How to test a product before testing the sales funnel?

8 years ago

Hey there,

In my opinion it's really never the product to much.. But if you want to test the product you can always give it to your current subscribers for free and ask for feedback

Free is always a good bet when trying something new..

Just my opinion on it though.

Adam

Thanks
1 reply

Signature

Six Steps to Making $100 Per Day Online - Free eBook :)

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10365229].message }}

JohnMcCabe 8 years ago

Are you talking about a product you developed (or had developed for you)? Or an affiliate product?

If it's your own product, the time to do the testing is before developing the whole package. Develop what some call the Minimum Viable Product. Offer it at a heavily discounted "intro" price. Set up a minimal funnel, maybe even just a sales page or short email series.

You aren't trying to break the bank here, just to establish that people will indeed pull out their credit card.

If the results are encouraging, then you can proceed to develop a full product and optimize a sales funnel. If not, you cut your (minimal) losses and move on.

If it's an affiliate offer, it's even simpler. Create a simple lead magnet and see if anyone goes for it. Direct them to the affiliate offer. If some people do buy, start optimizing.

The problem with surveys is that, unless you know what you're doing, you end up with a collection of answers that are either what the person thinks you want to hear or the answer they think will make them look "good."

If you want to try the survey method, you might want to pick up a copy of Ryan Levesque's new book, ASK.
- [ 1 ] Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10365269].message }}

Sid Hale

8 years ago

I'd have to disagree with this...

Originally Posted by Adam Yunker

In my opinion it's really never the product to much.. But if you want to test the product you can always give it to your current subscribers for free and ask for feedback

It's always about the front end product, but part of this is right.

Feedback is hard to come by - especially if you've given the product away for nothing.

I would suggest that, instead, you sell any new product to your own buyers' list first. Give them a good deal as a reward for being previous buyers, but don't give it away.

Then your feedback comes in the form of refunds. Someone who doesn't think your product is worth a discounted, customer-only, special price is much more likely to refund the product than a free recipient will be to give feedback.

Originally Posted by John9586

usually I need to optimize sales funnel first to see if somebody will buy the product.

I don't understand why you would ever "optimize" a sales funnel before testing sales of your lead in product. It is the first step of any sales funnel, and if nobody buys it - you don't really have a sales funnel. You have a dead end!

But sometimes one spends a lot of time and money to optimize the funnel just to see that nobody wants to buy the product. Sometimes it´s not clear if the problem is the product or the sales funnel.

As I said before, no one sees the rest of your sales funnel (other than a downsell) unless they first buy your front end product. "Optimizing" your sales funnel can only be done after receiving sales of your front end product and then analyzing whether those buyers are responsive to your subsequent offers.

It would be better to validate that people will buy the product first and only then optimize the sales funnel.
Is there some good way how to do it? How to get the product in front of customers if there is no sales funnel?

Agree!!!

Try this.

Make multiple sales pages for the front end offer so that you can split test to find the best performing page.
Create a simple sales funnel that consists of only :
1. Your front end offer
2. One upsell, and
3. One downsell
Promote that funnel to your buyers list.

That sales campaign should give you most of the "feedback" you need about :

Whether your front end offer will convert
What your best sales page is for that offer, and
Whether your upsell and/or downsell offers convert.

Who knows, you may even (after tweaking the sales page) need to re-mail to your same buyers list to see if your tweaks increase conversions.

Regardless...
Now you're ready to mail that sales campaign to your non-buyers and/or have affiliates promote the campaign to their lists (both can happen at the same time).

As sales come in for your product, you are in a position to "tweak" the funnel. You might want to add additional upsells, or swap out an upsell with a totally different offer to see if that does better. depending on what you have controlling the funnel, you might even be able to split-test sales pages for your existing upsells.

Over time, you can "optimize" the funnel to your heart's content, but if you're not confident in your ability to create (and sell) a funnel at the desired level of conversions at each level of upsell, you should create a minimal funnel (as outlined above) and expand that funnel only after sales begin coming in and you can properly track the performance of each offer in the funnel.

[ 2 ] Thanks
2 replies

Signature

Sid Hale
Coming Soon... Rapid Action Profits (Pro)

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10365293].message }}

John9586

8 years ago

Thanks for the answers, I must take some time, choose the best of them for my situation and try them out.
It´s my infoproduct, not affiliate product. I would like to tweak the product first and eliminate everything else, even a landing page or minimal sales funnel, only after I have tweaked the product to the best it could be, I would tweak them.

Even the most simple sales page or landing page has thousands of combinations of colors, headlines, bullets, features, benefits, CTA, Buy button, pictures, design, fonts, etc. etc. and I don´t want to test them all before I know I have the best possible product.

