🗞 What's New: Unique ways to validate your idea

Validation is essential before building, and there are lots of ways to do it:

• Check out these tips for interesting, unique ways to validate your idea. Hint: Look at your own bank transactions and note what you pay for. This may help you discover what others would pay for!
• Have you tried video prospecting for your email marketing campaigns? Incorporating video can help increase your response rates significantly, and the guide below can get you started.
• Founder Morgan Kung got 100 active users within days after launching Gemoo, a platform that organizes messages containing videos and images. Here, he breaks down his strategy, including the importance of building great relationships with other founders.

Want to share something with nearly 115,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

✅ Unique Ways to Validate Your Idea

by Ben Gorman

Looking to validate your next idea? Check out these tips! Disclaimer: These tips are for validating the problem, not your solution to the problem.

Let's dive in!

Use Upwork

There are a ton of companies on Upwork looking for freelancers to solve some kind of problem. These companies are ready to open their wallets and pay for a solution. Use this data.

If your idea is to build an AI tool to predict when someone's hungry and automatically order food for them, search Upwork to find out if anybody's actually looking for that.

Here's another example: Suppose your idea is to build a customer lifetime value calculator. You go on Upwork, run a search, and discover that 10 people are hiring data scientists to calculate customer lifetime value for their business. That's pretty good validation!

Ask questions with factual answers

Instead of asking your friends and family: "Would you use X?" ask them "When's the last time you did a Google search for X?"

You might be surprised how many people would answer: "Oh I'd totally use that!" But they'd also answer: "I've never actually searched for a solution to that problem."

Do competitors exist?

If competitors exist, you've validated the problem, and you've more than likely validated that people are willing to pay for a solution.

There are billions of people on earth. If you don't have competitors, you're probably solving a problem that doesn't exist.

Look at your own credit card transactions

What have you actually paid for this past month? Why did you buy those things?

You know the problem you're trying to solve. Have you ever actually paid for something that attempts to solve it? Looking at your card transactions will help you identify the level of pain that it takes for a customer to actually buy something.

Extra tip

Mac Martine adds an additional suggestion:

Where there's a spreadsheet, there's a SaaS idea. Create a SaaS that specializes in simplifying what the spreadsheet is created to solve!

Will you use any of these tips for validation? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

📱 Here's how LinkedIn is turning into the next Instagram.

🎯 Retargeting in Google Ads, and how it works.

🤖 AI may change our judgment and decision-making.

🤔 Should you invest in paid verification from Twitter or Meta?

💻 Reddit has continued to update its ad platform.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

📹 Video Prospecting for Email Marketing

by M. Basit Mehtab

Tired of low response rates from your email marketing campaigns? As a lead generation specialist, I understand how challenging it can be to get the attention of your prospects.

I recently discovered a game-changing technique that helped me to increase my open rate by 80%, click rate by 25%, and positive reply rate by 5%. Read on for more!

The key

Have you tried video prospecting?

Video prospecting can revolutionize your lead generation efforts!

I conducted a video prospecting experiment using the latest tools and techniques, and the results were nothing short of impressive.

A breakdown of the results

Recording video:

I recorded a generic video addressing industry leaders and discussing common pain points, while providing solutions through our services.

At the end of the video, I invited them to book a meeting, or reply for more information.

Finding my target audience:

To find my targeted audience, I used LinkedIn Sales Navigator and scraped the list. Then, I used Snov.io to find their emails.

Training AI:

Instead of spending a lot of time creating personalized videos for each prospect, I used Hify to create bulk personalized videos in Google Sheets.

First, I uploaded the video and created a preset. Then, I added screenshots of all the prospects' LinkedIn profiles.

After that, I recorded audio, and trained the AI to generate personalized audio introductions for each prospect. This saved me a lot of time, and allowed me to reach out to a larger number of prospects with personalized videos.

Automating Video Personalization:

After creating the audio, I finalized the preset, attached the audio and LinkedIn screenshot to the video, and saved it in Google Sheets to create videos on autopilot.

Creating the email campaign:

Once the videos were ready, I downloaded a CSV and pulled it up in Snov.io to create a drip campaign. This had five follow-ups with a four day difference. I went ahead and published my campaigns.

The real success came from the science behind video prospecting. By personalizing my approach and using a visual medium, I was able to capture my prospects' attention, and connect with them on a deeper level.

I've seen a significant increase in my response rates since I started using them. My results speak for themselves. With video prospecting, I was able to increase my response rates by 50%!

Some tips to get you started

• Keep your video short and sweet. I recommend keeping it under two minutes.
• You don't need to personalize every video. You can create a generic video, then personalize it with AI tools.
• Follow up 3-5 times over a few days.

Would you try video prospecting? Share in the comments below!

Discuss this story.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

Dormio's header:

1. Alluring outcome: “Your most restful sleep...”
2. Made frictionless: “...just a sip away.”
3. Vivid language: “Relax,” “unwind,” “restorative.”

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

🚀 Morgan Kung Got 100+ Users a Few Days After Launching

by Morgan Kung

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Morgan Kung, founder of Gemoo, a platform that organizes messages containing video and images.

After launch, we wanted to get more users in order to gain feedback as soon as possible. It's very difficult to drive new users when you have a limited budget! That’s how we embarked on our journey. We had these expectations, but no prior experience.

It’s been a difficult journey because we all lacked experience. We began to search, collect, and read a plethora of posts, threads, and books about growth hacks before attempting them. With this knowledge, we reached our goal a few days after we launched. The number of users far exceeded our expectations, with over 1K visits and around 100+ active users.

Here's how we did it!

Create strong bonds with other founders

The majority of the founders we reached out to are experienced people in this field, having founded more than one product. They are also dedicated to product growth.

Most importantly, the majority of them are friendly and warm, so after talking to them, we were inspired and encouraged.

Hang out in related communities

Personally, I adore the internet’s enchantment. If you want to dive into a specific topic and drive traffic from there, just join a community and get involved.

My cofounder and I have joined more than 10 Facebook Groups, participated in five Slack communities, met 100+ Twitter founders, and posted in various subreddits. Fortunately, we’ve seen results:

• New visits from Facebook:

• New visits from Reddit:

• New visits from Twitter:

Influencer outreach helps (if done right)

We were initially unsure about who our target users were (a mistake we should not have made!), so we devised a strategy: Imagine users in various fields, identify a few people who are regarded as experts in those fields and have a consistent following, then connect with them.

It was effective. We initially targeted marketers. I discovered a lead marketer in a Facebook Group who also runs a community, and we talked about something he was interested in. I began to recommend Gemoo, and promised to provide some benefits to users in his community. Here are some comments and suggestions that we’ve received as a result:

Launch on Product Hunt

I believe that Product Hunt is still the most effective way to generate more visits and feedback. We've gained more than 500 visits from Product Hunt!

I shared more specifics about my Product Hunt experience in this post.

The above suggestions have been the most effective things for me and my team, and you can also check out this post to see all the other things that we've tried (and failed!).

I hope my experience helps you catch the attention of early users for your projects!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Ben Gorman, Darko, M. Basit Mehtab, Harry Dry, and Morgan Kung for contributing posts. —Channing