You may think your business idea is the next best thing since sliced bread, but that doesn’t mean that others think so! Validation is the very NECESSARY process of vetting your ideas and making sure that you will be putting something into the market that people actually want/need.

These simple steps to validation your ideas is not an all inclusive list, but they are useful guidelines that can make a huge difference in the failure or success of your startup.

Analyze Potential Competitors: Find out who already makes a similar product or offers a similar service. By analyzing your potential competitors, not only will you be able to see if their idea is valid and attracting customers, you might also see the flaws in their model and find ways that you could improve your own venture. Follow their marketing techniques. What is their social media traffic like? Find out all you can about their target markets so you know who you will need to survey in the future.

Understand the Market: Like stated before, you need to get to know your competitors and your competitors target market. Is the market you want to reach a growing one? Find out what type of people will gravitate toward your business and how you can best meet their needs. How can you better meet your target market’s needs over your competitors?

Conduct Surveys: Another sure way to understand your potential market is to talk with them directly and conduct surveys. What do they think of your idea? You might get some great feedback on your idea and possibly even some ideas on how to improve your idea that you never would have come across any other way than talking directly with the people who will be benefiting from your business.

Crowdfund: Crowdfunding in a way is like a survey, if people think your idea is worth pursuing or valid they might be willing to put some cash behind it. On the contrary, if your idea still needs improvement or should be killed altogether, no one will be willing to fund it. This is a great way to see if people care about your idea as well as get some seed money to continue to build.

Open a Test Store: Opening a test store is a way to dip your toe into the water to see how others will react. Similar to crowdfunding, if people care about your idea or if it actually solves their problems you are more likely to get traction. If things are going well, this is a great opportunity to collect emails and build a mailing list of potential customers.