There are some books like Lean startup, which tell you to go out from the building, get feedback and develop the product together with your future customers. But they dont really say how to do it, these books are useless, too high level and no practical experience, mostly written by some professors who never did anything practical.

What other possibilities are there to get feedback about my product? I could get people from fiverr to test it, but it´s too expensive, 1 test for 5 USD, its 500 USD just for testing with 100 people.
Are there maybe some websites for testing products? Maybe some people from India could test it? And what about going to the local university and let some students to test it, but what could I offer them? Maybe it would be more expensive than fiverr?

The plan should be testing the usability of the product first, then landing page, then pricing and then sales funnel. I think at the moment the most people do it the wrong way, first traffic and CTR optimizing, then sales funnel and pricing, only to see at the end that customers are not satisfied with the product.

Thanks
1 reply

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10365712].message }}

Jill Carpenter

8 years ago

Originally Posted by John9586

I don´t want to test them all before I know I have the best possible product.

It's always good to test these things, but be sure to put a limit on it or it could never be launched - and if you truly believe it is something people need to solve a problem then it needs to be out there asap.

If it's your own product, the time to do the testing is before developing the whole package

Ya. Sounds like too late for that - but maybe might just need some tweeks.

The plan should be testing the usability of the product first, then landing page, then pricing and then sales funnel. I think at the moment the most people do it the wrong way, first traffic and CTR optimizing, then sales funnel and pricing, only to see at the end that customers are not satisfied with the product.

Ideally you get the list, find out what they want, and build it for them. Then there is no question of if they will buy. It is what they want from you.

[ 1 ] Thanks
2 replies

Signature

"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10365734].message }}

myob 8 years ago

Being a simple kind of a guy, I've always tested new products with inexpensive small classified ads in a few selected ezines, offline magazines, and newspapers. These publications would either have ads for comparable products or target audiences with relevant demographics. The initial ad response rate was the factor which determined further marketing resources.
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366313].message }}

John9586

8 years ago

Actually I have only the minimal product now, or prototype, and I want to find out if I should develop the whole product, or if people are not interested at all. But the problem is, I dont know if they don´t download it because they dont like it or because the landing page is not optimized. And its hard to optimize the landing page if I dont know whether the product is good or not. Because if not, then I can tweak everything on the landing page and I will see no results.

Maybe I should take some similar product from competition with proved quality and good reviews, so I know that people are buying it, then I could optimize the landing page and then I would put there my product instead and make the fine tuning of product and landing page.

This is a new niche for me and I have no list yet, and I dont want to wait 1 year just to build the list.

Thanks
1 reply

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366323].message }}

Jill Carpenter

8 years ago

Originally Posted by John9586

Actually I have only the minimal product now, or prototype, and I want to find out if I should develop the whole product, or if people are not interested at all. But the problem is, I dont know if they don´t download it because they dont like it or because the landing page is not optimized. And its hard to optimize the landing page if I dont know whether the product is good or not. Because if not, then I can tweak everything on the landing page and I will see no results.

Maybe I should take some similar product from competition with proved quality and good reviews, so I know that people are buying it, then I could optimize the landing page and then I would put there my product instead and make the fine tuning of product and landing page.

This is a new niche for me and I have no list yet, and I dont want to wait 1 year just to build the list.

Take a step back.

You can/should go ahead and start building a list!

There are things to draw in your potential audience that can be put in place to start building the list now.

If you are hesitant to share the niche here on the open forum, feel free to PM me and I'll shoot you back one if I have any ideas on how to set the initial squeeze page in place.

Tell me also what your "product" does in 5 sentences or less.

Thanks

Signature

"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366344].message }}

jbsmith

8 years ago

I have had the same experience as Sid mentions below in my businesses.

I typically setup sales funnels with the specific INTENT on testing different products - both from front-end lead-gen, to initial tripwire product to the back-end offers which can be bundles, memberships, services, etc...

This is advisable for several reasons:

1. It's never JUST the product or JUST the sales funnel - it is the combination of both that impacts conversion - to succeed you need to get the combination right, so testing both in sequence is the fastest way to improve

2. By testing via sales funnel, you at least get the lead which (if you treat them right) will give you multiple opportunities to seek feedback including testing multiple pages, multiple products and direct contact (surveys, feedback, etc..)

3. Lower your costs of testing...the most expensive part of marketing is getting traffic/leads - if you do that against a single product offering and they don't bite, you have lost them forever - having to go through the expense of getting another visitor/lead to test with. By spending to secure the visitor/lead once and testing multiple times you lower your cost of testing substantially.

