Or should I title this : “Inventors frustration with the world”?
I am currently working on some information memorandums to raise money for 3 companies. Reading their business plans, looking at their inventions, I cannot stop to think what a waste is going on in business development.
They have all developed their ideas to an advanced stage, spend many hours and Dollars, are ready to produce.
Testing the Market
But no one has tested the market. Apart from one, they do not really have a marketing strategy.
It would be so fantastic if there was an easy way to test the market without spending lots of money in research.
Actually there is a way, Tim Ferris calls it microtesting in his book “The 4-hour Workweek“.
Microtesting
What he proposes is to set up a sales site on the Internet, bring some targeted traffic via Google AdWords and see how many are ready to buy.
This tests the demand for the product in general, but more importantly it tests whether the marketing works:
- Are we using the right words?
- Is the price right?
- Is the warranty sufficient?
To really test all of these things, a split test is necessary of course. But all this can be done for under $1,000, probably under $500. Far more efficient than sending sales people around the country to introduce the products into retail shops.
Efficient and thus sustainable.
The Controversy
A lot of inventors will tell me that their clients are not on the Internet. That might be true, even though I think that there are always ways to test the interest of potential clients, even though they might not purchase online.