Use social media advertising for testing your product or market-fit prior to investing thousands or even millions of dollars – this is the message that leading digital agency, R17 Ventures has for entrepreneurs, founders and product developers.
As a global performance marketing partner and a venture builder with thirteen active businesses, the agency shared its methodology for product and market-fit testing in a webinar hosted on Wednesday, 05 July 2023. Presented by R17 CEO and founder, Raphael Rohner, and R17 Digital Growth Specialist, Jono Duguid, the webinar highlighted the importance of knowing which product will perform best, using social media ads, prior to producing it.
The pair offered three business cases that the methodology could be applied to:
1. MVP: finding a minimum viable product
2. Packaging: discover which packaging resonates best
3. Market-fit: test the market fit of a product/service
R17 Ventures’ product and market-fit testing methodology has three steps:
1. Create mock-ups (packaging, products, claims, business models)
2. Build a landing page or Shopify store to test the above
3. Build adverts on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok using the mocked-up material and direct consumers to the relevant landing page / Shopify store.
Once a consumer chooses to make the purchase, businesses have two options:
1: Sell the non-existing product, and then instantly refund the consumer
2: Collect subscribers / analyse all data from the site using heatmaps and similar technologies
R17 recommends option one, stating that actions speak louder than words, with Duguid pointing out “there’s a big difference between asking someone if they would buy your product, versus them actually doing so”.
Speaking about the reasoning behind using paid social channels instead of search engines, Rohner explained the latter is intent-based, meaning that the demand is limited, saying that to scale one needs to create demand, which is where social media ads shine.
The pair went on to describe additional benefits to this methodology, from insights into consumers – demographics, regions and more; to answers to testing variables (claims, packaging, etc); and discovering price elasticity of demand. They also showcased how the methodology works in the gaming space – something that they use for one of their ventures, InfluencerApps, a hyper-casual gaming company.
Rohner ended the webinar by inviting entrepreneurs that are looking for a business partner to reach out and pitch their idea.
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