Jeff

Originally Posted by Sid Hale

I'd have to disagree with this...

It's always about the front end product, but part of this is right.

Feedback is hard to come by - especially if you've given the product away for nothing.

I would suggest that, instead, you sell any new product to your own buyers' list first. Give them a good deal as a reward for being previous buyers, but don't give it away.

Then your feedback comes in the form of refunds. Someone who doesn't think your product is worth a discounted, customer-only, special price is much more likely to refund the product than a free recipient will be to give feedback.

I don't understand why you would ever "optimize" a sales funnel before testing sales of your lead in product. It is the first step of any sales funnel, and if nobody buys it - you don't really have a sales funnel. You have a dead end!

As I said before, no one sees the rest of your sales funnel (other than a downsell) unless they first buy your front end product. "Optimizing" your sales funnel can only be done after receiving sales of your front end product and then analyzing whether those buyers are responsive to your subsequent offers.

Agree!!!

Try this.

Make multiple sales pages for the front end offer so that you can split test to find the best performing page.
Create a simple sales funnel that consists of only :
1. Your front end offer
2. One upsell, and
3. One downsell
Promote that funnel to your buyers list.

That sales campaign should give you most of the "feedback" you need about :

Whether your front end offer will convert
What your best sales page is for that offer, and
Whether your upsell and/or downsell offers convert.

Who knows, you may even (after tweaking the sales page) need to re-mail to your same buyers list to see if your tweaks increase conversions.

Regardless...
Now you're ready to mail that sales campaign to your non-buyers and/or have affiliates promote the campaign to their lists (both can happen at the same time).

As sales come in for your product, you are in a position to "tweak" the funnel. You might want to add additional upsells, or swap out an upsell with a totally different offer to see if that does better. depending on what you have controlling the funnel, you might even be able to split-test sales pages for your existing upsells.

Over time, you can "optimize" the funnel to your heart's content, but if you're not confident in your ability to create (and sell) a funnel at the desired level of conversions at each level of upsell, you should create a minimal funnel (as outlined above) and expand that funnel only after sales begin coming in and you can properly track the performance of each offer in the funnel.

Thanks

Signature

Turn Your Knowledge Into High-Paying Digital Products To Sell Online

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366445].message }}

trip3980

8 years ago

Originally Posted by John9586

Hi,
usually I need to optimize sales funnel first to see if somebody will buy the product. But sometimes one spends a lot of time and money to optimize the funnel just to see that nobody wants to buy the product. Sometimes it´s not clear if the problem is the product or the sales funnel.

It would be better to validate that people will buy the product first and only then optimize the sales funnel.
Is there some good way how to do it? How to get the product in front of customers if there is no sales funnel? Are surveys useful, from Survey Monkey etc. or is there something better?
Thanks

I have been doing a lot of digging for products I plan to sell in the future and I came across IBIS world. You can access the database via universities. To find the demand you have to look at the traffic of where you plan to sell it and look at your competitors find out what ever you can about that product or similar products. On IBIS world you can figure that you have the potential of obtaining at least .5 to 1 % of the market. Ideally you want to find what those market numbers are in the aria you are planing to sell in not just the national numbers. If you want to find your demographic you can go to the local library and look up referenceusa.com. This will help you get an ideal of what your potential market is for a given aria. but most of all develop relationships with local businesses and talk to them about your product and ask them about their experience even if it means walking in to the stores and talking to sales people for their experience with sales on the product. If you contact many locations you can get a good ideal of what you need to do to start marketing and selling the product. Remember do not give things away for free just to test a product and always look for the numbers. Test the market based on what the numbers tell you and work form their. If you do give your product away for free I'd work with a youtube celebrity get his take and have him review the product on his channel. keep in mind that youtube is the second biggest search engine on the internet.

Thanks

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366345].message }}

RyanTH

8 years ago

If you are developing content in the niche ahead of releasing the product, you'll already have a pretty good idea if your product is of quality or not (assuming it's approach resembles the content you are creating). Have you tried creating a dummy Buy Now button and then analysing the demographics that click it? Then you could issue a surveymonkey survey to exactly these demographics to fine tune exactly what they need.

Thanks
1 reply

Signature

The luxury of self-discipline.

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366354].message }}

JohnMcCabe

8 years ago

Originally Posted by John9586

It´s my infoproduct, not affiliate product. I would like to tweak the product first and eliminate everything else, even a landing page or minimal sales funnel, only after I have tweaked the product to the best it could be, I would tweak them.

You're playing a game of "which came first, the chicken or the egg" here. You want to create the best possible product before optimizing the sales process, but you want to know if the product will sell before tweaking the product.

