- I'm going to show you an amazing strategy
for validating your products.
It's gonna save you a ton of time and money
so you can find out exactly what your customers want.
Let's go.
(upbeat saxophone music)
Hey guys, today, I'm going to be talking
about how to validate your products
by selling at local markets.
Selling at local markets is an incredible way
to validate your e-commerce store,
and you can save a lot of time
and money in those initial phases.
It takes a bit of time and energy at the start,
but really at the end of the day, it's totally worth it.
This strategy is gonna save you months
of collecting data and hundreds of dollars,
if not more, in saved ad spend.
Now, local markets are just one way
to talk to your customers.
The important thing here is that
you have two-way communication with those customers.
You talk to them and they talk to you.
Okay, so let's get into it.
So your goal is to create a successful e-commerce store.
What makes an e-commerce store successful?
Well, there are a lot of things that make a successful store
and I go through a lot of them
in my videos here on my channel.
But one of the main things is make sure
that you're helping people and adding value
with your products.
The best stores I've ever built
and worked with have done exactly this.
They have a clearly defined target customer.
They also really understand the pains
and frustrations of that customer.
Then their product and brand is designed
to solve those problems for that customer.
This is what makes amazing brands and stores,
because you can scale them up very quickly
and profitably because the ad spend is so efficient.
They convert so well at such a low cost per conversion.
Okay, so why is this important?
The most important thing about running a business
and running an e-commerce store
is that you are helping people and adding value.
Why?
Because money is really just a representation
that tells you that you are adding value.
People don't give you money for free.
You need to demonstrate value
before they hand over their hard earned cash.
This is how business works, and this is how our world works.
So how do you find your target customer,
find out a problem they have,
and then create a product that solves that?
You talk to them.
Most people spend a lot of time setting up their website
and setting up the perfect initial paid ad campaigns,
just to try and figure out this thing.
Why are people converting on their website?
This also even requires a bit of starting knowledge
about your audience and who they are.
If you tried doing this
without even knowing who your customers are,
you're basically playing the lottery.
You are hoping that your website
and product solves their problem
even though you have no idea who they are
and what their problem is.
You need to listen to your customers.
If you just have live chat installed on your website,
only a tiny proportion of your traffic
are gonna actually engage
and tell you that your website sucks
or that they have a problem that's different
from what you're trying to solve.
You might be able to see that your conversion rate
is so low, 0.01%, but this doesn't tell you why it's so low.
That's why you need to open up this two-way communication
and speak to those customers.
This is why getting to some local markets
is a great way to validate your product.
It's very easy and something very few e-com store owners do.
And it's a massive boost towards your store's success.
The stores that I've worked with that
were able to do this were able to quickly figure out
who their target market was,
the problem that they're solving,
and then build a better product
or find a better product that solves this problem.
A number of years ago,
I actually managed some local markets.
That's why I say this sort of thing.
And I saw a number of different entrepreneurs come in
and they would use the stalls to try out the market.
They would have their product there,
and then the next week, they would come back and iterate.
And these people went on to build bigger and bigger stores,
e-commerce stores, brands,
and then eventually got into retailers.
I've also worked with three different e-commerce stores
in the past 12 months alone that have done this exact thing,
setting up at local markets
and then doing their e-commerce store
once they've really honed in and validated their product.
These three stores were so much easier
to scale on paid traffic.
Okay, so what's the strategy here?
We want to rent a store or a table at some local markets,
bring along your products if you have them,
and then start getting feedback from all the traffic,
the customers, the people walking past at the markets.
If you don't have a product in your hands yet,
that's totally fine.
Just set up some signage, take some photos of your product,
print them out and just show people
that you're trying to get feedback
and get their opinion on these products.
You can even start a survey there
and give someone some sort of incentive
so they fill out a form and you get some information
from your target market.
A quick little tip here is that you can go
and see if there's a coffee store at the market
or some sort of food, and tell them that
you'll give people vouchers to buy a coffee
and you do some sort of prepay arrangement there
so when people fill out the form, they get a free coffee
and they go straight to the coffee store,
boom, they get a free coffee, everyone's happy.
But the key here, guys, is to talk to people.
Really ask the right questions
and find out what their big problems are.
For example, say if you want to start a store
that helps gardeners, I would research the local markets
in your area and find the one that
is more likely to have gardeners.
Maybe there's some sort of garden fair or garden club
or maybe just even setting up outside a plant stop,
like a nursery, and talking to people as they go in and out.
So you could rent out a little space
or just set up your little shop there,
print off some photos of some ideas for products.
Just have some talking points in mind to ask these people,
so you can get a better idea of who they are
and what they're looking for.
Just something to start the conversation.
And once you start talking to people,
you wanna ask questions like,
what are your biggest frustrations with gardening?
What do you wanna spend more time doing in your garden?
What do you hate doing in your garden?
Are there any tools that you wish you had?
Of course, make sure you just take notes
on what you're learning as you speak to these people.
It will be a big day and you'll talk to a lot of people,
and by the end of the day,
you'll start seeing some really interesting trends.
A lot of people will have problems with certain things,
certain areas, maybe certain tools,
certain parts of their garden.
And that gives you an idea of where to start,
and start researching the different products
that you could sell to these people.
Okay, what if you don't wanna spend any money
on a stall and there are no markets in your area?
There are so many ways to do this for free.
You could honestly go to a plant store, in this example,
and just talk to people.
Be polite, go up to them and respectfully say,
hey, what are you looking for?
And what are your biggest problems?
Get into the conversation,
be interested in their topic and find out more about them.
You're researching here and building up a lot of data
that's gonna really help you figure out
who your target market is and what they're looking for,
their problems, all that kind of stuff.
The gold nugget here isn't that
you set up at some local markets.
The key here is talking to these people
with a two-way communication
so you can get some great feedback on your ideas,
and figure out what problems do they have.
But why do I recommend setting up at local markets?
Because once you find a problem,
yes, you'll set up your e-commerce store
and you'll start selling those products.
But the cool thing is you can go back to those markets
and then set up a real store,
and actually start selling those products in person as well.
You can get people to physically use the products,
watch them using it, and get their feedback.
This is even better because you can just keep iterating
and improving what you know about your customers
and your products.
If you return to the markets next week,
those customers often come back each week.
It's a pretty common thing.
And they'll be able to tell you how the product went.
Yes, it may sound like a lot of time and energy,
and you're gonna have to get off that computer chair,
but honestly, this is gonna save you months
and months of time that you would spend
with your store anyway.
It also teaches you some incredible skills in business
and entrepreneurship that are gonna help you
for the rest of your life.
Anyway, guys, I hope that video was helpful.
If it was, please give it a thumbs up.
If you have any questions at all,
please leave them in the comments below.
I'll do my best to answer every single one.
If you wanna see more videos
on how to grow your e-com store,
please check out my channel and consider subscribing.
Anyway, guys, thanks so much for watching,
and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye for now.
(whooshing)
(upbeat saxophone music)