The alternative to testing? Segment your market until it fits all your assumptions, biases, inclinations and beliefs. Otherwise known as do nothing. Sadly, confirmation bias often leads great volumes of work to the same conclusion as the do nothing process.
You may get lucky, and do well. However, alternatively, the market might not:
- be big enough to generate enough revenue,
- be coherent enough to develop mindshare and communication channels,
- have enough urgency around the problem, either currently, or permanently, or
- be stable enough to stay around for long.
In which case, you have a product and a market you can’t reach, or a market you can reach but doesn’t care, or a market that slowly disappears due to commodity pressures or encroachment from other solution types. Or you might have hit onto something that is simple, stable and meets your business growth desires. In which case, congratulations, and I invite you to read on for fun and future reference. You never know when the market might change.
So, even if you don’t test now, you will probably need to soon enough to 1)grow, and 2) stay relevant to the changing market.
And how to avoid the nasty influence of confirmation bias? That’s a topic for a future post and includes the importance of testing your message AND your assumptions.
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