While hair grows back and you can recover from a bad idea like that pretty quickly, it’s another matter to invest in and proceed with a bad business idea. That always guarantees a loss of time and money. 

The best business ideas solve problems. We’ll say it again for the people in the back — the best business ideas solve problems.

So how do you know if you have a great business idea or a dud? In today’s post, we’re going to discuss the process of business idea validation and you’ll learn how and why you should validate your business idea.

Validating your business idea

The worst thing you can do when making business decisions is guess. Guessing is not a good strategy when it comes to your business, your livelihood, and your income.

Idea validation is the process of testing and validating your idea with feedback and data before you start developing a new product or service, or starting a business. This process is essential to developing a business or product that people actually want. If your idea is self-serving and doesn’t help solve the problems of others, it won’t go far.  

Large companies and corporations call this process “Research & Development,” and while you won’t need to do anything at such large a scale, there are a few things you can do right now to validate your idea.

By validating your business idea you’re going to save yourself from a future headache and loss of money. So, let’s dig in and figure out how to validate your idea.

The business idea validation process

Identify your ideal customer

Do you know who your ideal customer is? That’s as good a place to start as any when you’re trying to validate your business idea. If you don’t know who your ideal customer is, who are you supposed to ask for feedback and validation? Sure, you can ask your friends and family, but let’s be honest: They’re likely to sugarcoat things so as not to offend.

Your ideal customer is the person whose needs are met by what you’re offering. To identify those people, you’ll need to know your products and services from your customer’s point of view. Think from their perspective: What sets you apart from competitors? What problems of theirs does your business solve?

Identifying your ideal customer isn’t about identifying who you want as a customer, it’s about identifying who benefits most from your product or business as it is.

Think about what you’ll ask when validating your idea

In order to validate your business idea, you’re going to have to present it to people to get their honest feedback. You don’t want to inundate them with a massive presentation; instead think about how you can present a handful of ideas, the best ideas and solutions your business aims to provide.

If you start with your life story and amble into a presentation about your business, you’re going to lose your interviewees’ attention (yes, interviewing is part of the process.) You’ll want to keep your presentation short so that it doesn’t get confusing and focus on the core of your business or products.

Reach out for interviews and feedback

Once you’ve identified what your ideal customer looks like and know what you’ll be asking, it’s time to do some reachout. Make a list of potential customers or clients that you think fit your ideal customer profile and ask for their time. You’ll want to set expectations with them: Let them know you aren’t trying to sell anything, why you’ve contacted them, and that it won’t take much of their time.

As we said earlier, friends and family are likely not great candidates for interviews. They’re personally vested in you and may gloss over issues they see in your product or business idea. It’s not because they’re trying to be unhelpful, but more often than not, they won’t want to hurt your feelings.

The business idea validation interview

When you start your interview, remember that these people are giving up their time to try and help you succeed. So, say “Thank you” and let them know how much you appreciate their time. Explain that their feedback is essential to you designing and creating something people will actually benefit from. People like to know that they’re important and valued, and assuring them of their importance during this process can help them open up to you.

Give them a brief rundown of your business, but don’t get lost in the weeds or use technical terms that they’re unlikely to understand. Then, launch into the core aspects of your business idea that you need their opinion on. Present these ideas individually and allow people to give you their thoughts on one of them before proceeding into the next. The interview is a back-and-forth between you and the other person, not a one-sided soliloquy.

Once you’ve completed the interview, thank them for their time and again reinforce the importance of their opinion and insights. You may find that you’ve just earned yourself a future customer or client.

Review your feedback and optimize your business idea accordingly

After your interviews, sit down and review what people had to say. Look for common themes and patterns in your feedback — is there anything everyone was excited about? What negative things did they highlight?

This process of validating your business idea isn’t designed to deflate anyone’s confidence, it’s designed to help you create the best and most effective business to suit your customers’ needs and wants.

Take what you’ve learned from the interview feedback and use it to modify and improve your business idea. Always keep the customers’ point of view in mind as you move through this exercise as they’re the ones who will be keeping you in business once you launch.

