I had the opportunity to connect with Melissa Gutierrez, a successful entrepreneur with a great career trajectory in the Advertising industry in California. I asked her what advice would be helpful for entrepreneurs who want to succeed. She replied, "If you are gonna fail, fail fast and cheap. That's my advice."
Failure is part of the process; if you are not willing to fail, you are not willing to take risks, and if you are not willing to take risks, you can't be an entrepreneur. The other key word she said in his advice is to fail cheaply.
Imagine if you spent all your funds on developing your platform; what would happen next?
- You don't have enough funds to make a marketing campaign, and the company closes.
- You do a soft launch, but since you didn't validate with the market, no one uses your platform, and the company closes.
- You go with a VC or angel investor, thinking they will give you 1 Mn to your company, without considering that an angel investor or VC that used to receive between 4 and 5 pitches daily now receives 15 to 20 based on the high demand. Plus, you show without traction (because you didn't validate with the market first); in conclusion, they don't fund you, and the company closes.
AngelCentral, a significant community of angel investors in Southeast Asia, noted a substantial increase in pitch sessions and syndication services during this time.
You might see that you can't expect a VC or angel investor to fund your idea just because you think it's fantastic.
First, you need to test whether the market will be interested in your offer; that is where the Painted Door Test comes into play!
What is the Painted Door test?
The fake door testing (also known as painted-door testing) is a technique for quickly determining the viability of new ideas before committing resources to their development.
It is used to check whether the target audience will be interested in a product, a feature, or a new offer of a service that doesn't exist.
Project managers often use this technique to test the product's value proposition before spending money on R&D.
Benefits of this technique
As we explained before, this technique has multiple benefits for your project, some of which are.
- Allow you to validate your value proposal to the market and see if your product will be profitable.
- This will give you one of the most critical information investors want to know before investing (DATA) and traction about how many potential customers will be interested in the product.
- Save your cost on development.
- Reduce your possibility of failing after launch.
- You can measure how much you need to invest in marketing to be profitable.
When can I use this technique?
The Painted Door test can be used before and after the launch of a digital product.
- Before lunch: In our previous article, "Earlier Access: How You Should Validate Your Ideas Before Takeoff," we discussed how tech companies usually develop an earlier access strategy that rewards the user for using the prototype or even leaving their contact information to be contacted in the future once the MVP is complete. This reward can be a free month subscription, more benefits, or a gift card.
- After Launch: Once your community is built and your MVP launches, you can conduct a fake door test of new features to see how your more trusted users will use them, and is worth developing.
Disadvantage of the Fake Door technique.
It is essential to understand that you could disappoint users and damage your credibility if you are us often; that is why before you apply this technique, we recommend you do the following.
- Communicate to your community that is a test: In this type of launch, communication is critical; let your audience know that this is a test of a future feature and, based on the demand, whether they can integrate it or not; this to make conscious in the user and apologize upfront for any potential disappointment.
- Give them something in exchange for his participation and Thank them for their time.
- Leave a place to provide feedback.
- Invite them to do a beta test once the product or feature is ready.
- Carefully choose the size of the testing cohort to limit the potential damage (while still getting enough data).
How to do a Painted Door test
Making a Paint door test is straightforward and requires little effort. Here is how to do it.
- Make a high-impact landing page to get people to register to use your platform.
- Use Paid Add to bring traffic to this landing and measure the conversion rates.
- Once the person registers, this one will need to be sent to another page (a thank you page) where it is informed that the feature is still in development, but because he registered before launch, he received a gift (you can inform about the lead magnet on the landing page as well)
- Once you launch the landing with the campaign, start measuring the site's activity and the main KPI to determine what you need to be profitable and whether there is enough demand to be worth developing (CPC, Conversions, CPM, etc.).
Next step after the Painted Door Test.
Once you have market approval, you just need to create a Demo of your idea (it doesn't have to be the whole platform, just one that resolves your audience's main problem).
With the data you have for your Painted Door test that validates the idea, a good demo prototype to show the potential, and a well-structured pitch deck, your chance of getting funding will multiply by X10, allowing you to cover the expenses of other vital areas such as development and marketing.
Conclusion
This technique will help you validate and test your idea on the market before even starting, but to make it right, you need to be aware that you will still need to have at least a minimum budget to spend on the landing page creation, ads a good value proposal, and a demo that can be shown to investors.
In Entertact, we help earlier startups validate their ideas, focus on working on their brand, launch a landing page, create a value proposition, and build a demo with a good pitch deck structure.
We connect them with our funding partners, who, depending on their sector and product type, will help them reach the VC and angel investors they need.
If you need help with your product launch, you can always book a free consultation with us. To help you get on track and have a successful launch.
Related Posts
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Are you ready to Stand out
Become a Entertact Client and obtain your first prove of concept by free!
