So a dear subscriber of my marketing newsletter and I were discussing his SaaS idea.
He asked me,
“So I sensed an opportunity to make a simple tool (saas product) targeted toward medium and small companies. I want to plan for the marketing and understand how I will be able to crack this market open before I get the developers. There are already many small players in this market, so I want to be convinced that I have some odds to succeed before I invest. So I need help with …. Identifying trends based on keyword search and suggesting some plans on how to reach out to SMB based out of the EU, UK & US. Net net test the market before I invest more time and money.”
He wanted to know if it can be done on a lean budget so I shared three options. Sharing the same with you. Hope you find it useful for validating your idea.
If you are considering building something similar I’d recommend running some ads to the landing page of your future product, getting leads, and talking to them to understand what they are looking for in an alternative to the product they are already using. So, of the three options, I shared below two talks about different approaches to running ads. One option that allows you to validate your idea without running ads or spending any money.
Let’s take a look.
Option 1 | The Cheapest Way
Your investment: No money only time, about 50-70 hours of your time.
Identify about 100-250 potential customers for what you want to make. Hit them up on LinkedIn and schedule a 15-minute research call with each one of them. Once you finish your call, ask them if they would be willing to pay a fraction of what they pay now if you were to make a product that took away their existing pain. Of those who say yes, ask them to pay upfront 20% of the final amount. If 20 people pay you, build what you want to build. This is the kind of product where your MVP should be really good because, in a way, your clients are dealing with digital trust and privacy lawmakers.
Option 2 | The Cheaper Option
Your investment: some time and some money. $1.5-1.8k, and about 50 hours in learning and setting up, and optimizing campaigns.
Get a domain ($11/year), get a logo (0-$100) and build a landing page on Carrd.co ($19/year) and take a short course to run LinkedIn and Google Ads ($100/200 + 10-20 hours) and run ads. You should still be willing to invest about $150-200/day for 5-7 days on LinkedIn and $60-80/day for the same duration on Google to validate the idea.
Option 3 | The Not So Cheap Option
Your investment: More money and less time. $1.5-1.8k + $1k
For this, you do what is in option 2. The only difference is that instead of doing it yourself you get a professional to help you with setting up and running ads and putting the marketing assets including the landing page together. Pay them about $1k for their help. You need help from a designer/developer, someone who is good at Google ads, and another person who knows LinkedIn ads well. Both are different skills. A professional may save you money by keeping the ad cost down than if you learned it and did it yourself.
For someone in India, it can be done within an investment range of INR 0-2L.
I’d recommend starting with option 1 even if you have money because if you know your customers and what they want, you’ll run more effective and efficient ads.
