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Why Should You Test Social Entrepreneurship Ideas?
If you are a new or aspiring social entrepreneur, you may be wondering how to bring your first social innovation to life. Let’s say you have identified a market and designed a potential solution. You probably have no clue what to do next…
Should you develop a product? Form a team? Raise funds? No. No. No.
After developing your social entrepreneurship idea, your next step should be validating your proposed solution. This informative post will teach you how to run market tests and decide whether or not your brilliant idea is actually worth pursuing.
How to Conduct a Basic Online Market Test
This 6-Step Process Uses Facebook Ads to Evaluate Interest in Your Idea.
Step 1: Create a landing page with Mailchimp (Option A).
Mailchimp is a versatile tool that enables entrepreneurs to collect emails and send newsletters. Using the free version, you can create a “landing page” that describes your solution with text, images, and videos. The term “landing page” means that people will land on the page when they click your ad. Here are the steps for creating your first landing page:
- Log in to Mailchimp.
- Click “Create” near the top-right corner.
- Select “Landing Page” on the left side of the pop-up window.
- Name your landing page, and choose an audience for email collection.
- Pick a landing page template.
- Add text, images, and videos to your page.
Step 1: Create a landing page with ConvertKit (Option B).
ConvertKit offers similar very email collection and delivery services to Mailchimp. Even premium pricing options are fairly comparable. When it comes to landing pages, ConvertKit has more templates. Plus, they offer advanced tools for mapping and designing email campaigns.
- Log in to ConvertKit.
- Click “Landing Pages & Forms” in the top menu.
- Click “Create New” in the top-right corner.
- Select “Landing Page” from the options.
- Select a template and click “Choose” when you scroll over the preview.
- Click the “Gear Icon” to navigate to settings.
- Click “Custom Domain” and select the default option.
- Use the ConvertKit tools to style your landing page and add SEO titles/text.
- Save your landing page.
- Click “Share” to get link to your new landing page.
Step 2: Add a registration form to your landing page.
The registration form is the most important part of your landing page because it enables people to engage with you. This form will help you track how many people are seriously interested in your idea and provide an initial list of contacts for research/marketing campaigns. You may want to use incentives, such as free downloads and beta testing opportunities, to promote registrations. Here are the basic Mailchimp form fields:
- Email (Always collect)
- First Name (Optional)
- Last Name (Optional)
- Address (Not very useful)
- Phone Number (Collect if necessary)
- Birthday (Not useful)
- Company (Use for B2B solutions)
Both Mailchimp and ConvertKit enable you to design forms within their landing page software. Once you have created a landing page, putting the final details on your form should be a breeze.
Step 3: Design a Facebook Ad with Canva.
Canva is a user-friendly tool that allows you to design marketing materials quickly and easily. The software offers a variety of high-quality templates for Facebook Ads so you can promote your social entrepreneurship idea in a professional manner. Here are the steps for designing your first Facebook Ad:
- Log in to Canva.
- Type “Facebook Ad” in the search bar, and select it from the dropdown.
- Choose your template or background.
- Add images, shapes, and text.
Step 4: Run your Facebook Ad.
Facebook offers cheap and flexible advertising solutions that help you reach people with specific interests, jobs, locations, etc. Due to its targeting criteria, Facebook provides a substantial advantage over other advertising platforms when it comes to market testing. Follow these instructions to set up your first Facebook Ad:
- Go to your organization’s Facebook Page.
- Click the blue “Promote” button in the left column.
- Select “Get More Website Visitors” in the pop-up window.
- Set the website link to your landing page URL.
- Design your post.
- Choose your audience based on location, age, interest, etc.
- Determine your budget (Hint: $5-$10 per day should be sufficient).
- Click “Promote” to send your ad in for review.
- Upon approval, let your ad run.
- Advanced: Convert your ad into a post and share it in relevant Facebook Groups.
Step 5: Record key metrics.
Tests are useless without metrics. Remember to record key metrics and compare them across your test cases. Here are a few data points you should track:
- Ad engagement rate: (Engagements/Ad Views) x 100%
- Click-through rate (CTR): (Landing Page Views/Ad Views) x 100%
- Conversion rate: (Emails Collected/Landing Page Views) x 100%
Step 6: Repeat Steps 1-5 to test alternate content and offerings.
Once you have learned how to conduct market tests, you can begin comparing performance across different types of content and offerings. By making small changes (e.g. different ad images, product names, product descriptions), you can vastly improve your test results. Keep testing new content designs and social entrepreneurship ideas until you discover what people want!
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