What happens after you validate your business idea?

After validating your business idea and making any necessary changes, it’s time to create a business plan and launch your business.

Keep in mind that it’s essential for businesses to have a digital presence these days. Online business has boomed throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, and we don’t see it going away any time soon. If you want to be competitive, be where your customers are — online.

Creating an online presence for your business starts with a domain name. Your domain name is your online address and will lead people to your site. You can easily create a beautiful website using a website builder once you’re ready to go live.

If you need help or have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us or comment below. We wish you the best as you launch your business!

●  You’ve grown so much that you’re struggling to keep up with customer demands.

●  Your growth has plateaued.

Planning for future growth is crucial for any online business. In today’s time, entrepreneurs have to be prepared to face any unexpected challenges. That’s how you become a leader and stand out in your niche.

The only hiccup here is: preparing your exponential future growth demands a lot of time and patience.

But — it’s not as difficult as you think.

Having a vision for the future and making smart decisions from day one can help you build a scalable business model that can make a significant difference in the longevity of your business.

In this article, we explore five ways you can take your online business to the next level.

How to scale your online business

1. Get your foundation right

This involves two things — your domain name and your website. These form the foundation upon which your online business stands. Your domain name is your business’s online identity. It’s the address that you communicate in presentations, on your business cards, on your banner ads, in a podcast, and more. Registering your domain name is the sign that your idea is now a business.

When registering your domain name, think about how you can make your website more brandable. This doesn’t mean you www.stuffallthekeywordsinyourdomainname.com.

It means making use of new domain extensions that are more meaningful, industry-specific, category-defining, relevant, and most importantly, keyword-rich. For example, a technology startup could opt for a .TECH domain name, an e-commerce business could go for a .STORE domain name, a creative agency could choose .SPACE. And if you’re looking for a more versatile and open name then you could go with .ONLINE or .SITE.

These domain extensions give you a domain name that’s brandable and meaningful to your business. Add a well-made, fully-functional website to this concoction and you have a strong online foundation to build and scale your business.

2. Always plan for the future

Building a business and planning go parallel to each other. That’s because planning is vital to your business whether you’re on day one or year one.

A good way to plan ahead is to start by setting realistic goals for growth. These could be yearly goals that are further broken down into smaller quarterly goals. Doing a simple exercise such as this gives you time to prepare for the coming weeks.

As you start preparing for these goals, you’ll be able to outline the resources and features that you’ll need to move to the next level. Here are some components that you can factor into your plan:

●  Possible resources that you might need.

●  Digital marketing goals.

●  Customer acquisition plan.

All these components will all come down to one key factor: budget.

3. Arrange for funding and spend wisely

A great option here would be to get featured on Shark Tank and get the necessary funding, however, that’s not an approach most online businesses can take advantage of.

Most small business entrepreneurs have one big responsibility to run and scale their business: secure the right amount of funding and collateral.

One of the options here could be bootstrapping where you either dig into your personal savings, take a loan from family members and friends, or get crowdfunding through sources such as Kickstarter.

Another way for entrepreneurs to get funding is to pitch to investors. While investors can provide great value to your business in terms of funding, valuable advice, resources; they’ll also take part ownership of your company.

Most small businesses opt for the latter, however, if you’re unsure about partnering with an investor then you could consider other options such as scholarships and grants. Many large organizations offer scholarships to startups and small businesses. These can range from $5k and up to a larger sum to help you reach the next level.

A few that you could consider include:

●  Fundbox Small Business Funding Scholarship

●  FedEx Small Business Grant Contest

●  U.S. Small Business Administration Grants

4. Study your analytics

Monitoring your business performance gives you a clear insight into the speed of your growth. Sales performance is one of the first metrics you should be studying when your objective is to scale.

●  Is your sales trend healthy?

●  How fast are your sales growing?

●  During what period do you see a spike in sales?

●  What do you attribute that growth to?

