very high level, “hey, I’m thinking of doing this, it’s going to solve these problems.” Let me know if you’re interested and you’ll be the first one to find out. You can see how many people are signing up.
If nobody’s interested, then that’s a warning, it’s a very loud signal to you that you might want to change and pivot the future service that you’re about to offer another way to do market research to run a small ad.
It could be a dollar a day, two or three dollars a day on Google or being or Facebook ads. You’re running an ad and it could just point them to a landing page or that pre sale course page, or maybe that ad simply points them to a blog article, but it’s a blog article about the thing that you’re about to service the tips that you’re about to teach them.
So by running that ad for 30, 60, 90 days, you’re going to get a good feel, are people even looking at it? Are they clicking through? Do they get all the way through and maybe sign up or submit their email? This kind of analysis is mathematical, but we want to know if you ran an ad.
How many did you get anybody to look at it? Is anybody interested? Remember, you don’t need hundreds or thousands of people. It could just be with a hundred people alone at some fair price that you’re about to offer. That could be good money, Especially if you already have other services.
It could be your first service, which is also cool to just make some money, so you’re making some money on your first thing, or it could be this extra service that you’re just stacking to give more value to your audience. Either way, it’s cool, you don’t need a million.
Run a Small Advertisement to Test
You don’t need the viral thing with this ad. You could find out if people are interested. If they have this problem, is it enough of a problem that maybe you could hint at a price or not even hint at a price? By the way, you could do two ads. The first one is just to see if people are interested, and then maybe for those people that are, you could talk to them, send them an email, you could send them a follow up survey to see if they’re willing to pay the price for that course.
Benefits of Validating
Let’s talk about some of the benefits of validating your new idea.
Ensures and Measure Demand
First of all, you’re going to ensure that there’s demand. You’re going to measure it, whether it’s a few people or a lot of people. You’ll be more confident that you should keep investing. Maybe you’re pumped up in the beginning and then you’re going to get the market. You’ll get some feedback. Then you’ll keep that level of enthusiasm that works, like sacrificing your Sunday afternoons and Tuesday nights.
It’s worth it and there’s something here. You could also find out that there’s nothing there and that’s okay.
Build the Right Thing or Variation
The next benefit is knowing that you’re building the right thing. You may have had the spark of an idea, but then as you’re getting smarter on the keywords and the problems, and you’re hearing from some prospects, potential customers, and some leads. You may see that you have this other slight problem.
It’s about choosing a particular instrument, tool or software. You’re going to teach this angle. Maybe it’s too broad, maybe you got to narrow it or maybe it’s the wrong stage.
Maybe it’s the step before or the step after that you’re going to be teaching. Validation is going to help with that stuff. That’s not to say later that you don’t provide a full service suite of courses or content across every step of the problem, all the stages for your people. But you have to make that first bet that’s going to get you some money then later, you can snowball and roll into other services.
Identify Goal, Need, Transformation
You’re also going to identify a goal. What exactly is the transformation that these students need? So just like you’re solving the right problem, you’re going to want to know what their end goal is. Their end goal might not be to learn how to do something. It might really be to get a job or change a career, or start a business with some skill.
So you’re going to help them do that. It’s very important to know a little bit deeper than what they want to do this fashion thing. But what they really want is to change careers or what they really want is to help this group.
You want to not just know the thing that you’re building, but how it really helps them so that in your stuff, you’re also planning. In your sales page in your content at the end of your course or your community or your webinar, you’re going to not only offer one item , but you might also offer a program or a bundle of things that helps them.
Maybe there are some resources in addition to the knowledge that you’re going to teach them. So think about that transformation.
Save Time, Opportunity Cost
Now as the lead here for this training business, your time is crazy valuable. There’s something in economics called opportunity cost. Are you spending your spare time on your best bets, So you’re going to spend hours and time and research and you might buy some products, some books? Is this the best use of your time?
Could you be spending the next six to nine months on something else? That’s a higher probability. This opportunity cost you want to think about, you might have your day job or your core business. You have a little bit of extra time for growth. You’re about to spend the next 6 to 12 months on this thing.
So it better be a good thing. So at a high level from a strategy point of view, you’re going to review your two options. What am I going to give some time for? And then as you research, you’ll see that it makes sense and you keep going. Or right away within a month or two, you might see that it was a good idea, but nobody seems to be resonating with it.
Let me move on to my next idea. That way you’re using your spare time, spare money, brain power, etcetera, on the highest probable ventures for you and your training business.
Save Money – Build Just in Time
Another way to save money is to build just in time. If you’re doing research, you’re not going to go build out all the resources or record all the videos. You’re going to do every step in stages. So that way you’re building just in time.
You may need to build a curriculum. Don’t go ahead and build out or record videos. You don’t even know what’s going to be in the videos. You might have to re-record the videos, because you didn’t get smart on the market, the problems and the transformation. You’re going to want to do everything in stages, just in time.
Get Smart on Price Sensitivity
Another benefit of validating is to get smart on price sensitivity. Are people willing to pay three hundred, five hundred, a thousand, whatever it is that you want to charge, you want to explore that. You want to get smart on that.
So that might come in surveys that might come in researching your competitors and what they provide. Will you provide more? And even for your services, you might even have small, medium, large. Where you might have a base service, but then there’s a more advanced service that has training and coaching.
