Market Research Versus Market Validation

Nothing like a good clipboard and pen with a survey to get insight on your customers so you can develop a better plan of attack.

"Excuse me. Do you have a second? This is a short survey that will help with my startup and I was wondering if you would take a few minutes to fill it out.”

You raise your voice as she hurries away. “We are doing some market research!”

She leaves, and you start talking to the next passerby.

“Hi, hello. Do you have a second. I am doing a market research survey. Could you help? It will just take a minute.”

When was the last time you were out in public trying to get random people to fill out your market research survey?

You go home, slightly defeated, and you turn your attention to applying to a new business competition. You notice that one of the application questions asks about market validation. You scratch your head. Is this the same thing as market research you just did all day?

Well, aren’t they sort of the same? We did market research to validate our market. Right? You scratch your head again, exhale, then get back to completing the application.

There is a huge difference between market research and market validation.

Market research is the time, energy and effort spent doing the research on the people within your market, specifically dividing it into submarkets from early adopters to laggards. A lot of amazing data exists out there to help in your market research.

A survey is a great way to get insight about your customer. As long as you are having your target customer fill out the survey and not just any random person in the street, you are good to go.

Think of market research as looking at the weather forecast before you go sailing. You want to know the conditions so you can bring the appropriate sails and be on the appropriate sailboat to get the most out of the day’s weather.

Taking the time to research your market will help you to narrow the problem you’re solving and help you to focus on finding the people who have that problem that needs to be solved.

Market validation is more of an active participation with your minimum viable product or specific interface where you can get real feedback from people who are experiencing what you’re doing and how you’re trying to do it. Market validation needs to be done with the target market the you’ve identified in your research in order to increase the significance of the results.

If you have an MVP, do the market research first to make sure you know the right type of people to approach for your market validation.

When you’re answering the question for the business competition about market validation, you want to talk about the individuals who you’ve identified as your target market and their reviews and their critiques of your product or service. The testimonials from that target market of your research base will give you a springboard to an early start of adoption for whatever you’re trying to do.

You should always be researching your customers and potential clients as well as constantly receiving feedback from people using your products or services.

#marketresearch

#marketvalidation