Strong sales performance is a key indicator of the overall health of your online business. If your metrics are positive and growing, then you know your business is scaling.

Other important metrics that you could consider to measure business growth are:

●  Primary platforms – which platforms are bringing in the most sales / new customers?

●  Product performance – which products or plans (in case of a service) are your top sellers? Is there an opportunity to add another feature to your product/service?

●  Lifetime Value:Cost per Acquisition (LTV:CAC) – how effective is your marketing? Can you justify the cost per customer acquisition?

Having a strong grip on your analytics will give you confidence and a competitive advantage when pitching to investors. It’ll also give you enough data to justify any expenses on updated technology or tools.

5. Determine your resources

The more you grow, the more resources you’ll need to manage your online business. These resources could be human or technological.

Here are two instances where you might want to invest in human resources.

1. If you’re looking to build a strong content marketing strategy and build a strong company blog, you may want to consider hiring an experienced SEO professional, a content manager, and a few freelancers who can write good content that can help you lead the search results.

1. If you’re looking to build your community on social media, you may want to consider hiring a professional who understands the nitty-gritty of all the social platforms. Someone who can curate engaging posts, drive engagement, and target relevant audiences on different platforms.

For technical resources, let’s explore these two examples.

1. While you could hire an agency to manage your accounts and keep track of your expenses, you could save time by getting a simple accounting software that can do all this and more.

1. As your business grows, so will your customer queries. Instead of managing a customer line that receives an overwhelming amount of calls in a day, you could install a chatbot on your website that could resolve basic customer queries 24×7.

Identifying areas where you can be more productive will help you prioritize your investments. However, once you do invest in these resources, ensure to check their performance periodically to make sure that you’re getting value for your spend.

Ready to scale your online business?

Your next step from here is to get started!

Carve out a plan and list down all the resources that you might need to scale your business.

●  Create systems and processes.

●  Look for investment and other income streams.

●  Find new clients and collaborators.

●  Have the time to step back, relax, and work on your own development.

Author Bio

Alisha is a Senior Content Marketing & Communication Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

No matter how beautiful and functional your site is, you can’t gain traction and build a successful business if no one knows about it. Sure, you can craft a few social media posts and create some flyers, but those ad hoc efforts won’t result in much if they aren’t part of a larger, strategic business marketing plan.

If you’re not a trained marketer, the idea of creating a marketing plan for your business can seem intimidating. Where do you begin and what’s included?

Rest assured, you can write a great marketing plan, and we’re going to help.

In this post, we’ll start by defining what a marketing plan is, then we’ll discuss the different elements that make up a marketing plan, and finally, we’ll provide tips so you can craft the best plan possible.

Creating a Business Marketing Plan

What is a business marketing plan? It’s a strategic document that outlines how you’ll communicate your products and services to your audience. It details what you’re setting out to accomplish, why you’re doing it, how you’ll get there, and in what time frame.

Marketing plans aren’t static documents, they are actionable guides that can and should be edited and reworked when necessary.  

Your plan helps take the guesswork out of connecting with prospective customers — it serves as a roadmap for your marketing efforts and ensures you aren’t throwing money away on random tactics. Unless you have plenty of disposable income (and who does?), you want to know that the money you invest in marketing is well-spent.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

-Benjamin Franklin

Keep in mind that no two marketing plans are exactly alike. Depending on your business and specific needs, you may end up with a more simple or complex plan. But regardless of its length and complexity, your plan should always be backed by research and data.

Let’s look at what you need to have prepared in order to write a business marketing plan. 

Preparing to write your business marketing plan

Before you sit down to write your marketing plan, you should have an idea of what data supports and informs it. Take a look at the following list and make sure to have this information handy as it will help guide the shape your plan takes.   

Your business’s mission statement

A mission statement sets the tone for your business. It’s a short, and to-the-point statement that describes the purpose of your business and it informs your business decisions.   

Ideal customer persona

Your ideal customer persona, also called a buyer persona, is like an archetype of your perfect customer. Creating a customer persona gives you a better understanding of their needs and how to address them.

