Step 4: Test

The testing step is where you put your ideas into the real world. The goal of this step is to find out which of the traction channels in your inner circle is worth focusing on.

You will make that decision based on results from a series of relatively cheap tests. These tests should be designed to answer the following questions.

  • Roughly how much will it cost to acquire customers through this channel?
  • How many customers do you think are available through this channel?
  • Are the customers that you are getting through this channel the ones that you want right now?

These questions are very similar to the columns we suggested making in the brainstorm step. When testing, you are replacing your educated guesses with real answers.

There isn't a single method for testing each traction channel because every business is different. We will cover tactics for organizing and thinking about these tests in chapter 4. You should also get specific ideas for each traction channel throughout the rest of the book.

Keep in mind that, when testing, you are not trying to get a lot of traction with a channel just yet. Instead, you are simply trying to determine if it's a channel that could work for your startup. Your main consideration at this point is speed to get data and prove out your assumptions.

You want to design smaller scale tests that don't require much upfront cost or effort. For example, run four Facebook ads vs. forty. You should be able to get a rough idea of a channel's effectiveness with just a few hundred dollars.