If IBM had followed that thinking, they never would have licensed MS-DOS to Bill Gates, and we'd still be using computers via a command line interface.

Originally Posted by John9586

Even the most simple sales page or landing page has thousands of combinations of colors, headlines, bullets, features, benefits, CTA, Buy button, pictures, design, fonts, etc. etc. and I don´t want to test them all before I know I have the best possible product.

You don't have to test them all. All you need is a basic sales page that sort of works. You need to find out if people will pay money for a solution to whatever issue you address. If they won't pay a discounted price for a 1.0 version, what makes you think that they'll pay full price for 2.0?

Originally Posted by John9586

There are some books like Lean startup, which tell you to go out from the building, get feedback and develop the product together with your future customers. But they dont really say how to do it, these books are useless, too high level and no practical experience, mostly written by some professors who never did anything practical.

I already told you how. Start with a minimum viable product, which it sounds like you already have, and test it on the marketplace. Trade a bargain price for feedback from actual users.

Just because these books didn't show you exactly how to test your product, keystroke by keystroke, doesn't mean they are useless or that the authors don't know what they're talking about.

Originally Posted by John9586

What other possibilities are there to get feedback about my product? I could get people from fiverr to test it, but it´s too expensive, 1 test for 5 USD, its 500 USD just for testing with 100 people.

Are there maybe some websites for testing products? Maybe some people from India could test it? And what about going to the local university and let some students to test it, but what could I offer them? Maybe it would be more expensive than fiverr?

Better to get feedback from real users. Why are you so willing to pay people not in your target market to test an infoproduct, and so unwilling to test using a less than optimum sales process?

Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black with the "too high level and with little practical experience" angle.

Originally Posted by John9586

The plan should be testing the usability of the product first, then landing page, then pricing and then sales funnel. I think at the moment the most people do it the wrong way, first traffic and CTR optimizing, then sales funnel and pricing, only to see at the end that customers are not satisfied with the product.

Once you have a minimum product, you need to find out if anyone will buy it. It's called "proof of concept." Once you have that proof, you can jump into the cycle of improving the product and the sales process. To do otherwise is to risk spending a lot of time, money and even emotional capital on something that won't work.

[ 1 ] Thanks

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366425].message }}

Randall Magwood

8 years ago

Business is a risk. Whether online or off. Generally you stack the deck in your favor by excellent niche selection, niche size, and niche demand. Your query is valid. Sometimes marketers launch a product to sell and it bombs. Usually more often than not, bombed launch attempts are higher than successful attempts. But on the attempt where your launch is successful.... it usually superceeds all of the failed attempts combined... in a BIG way.

Thanks
1 reply

Signature

==>> Free book reveals make money with affiliate marketing

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366625].message }}

Joe Mobley

8 years ago

Tim Ferriss Interviews Noah Kagan of AppSumo.com...

This clip is from the Tim Ferriss course, "The 4 Hour Life" on CreativeLive.com, in it you'll hear from Noah Kagan, the Founder and 'Chief Sumo' of AppSumo and Tim as they discuss online business ideas and how to start an online business.

Good video that directly addresses the thread title with examples.

Joe Mobley

[ 1 ] Thanks
1 reply

Signature

.

Follow Me on Twitter: @daVinciJoe

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10366911].message }}

John9586 8 years ago

Thank you for the answers, I must read the thread several times and implement everything what I can use in my situation. I will start with a simple landing page, optimize it a little bit and then I will tweak the product, then I will go back to the landing page and optimize it again, then I will optimize CTR, and then I can start to build the sales funnel. Later I will build my list so that I can get feedback for future updates and new products.
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10367025].message }}

djmill

8 years ago

Offer it for free to a limited number of people.

If nobody wants it for nothing, chances are nobody will want to pay for it either.

Just my thinking.

D

Thanks
1 reply

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10367654].message }}

Sid Hale 8 years ago

Think this through again (I've underlined the important bits)

Originally Posted by djmill

Offer it for free to a limited number of people.

If nobody wants it for nothing, chances are nobody will want to pay for it either.

I don't know how big your target market is, but I'll bet it is HUGE compared to the "limited number of people" you propose to offer your freebie.

The fact that zero out of some small number of people will take a free offer... is NO indication of how many might be willing to pay money for that same offer.
- [ 1 ] Thanks
Signature

Sid Hale
Coming Soon... Rapid Action Profits (Pro)
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10368014].message }}

How to test a product before testing the sales funnel?

Trending Topics

Fixing a massive traffic drop after rebranding

Meta AI now has Google Search results

Looking at the average screen time and socmed usage

What's the Best IM-Related Skill to Learn Today That Can Help in the Future?

Would You Go?