That’s another value. Just getting smart on your possible price and then connecting that back, So what am I going to possibly earn from how many people? And then how much is this going to take? How much will it cost to actually build out this thing?
Increase Success Rate on Smart Bets
Finally, you’re just going to increase the success rate. By making smart bets. If you do a little research instead of getting psyched and excited and just going, like writing content or recording or making a book, you’re not going to know. By doing a little research, it’ll have huge payoffs.
It’s like an 80-20 rule. Doing that little research is going to be so important and will set you off on the right trajectory. After a little while, if you’re on the wrong trajectory, You’re going to go in the wrong direction. So giving that little research upfront is going to set you off so that you can go pretty far in the right direction.
And that way you’re making smart bets with your time and money as you’re a train, as a creative training CEO.
Example: How To Validate a New Course Idea
Now. Let’s check out an example.
Validating a New Course about Fashion Designs for Certain Body Types
Let’s say you’re trying to validate a new course idea. Maybe you have a course idea on fashion for certain body types. Whether it’s big women, short women, maybe it’s specific, like pregnant women. It could also be men as well.
They might have certain needs on how to look stylish. It could be about sewing or you work in retail or design, and you’re about to do this.
So let’s think about some things that you would do to validate that new course idea.
Survey
First of all, let’s start off with a survey. You’ll create some smart questions and you’re going to get smarter on these options. The pains people are having and their frustrations
Maybe they don’t want to modify it, they just need this one good store, these resources to help them with their problem to stage, or maybe the stage is short term and they feel that this is not a long term problem. It could be a long term problem. In this survey, you’re going to want to ask them all this stuff.
Then you’re going to want to think about how do I get this survey or poll to the right people? Maybe you might start off with some friends and family, or maybe it’s your Facebook group, or maybe it’s wide open on Twitter. You don’t want to think about where you can put the survey.
You could do multiple surveys, You could do one survey now, get a little smarter, then come back and do a slightly different survey. That way you can learn about more specific details of those problems. Another thing is, when you do that survey, maybe you collect emails.
Maybe it’s a poll and, but if you do collect emails, you can follow them up with specific people. Maybe there’s somebody you really know or maybe there’s a subset of people you know. It could be a small group of twenty-five, fifty people and then you get back an excellent ten that you send them an email and you ask a follow up question.
Social Media
Next, you’re going to want to hit up social media, find out what people are saying and struggling with.
If they have this certain style issue, what are they doing? What’s their current solution? They could have this certain body type. You’re going to discover that it’s not about body type. It’s about a lifestyle.
Because it’s a religious thing or something like that, that’s going to make you pivot this fashion course. You got smarter because you engage with social media, whether it’s researching or you being proactive and asking groups about certain things.
Search Words
You’re gonna search for words, You’re gonna want to see what kind of results are coming back. If you have certain Web SEO tools, you might use them and see what kind of traffic is coming back. You also want to just hop on Google and Bing and search. You’re gonna want to see what kind of results you get back.
Maybe for a certain body type, you’ll search for each of those how to deal with or ideas or tips for certain body type or fashion and see what’s coming back. Are you getting millions of results or are they just weird other things and it’s just advertisers and retailers?
Competitors
Then you’re going to want to see what kind of competitors are out there for your idea. Maybe your idea is a course. You’re going to want to search, not only search on Google, but go on some platforms like Udemy or different kinds of academies that might be out there and see what’s coming up.
You’re going to see what shows up from fashion. Is it only for fashion designers? Is nobody talking about body types or whatever it is that you wanted? Whether it’s big and tall for African American or Latino or Asian. So you’re going to search for that and see what’s out there.
Is it for your people? Are you going to be able to create something really awesome for your people? In which case, you know what’s out there. If nothing’s coming back and you’re feeling pretty strong, then keep going.
You can create that blog article that’s pretty detailed about this idea, the core tips that you might want to do and see, and then look at that idea. Like, what kind of traffic you are getting on that blog article relative to your other articles.
It’s like when you write that blog article that might help you write your curriculum later or figure out what resources you need to add to some sort of program. So it’s not like wasted work, but it’s small so that you could go forward.
Opportunity Cost
Finally, you’re going to look at the opportunity cost. You’re going to say, “hey, what other things could you be doing that makes revenue?” Think about how much work you’ll do to launch this thing? What’s the cost there? Do you have to hire a bunch of people?
But yeah, you’re going to want to think about whether you could keep doing this idea or have these two other ideas that are different. Let me go research those because I’m not seeing any traction with these ones. I’m not seeing hand razors. It feels funny or there’s a market leader there that’s rocking it and I’m a small person.
FAQS about Validating Online Course Ideas
Summary – Validating Online Course Ideas
Validating your online course idea is a necessary step in creating a successful and impactful learning experience. By thoroughly researching your target audience, testing demand, and refining your concept based on feedback, you can ensure that your course meets the needs of potential students while minimizing the risk of investing in a topic with little interest.
Validation not only boosts your confidence in your idea but also lays the foundation for a strong marketing and sales strategy. Ultimately, taking the time to validate your course ensures you’re building something valuable, marketable, and rewarding for both you and your students.
Here are the top tips you need to know about validating a new course or any new business idea
- Create a landing page as a part of your experiment
- Do a little market research and get info from real people
- Research and find out about your competitors
- Do some experiments to see if your course idea is valid
- Run an ad to see if it works for your course idea
You should be a little more smarter now. Thanks for hanging out!
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