Connect with the target audience

Talk with people in the target audience. You have to be able to find them and talk with them. These are the people who will give you feedback on your MVP and eventually buy your product. If you can’t do that, then when it’s time to sell your product you won’t have anyone to sell it to, because you won’t know how to reach the people who would want to buy it.

This step is critical to the success of your business: Once you’ve identified a community, a problem, a willingness to pay, and a target audience, test your ability to connect with them before you invest any time or money into building a product, because if you don’t know how to connect with your target audience, you won’t know where or how to sell your product after you make it.

This is an important pre-launch activity. You’re not checking to see if your target audience can be reached — you’re checking if you can reach your target audience. Imagine that another person is building a product right now that is identical to yours in every way. If one of you knows how to connect with the target audience for that product and the other one doesn’t, it’s easy to predict which business will succeed. This means that if you know there are competitors out there and they are making sales, then you know that they have learned how to reach the target audience, but that does not mean that you know how to reach the target audience. Don’t assume that just because someone is out there selling something similar, that you can do it too. If you want to have a chance at success, you need to check that you can reach your target audience.

If you reach them online, then reach them online. Otherwise, get up and go to wherever they are and talk with them.

There are different kinds of places where you can find your audience:

A marketplace. If there’s already a place where people buy or sell products, the community is already going there to shop for solutions to their problems, so go there and meet them. For example, a farmer’s market for produce, a state fair, Amazon for books, Etsy for hand-made things, etc.
Warm network. Your friends and colleagues. Maybe they need what you’re offering, or maybe they know someone who needs what you’re offering. Invite them to try it themselves or to invite people they know to try it.
Social media. Takes a long time to build an audience, but it can reach many people. If you don’t have a big audience, try being a guest in someone else’s show or blog.

Online communities

Quora and other forums

Facebook groups

Slack and Discord channels

IndieHackers

Twitter/X

Bluesky

What to do

Make a video of yourself talking about your solution statement and what excites you the most about the people you will help (or save).

Talk with at least 10 potential customers, but do not pitch them yet. Instead, approach them with curiosity about the problem:

“How do you currently solve [problem]?”
“What’s annoying/frustrating about your current solution/method?”
“Have you tried finding a better solution? What happened?”
“Would you pay to resolve this?”

Then, create and share a simple landing page. This is how you move from qualitative insights (conversations) to quantitative validation of your business idea (data). Create a simple landing page outlining your proposed product clearly.

The page should include:

Introduction. This should be intriguing and spark their curiosity
Tell a story. Interact with your audience even if it’s one-way it should be in a casual and authentic style.
Clear explanation of the niche problem you’re solving
Simple visual mock-up of the solution (use Canva to create this)
Pricing or model details, if possible; and if you have more than one thing to offer then stack them
Call to action. Invite them to sign up or purchase, which would lead to an email signup form with a call-to-action like “sign up to get early access”

How to get people to say yes:

Remember your message matters. Someone in your audience needs what you’re offering. Maybe they are now where you were last year or 20 years ago.
Enter the conversation already in their mind. Knowing what they’re thinking about comes from the market research about their needs and problems.
People buy from you when they feel understood (not necessarily when they understand you)
Sell them what they want (the vision of the successful future) and deliver what they need to get there
Elevate your offer. Stack the value to make your offer so irresistible they would feel silly saying no.
Sell through service. Fall in love with your customer, care about them, and want to share with them. Fall in love with your product or service. Fall in love with their outcomes and results. Speak genuinely about these things. When it’s time to ask for the money, that’s just a required step to getting the value, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to help anyone else anymore.

Here are some tools to create the page:

WordPress, carrd.co, Wix, Notion, or Google Docs for creating quick, no-code landing pages.
Mailchimp or ConvertKit to capture emails to gauge interest

Share this landing page in the same communities and forums where you gathered feedback.

Reach out to people who expressed interest:

Email early followers, offer personal one-on-one demo calls
Discuss their workflows to see how your solution fits in
Confirm the price they are willing to pay

Compass

After you engage the target audience, continue to product development.

See more executive activities for startup and revenue activities for marketing and sales and more.