"How can you test early signs of interest for a new product or service I am looking to launch, quickly with limited cost?" This question has been fielded to me in a number of occasions over the years, but in all honestly I provided a somewhat generic and standard answer - something along the lines of "Create a landing page, drive some traffic to it and either monitor clicks throughs for a 'coming soon' product or service or acquire email addresses". Pretty basic stuff right?

However, after reading a fantastic book by David J. Bland titled "Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation" it got me thinking there must be alternative approaches when it comes to 'Smoke Testing' an idea for a product or service. So I recently put aside some time and did some relatively thorough online research and began pulling together a list of alternative approaches based on some great case studies I found.

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For those new to the term 'Smoke Test' it's a technique that enables you to gather real-world, purchase intent data on your product or service idea as if it was ready for launch.

Each of these alternative techniques i have curated in the spreadsheet below have a similar goal!

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"To help you test early signs of desirability fast and with limited cost."

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This sheet includes a number of factors to consider, including:

⏰ Time to create
💪🏼 Validation strength gauge
💰 Setup cost
✅ Advantages
❌ Disadvantages
💼 Business Type
🔗 Examples

Lastly, i'm keen to keep adding to this and providing better examples and new techniques so please drop me a message with any suggestions and il update it. Feel free to make a copy of it and distribute it as you like. Enjoy.

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