This persona should include actionable information, like:

• Their demographics (age, income, location, etc.).
• Goals and challenges.
• Their interests.
• Any relevant behavioral traits.

Your customer persona should give insight into how you can better communicate with your prospective customers — from where you can find them to share your message (i.e. on social media) to what language you should use (for example, avoiding jargon and buzzwords.)

Target market information

Identifying your target market is a lot like identifying your ideal customer persona; however, there are a few key differences.

While they both involve demographics and psychographics, your target market deals with a broader group of potential and prospective customers. Your target market could be people in a certain age or income bracket, whereas your ideal customer represents a more segmented piece of that market. 

General market information

When we talk about knowing your general marketing information, we’re talking about your customers, competitors, suppliers, along with industry news and trends.

Look at your competitors, the businesses offering products and services similar to yours, and try to identify the following things:

• What are they doing well?
• What are they doing poorly?
• Do you know what their customers look like?
• What differentiates you from them?
• What marketing materials do they use?
• Where do they share their message?

Knowing these things helps you understand what works and prevents you from making their mistakes.

Have you taken the time to know your suppliers? What’s available to you and when? This helps you plan your inventory and can help as your business picks up and demand grows.

Keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry is always a good idea. It helps to know when there are new trends you can capitalize on, and it can provide insight into your own products and processes.

Your business goals

Your business marketing plan exists to support your business goals. It’s never a bad idea to restate your goals and come back to them often. This keeps them front-of-mind and helps you craft a marketing plan that ultimately supports your goals.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

Business marketing plan elements

Now that you’ve prepared, it’s time to work on drafting your marketing plan.

Not all marketing plans look exactly the same — you can create email marketing plans, social media marketing plans, and various others. Below, we’ll provide a basic framework you can use to create a general business marketing plan, but feel free to customize or tweak it for more specialized marketing plans.  

1. Description of your business and goals.
2. Describe your target market and ideal buyer persona.
3. Defining SMART goals.
4. Marketing tactics.
5. Measuring success.
6. Roles and responsibilities.

1. Description of your business and goals

The first step in writing any business marketing plan is to lay the groundwork.

Your mission statement helps direct your business, and it helps direct your marketing plan, too. Don’t use your general mission statement in your plan; instead, adapt it so that you have a similar statement to set the tone for your marketing plan.

For example, HomeChef’s mission statement is “to make cooking fresh food at home as easy as possible.” That could be turned into a marketing mission statement by editing it so that it reads, “to engage an audience of amateur and time-starved home cooks, educate them on the joys of cooking, and turn them into subscribers of our service.”

In one fell swoop, you’ve both set out your mission statement and created a goal that the rest of your plan will help support. 

2. Describe your target market and ideal buyer persona

There are people out there who need and want your services, but they don’t know about you yet: Who are they?

Let’s continue with the example we used above — in that statement, we’ve identified that we’re looking to market to an audience of “amateur and time-starved home cooks.”

This section should address that market: Where do you find these people? What are their worries and how can your product or service answer their needs? What do they “look like” (demographics, income, etc.)?

This is also a good time to think about your competition. How do you stand out in your target market? Do you have a unique selling proposition (USP) that differentiates you from other similar businesses? If you don’t know what sets you apart then it’s going to be difficult to target your market and make sales.

All of this information helps you think of, discover, and revise your marketing strategies and tactics, which we’ll get into shortly. 

3. Define your S.M.A.R.T. goals

Smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. They make you think practically and realistically, breaking down lofty ideas into achievable goals.

Your marketing mission statement is a great starting place when drafting your specific goals. In our example, we said that our mission is “to engage an audience of amateur and time-starved home cooks, educate them on the joys and techniques of cooking, and turn them into subscribers of our service.”

Now, it’s your job to think of how that can be turned into more specific, actionable goals. We’ll share an example to give you an idea of how it’s done.

