Although first-movers make the most money, you shouldn’t waste your time and money developing a new service with no demand.
Admittedly, testing demand is more art than science. Especially if your service does not exist yet. However, this guide will show you four actionable strategies to determine if there is adequate demand for your service.
Choose Your Target market
Before you can test demand, you must choose your target market. For example, are you targeting businesses or homeowners? Are you looking for new customers, or are you trying to upsell existing customers? Are your services general, or are they for one specific niche?
Although simple, this first step is the most crucial part of the process. If you are targeting people that can’t pay or don’t want the service, you will have no demand for your service.
Analyze Competitors
If your competitors are already offering the service, there is a good chance of a market for the service. Do not be discouraged that you were not the first to offer the service in your area.
The existence of these competitors will allow you to analyze everything they are doing right and everything they are doing wrong. Read their reviews on Yelp and Google to see if people liked their service. Check out their social media profiles to see if they engage with their clients.
Create a Questionnaire
Talk to past, current, and potential clients to get their feedback. The most efficient way to do this is with a questionnaire. On your questionnaire, you can ask if they would be interested in your service and how much they would be willing to pay.
Create an Ad Campaign
Creating an ad campaign is one of the more effective ways to test demand for your service. You do not need to invest time or money into creating the service, as we want to see if the ad campaign will generate leads for the new service. Below is how to do it:
- Create a landing page for your service with the ability to call you and send an email
- Create a Google Adwords Campaign with a $500 budget to drive traffic to your service
- When someone asks you about the service, tell them that you do not have availability right now
- After the campaign is over, determine if the amount of leads you generated is adequate to develop and market the service
Conclusion
The best ways to test demand for your service is through ad campaigns, analyzing competitors, and talking with previous clients. After you perform these strategies, you will have a very clear understanding of whether your service will be viable.
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