How to Test If Your Offer Is Any Good

Do you remember Google+?

Google spent hundreds of millions of bucks trying to get people to switch from the then-hottest social network: Facebook. They had excellent technology, smart engineers, and an unlimited marketing budget.

It was officially shuttered on August 2, 2019.

Google was essentially saying "use our social network because we're Google." And honestly, that’s just not a compelling reason at all to switch from something that already works.

Google was trying to solve a “Facebook problem” that didn’t exist.

People spend months (or years) of their life optimizing tactics—split-testing headlines, tweaking ad copy, rebuilding landing pages—when the real problem is fundamental. Which leads me to this basic fact that is really easy to gloss over sometimes…

No judgment here: I’ve sunk big sums of cash into bad ideas before.

Here's what I've learned after working with dozens of businesses: many marketing failures aren't tactical failures, they're offer failures. And just like understanding base rates helps you choose battles with good odds, testing your offer is how you determine if you even have good odds to begin with.

So you test the fundamentals first before you optimize the details. And there are two parts to this.

Before you test anything, you need an offer that's actually testable. If you follow these three basics, it will be enough to get you 80% there.

The core question every offer needs to answer: Are you solving a real problem for people who have money to solve it?

If you can get your offer in line with these three principles, then it’s enough to do some testing. Because, in my view, the testing process primarily serves to make sure you’re directionally right. And if your early testing shows that you’re directionally right, then you can optimize the details of the offer and the tactics you use to promote it.

Easier said than done, obviously. Which brings me to…

The second mistake is thinking you need expensive market research or perfect prototypes to test your offer.

But truth is, you really just need to work on a minimum viable product or service. And one with as few bells and whistles as possible, because you’re probably going to have to explore a few options before you can exploit one that works.

You don't necessarily need expensive market research or focus groups.

Market validation can often be done with inexpensive tools like putting together a simple landing page with a small amount of money for ads. Or, alternatively, just cold calling—yes, cold calling—a couple hundred people before you spend 9-12 months of time developing something people don’t want to buy.

And this needs to be done while also recognizing another subtle fact:

You're not testing if people say they want your offer. You're testing if they'll pay for it.

Those are very different things.

People will say they want all sorts of things they'll never buy. They'll tell you your idea is great to be polite. But don’t worry, there are ways to separate politeness from true feelings.

Once you have an offer designed around outcomes rather than features, you can test it without building anything elaborate or spending much money.

The simplest validation method is also the most overlooked: just describe your offer to people in your target market and see how they react.

Find 10 people who match your ideal customer profile. This could be through your network, LinkedIn, industry events, or even cold calls or emails if you're respectful about it.

Explain your offer in 2-3 sentences and watch their reaction. Do they immediately understand what you're talking about? Do they ask clarifying questions about the problem or the solution? Do they mention that they have this exact problem?

Pay attention to body language and follow-up questions. Genuine interest looks different from polite interest.

Red flag: If you have to explain your offer twice or people seem confused about what you're selling, it's probably too complicated. Simplify before you test anything else.

Build a simple page that explains your offer and asks for email signups, pre-orders, or consultation requests. This doesn't have to be elaborate—a single page with a clear headline, brief explanation, and one call-to-action will work.

Drive small amounts of targeted traffic to this page. Share it with your network, post it on relevant social media groups, or run a small ad campaign with a $100-200 budget.

For email signups, think around 10-15% conversion from warm traffic (people who know you or came from personal recommendations) and perhaps 2-5% from cold traffic. For pre-orders or consultation requests, 1-3% conversion rates tend to indicate genuine interest.

It’s tempting to build elaborate funnels and spend thousands on ads, but this isn’t necessary for early concept testing.

And that’s really the goal here: just do enough to test the basic concept.

Offer to deliver your service or product to 3-5 people at cost or a significant discount. Make it clear this is a pilot program to refine your offering.

Focus on learning, not profit. You want to understand:

For B2B offers, this might look like a 30-60 day trial engagement. For B2C offers, it could be a beta version at 50% off regular pricing.

Just make sure you get across that you're in learning mode. This can make people more eager to help by providing honest feedback, and often delivered with kindness too.

Present your offer to your existing network—past clients, colleagues, friends in your industry. You're not necessarily trying to sell to them, but you want honest feedback from people who understand your market.

Structure these conversations carefully. Instead of asking "What do you think?" ask specific questions: "Who do you know with this problem?" "What would concern you about this approach?" "How would you explain this to someone else?"

Your network will tell you if you're missing something obvious or if your offer doesn't make sense from their perspective. They'll also tell you if it's compelling enough that they'd consider referring people to you.

Testing will give you data, but you need to know how to interpret it. Not every piece of negative feedback means you should scrap everything. And so you’ll need to use your best judgment in order to tease out the true meaning of the feedback you’ve received.

So let’s break this into red lights, yellow lights, and green lights.

If you're seeing consistently low engagement across multiple test types, that's a clear signal. People understand what you're offering but don't see enough value to take action.

Another pivot signal: you're solving a problem people acknowledge but don't prioritize solving. They'll say "yes, that's a problem" but won't pay to fix it because other problems are more urgent.

Market feedback suggesting adjacent problems are more pressing is also worth paying attention to. Sometimes you're in the right neighborhood but knocking on the wrong door.

A strong response from a subset of your target market suggests you're onto something but need to narrow your focus. Instead of "professionals who want more freedom," maybe it's "marketing consultants who want to replace their biggest client."

People wanting your offer but having specific objections about price, timing, or delivery method indicates you have the right solution but wrong packaging. These are solvable problems.

Clear feedback about how to make the offer more compelling is gold. If multiple people say "I'd buy this if..." then you have a clear path to improvement.

Multiple people willing to pay or pre-pay is the strongest signal you can get. Money talks louder than any focus group could ever muster.

Organic word-of-mouth and referrals indicate you've solved a problem people care about. When customers become advocates without prompting, you're probably onto something.

People asking when they can get started or how to sign up means you've created genuine urgency around a real problem.

Testing your offer connects directly back to understanding base rates and choosing battles with good odds. When you validate your offer before you scale, you're determining whether you have favorable odds before you commit serious resources.

It’s very tempting for entrepreneurs to skip this step entirely. They have an idea, build it, then go straight to tactics—Facebook ads, sales funnels, content marketing.

And if it fails? Blame the execution instead of questioning whether anyone wants what they're selling.

But here’s the irony: testing your offer takes so much less time than building a whole marketing system around something people don’t want. A few weeks of conversations and simple tests can save you months of expensive optimization.

So before you spend another dollar on ads, funnels, or marketing automation, spend some time testing whether your offer is any good.

You might discover you need to change what you're selling, not how you're selling it. And that discovery could save you a lot of time, money, and frustration.