We know our target audience cooks at home, but they’re often at a loss for time and might not know all the proper cooking techniques. In researching their behaviors, we discovered that they use certain social media channels for meal ideas. With this information, we can create the following smart goal:

• Set aside one hour each week to create short videos that illustrate our simple, delicious recipes, and share those on social media to create interest in our service.

That goal shows you understand your need to create brand awareness and are sensitive to your ideal customer’s time and abilities, and that you know where to find them online. It also gives you a concrete, achievable goal that you can easily put into practice. 

4. Marketing tactics

Fundamentally, your marketing strategy is designed to promote your products and services so that you can convert customers.  

Your marketing tactics are the specific things you do to support your overall strategy and plan, and can be made up of many different activities, like the following:

• Public relations
• Online marketing
  • Social Media
  • Email
  • Website
• Sales and promotions
• Other marketing materials

You can use this section of your plan to detail the tactics and channels you’ll use to communicate your marketing messages in support of your smart goals. 

5. Measuring success

As a small business owner, you don’t have the time or energy to invest in wasted marketing efforts. Implementing KPIs, or key performance indicators is a great way to measure the efficacy of your marketing and helps you understand what’s working and what isn’t.

If one of your goals is to increase brand awareness through the use of social media, then you might want to consider social share of voice as a KPI. Social share of voice (SSoV) helps you understand how much people are talking about you versus others in your industry. If your SSoV increases on platforms where you share your marketing messages, you can assume that your strategy and tactics are working.

If you’re running a seasonal promotion on certain products, you can look to your click-through rates and conversion rates to see if they drove any increase in traffic and sales on your site. Google Analytics is a great, free tool that can help you understand your website performance. 

6. Roles and responsibilities

Do you require others to help support and implement your marketing plan? Use this final section to define what everyone’s responsibilities are so there’s no question or debate.

Implement your business marketing plan

And there you go! Using this guide, you should be able to craft a business marketing plan that helps direct your efforts so you can achieve your goals.  

Do you have any tips and tricks to share with other entrepreneurs as they craft their marketing plans? If so, share them in the comments below and let us know what’s worked for you.

Yet, for all that time set aside, 61 percent of managers admitted that the time they spent making business decisions was used ineffectively.

When the decision-making process lags, productivity loss isn’t the only issue. The subsequent opportunity loss is also staggering. Considering these numbers, the researchers estimated that the decision-making process could cost a typical Fortune 500 company a collective 530,000 days of managers’ time every year. In annual wages, that equals around $250 million.

The Importance of Strategic Business Decisions

Building a strong brand is a combination of a lot of great strategic decisions. Delegating the right decision to the right team and making those decisions at the right time is crucial.

For example, deciding on the domain name of the company. It’s a small decision but management often delegates it to the IT department. The conception of your brand happens with its name. For something that is at the core of your brand’s identity, often entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of a good name.

Often when the first-choice domain name isn’t available, people tend to add a hyphen or change the spelling or add a number to find a name that’s available. They completely ignore new domain extensions such as .TECH, .SITE, .SPACE, .STORE, .ONLINE, etc. that give you the opportunity to get a great name that’s meaningful and contextual.

Choosing the right domain name is a crucial decision. New domain extensions allow you to get domain names that are more relevant to your business and your industry. They help you get a meaningful online identity and offer a great deal of support in your marketing and branding efforts.

4 Keys Ways to Make Better Decisions for Your Small Business

You want to drive your company forward, but your time is valuable. That’s why it’s important to deploy smart strategies that can help you reach the right decision sooner.

Read on to learn about four key ways you can optimize and improve your decision-making process, starting today.

1. Perform a Marginal Analysis

A marginal analysis measures the cost of activity against incremental changes in volume, determining how the overall change in costs will affect your bottom line. To perform this analysis, you’ll weigh your marginal benefits against marginal costs.

To find your marginal benefit:

1. Determine a variable to change (for example, the volume of output produced.)
2. Determine your increase in total benefits if you add one more of that unit (marginal unit.)

To find your marginal cost:

1. Determine your current costs associated with that variable.
2. Determine how that cost would increase if you added the marginal unit.

Does the marginal benefit outweigh the marginal cost? If so, you’ve reaped a net benefit, and it’s wise to add the marginal unit of that variable. Conversely, the opposite also holds true.

For example, assume you manufacture a product that sells for $100 and costs $75 to produce every 50 units. You’re wondering if you should increase production to 51 units. If you do so, the anticipated revenue will remain $100, and your potential profit is still $25.

However, when you do the math you realize that there will be an uptick in overhead and labor costs. This will increase your production cost to $105 per unit, and you’ll lose $5 on every extra item you manufacture.

In this scenario, your extra costs now outweigh your potential sales revenues/profits. That makes it easier to see that increasing your manufacturing output is an unwise move.

2. Create a Decision Matrix

Listing the pros and cons of a potential decision can be helpful. Yet, the procedure becomes complicated when you have myriad variables and choices to select from. This is where a decision matrix comes into play.

In short, this is a pros/cons list that allows you to rank each factor by its level of importance. This way, you can understand which option is the clear winner.

You can create your matrix manually or in an online spreadsheet. Let us consider a situation where you have to select an IT vendor based on certain parameters. Have a look at the table below. 

Here are some steps that you can follow:

1. List your decision options as columns.
   1. (Vendor A, Vendor B, and Vendor C)
2. List all your relevant factors as rows.
   1. (Capabilities, Reputation, Technology, and others)
3. Create a scale to assess the value of each option/factor combination.
   1. (2 for the Price and 1 for the rest)
4. Assign weights to each factor depending on their level of importance.
   1. (Any value between 1 and 10. For the Price factor, double the weightage value)
5. Add up the factors under each option.
   1. (36 for Vendor A, 37 for Vendor B, and 45 for Vendor C)
6. Now calculate the score for each vendor by using the formula:
   1. (Score obtained/Total score) ✕ 100
   2. In the above example, that would be – Vendor A: (36/70) ✕ 100 = 51 percent
7. The option with the highest score wins (Vendor C).

You can apply this matrix to a variety of scenarios, including:

●  When you can only implement one solution or problem-solving approach.

●  When you can only select one new vendor.

●  When you can only develop one new product.

Have a look at some examples for a better understanding.

3. Make a SWOT Diagram

Are you planning to make a substantial change to the infrastructure of your business? If so, a SWOT diagram can help you break the situation into four actionable pieces, helping you analyze:

●  Company strengths (internal).

●  Company weaknesses (internal).

●  Company opportunities (external).

●  Company threats (external).

To create the diagram, draw a grid with four quadrants. Assign one quadrant to each of the above sections. Bring in team members, partners, and other key stakeholders to help you determine the data that fits into each one. Together, you can analyze the finished diagram to draw comparisons and better understand the long-term impact that your decision will have.

4. Perform a Pareto Analysis

This analysis is often referred to as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule. It states that 80 percent of a project’s benefits are derived from 20 percent of its work. At the same time, 80 percent of a problem traces back to 20 percent of its causes.

You can use a Pareto Analysis to identify the problem area or task that will have the greatest impact on your business. Benefits of performing this exercise include:

●  More efficiently optimized workloads.

●  Improved productivity.

●  Improved profitability.

Wondering why your sales are lagging and trying to decide what to do about it? This analysis can help. To create one, follow these steps:

1. Identify and list your root problem.
2. Identify the root cause behind each problem.
3. Score each problem by the importance.
4. Group like problems together.
5. Calculate your scores for each group.

Have a look at an example for a better understanding of the concept.

With these numbers in mind, you can prioritize your efforts and take action. You’ll begin by tackling the most important causes, dealing with the top-priority problem first.

Make smarter, data-driven business decisions

Better business decisions start with better data. When you allow emotional or impulsive thinking to dictate your next move, it can exacerbate confusion and muddle outcomes. These four steps allow the information to take center stage, revealing the key insights you need to make a well-informed next step.

Author Bio

Alisha is a Senior Content Marketing & Communication Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Are you seated at your desk with a cup of coffee, pens, and papers splayed about you? Are you outside, reading this post from your mobile phone while a plane flies overhead?

What do all of these things — the cup of coffee, pens, and planes have in common?

Each of them started as an idea.

Could you imagine what our world would look like if the Wright brothers hadn’t dreamt of sailing the skies and then carried their idea through to fruition? Without planes, maybe we wouldn’t have a global economy, or perhaps you’d never have met your significant other.

Everything product or business begins with an idea, but that doesn’t mean every idea is good.

Is the business idea you’ve been tossing around worth pursuing? Is your product idea worth pitching on Shark Tank? If you don’t know, don’t worry. We’re going to take a look at different ways to vet your idea so you’ll understand if it’s time to take it to the next level or if you should steer clear of pursuit.

It all starts with the right domain. Get yours today at Domain.com.

Determining the value of your idea

What’s your value proposition?

If you’re familiar with the business world then value proposition is a term you’ve heard before. You might think value propositions are the strict purview of business plans, but it doesn’t hurt to think of your value proposition early and often.

A value proposition is a statement that clearly and concisely details the unique benefits your idea offers. It needs to convince others that your idea is better than others like it.

So how do you determine if your idea has an edge over the others?

A good place to start is by researching your competition. You have the power of the internet at your fingertips — take a gander at Google, audit Amazon, and don’t forget Facebook.

What makes your idea better than your competitors’ — can you put your finger on it? If you’re having a tough time identifying how your idea outshines the others then ask someone you trust to talk it over.  If you find that your idea doesn’t have an advantage over the others, then it’s probably time to set it aside and move on to the next.

Talk it out

“The ability to express an idea is well-nigh as important as the idea itself.” -Bernard Baruch

Nothing flourishes in a vacuum. If you want your idea to succeed then you need to get input on it from other people. Consider asking friends, relatives, coworkers, business advisors, and most importantly, your desired audience.

Think about your idea and ask yourself the following questions.

Who will benefit from it?

What does your ideal customer or client look like?

Once you have a better understanding of what they look like, go find those people and get their feedback. If they have concerns, address them. If they have praise, thank them. Take their insights and feedback to heart and make the necessary adjustments to your idea.

You’ll have a good sense of your idea’s tenability after talking to others. You’ll come to know if your idea solves a universal, or common, problem, or if it’s unrelatable to most people. If it’s the former, you’re in good shape. Use your findings to improve upon your idea until you find something that resonates, or if it becomes apparent that your idea isn’t well received, consider scrapping it.

Know yourself and when to ask for help

“One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ideas are as varied as the people who think them. No one else on this planet has your memories, your experience, or shares your thoughts. This is truly your unique advantage.

So what is it that informs you and the way you think? Is your idea born from your years of specialized study and training, or is your background somewhere else?

If your experience is in computer science but you’ve been inspired to revolutionize animal husbandry, chances are you’re going to be a little out of your element. Your idea can be good, really good, but you need someone who knows the animal husbandry business to help you fill in the missing pieces that allow your idea to take root and grow.

Don’t get defeated if you find yourself at a bit of a loss sometimes, there are people out there with the insight you need and the willingness to help. Consider taking a local class or finding online instruction. So what if you’re not an expert in something right now?— that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. However, if you’re not willing to put in the time and elbow grease required to learn and grow, you can give that idea a hard pass.

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All it takes is one idea

One idea can revolutionize the world.

Pasteurization, computers, social media — at some point these were mere ideas. Someone, somewhere, took the time to think them through, vet their potential, and bring them to life.

Deciding whether or not your idea is worthy of pursuit is possible. Look to identify and explain the value in your idea, open it up for feedback and critiques, and examine yourself — does your expertise and skill set help you or will you have to seek outside counsel or classes?

What other criteria or steps have you used to vet your business and product ideas? We’d love to hear about them, so make sure to reply below.