This is the third part of the 3-series article about reasons to share your business idea. Part 1. Part 2.

Let me introduce you to the last, but surely not least reason to stop hiding your business idea. What is more, I wish you become encouraged to share it with pleasure when you read my own story implemented in the article.

3. IT GENERATES BUZZ AROUND YOUR BUSINESS

This is definitely my favorite one.

The vast majority of businesses start with zero people knowing about the offer. However, you can also find some rare ones that beat sales records in their first days.

Why does this happen? How can these businesses sell so much if no one knows the product?

Here’s the key:

many people are waiting for the product to be officially launched

I’m sure you can easily think of iPhone launches as example, but I’m not referring to such outliers, I’m thinking in startups, specifically.

So is it all about promotion? Sure.

But isn’t that expensive? Well, yeah, if you pay for it, of course.

But there is a free and accurate way to promote your business.

You don’t need to invest in media from the first day; I would especially recommend against that if you’re launching a company through bootstrapping (with your own money).

Nope, you don’t need to spend cash on the promotion. I’m not saying it doesn’t help – of course it does -, but there’s something else that’s even more crucial than paid advertisement.

When you’re developing the offer, you want to have as many people from your target market involved as possible.

I’m sure you think I’m crazy. After all, how can you develop a project by involving more people?

I won’t dwell too much more on this issue right now because you can find a practical example of our first business’ story after this paragraph.

Let’s just say that, first of all, when you’re asking people for feedback, you’re already promoting your business. Even if they don’t want it, your target market is already hearing from you and knowing that sooner or later you will launch.

But most importantly, my advice is that every time you have a marketing or product doubt, you go ahead and ask directly to your target audience what they think.

That’s right. So you aren’t sure of what name to give your brand?

Go and ask your audience.

You have no idea what should be the colors of your logo?

Go and ask your audience.

You can do it in several ways: via social media, enterprise email, SMS or Whatsapp and so on.

As soon as you get people involved with your brand, they will feel like it’s their own brand.

Can you see how powerful this is?

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MY STORY: Why was everyone so excited about the launch of Walkamole

I wanted to share our own example with you. Naturally, it doesn’t always fit every scenario.

Quick recap:

We’ve created a Mexican Burritos Street Food business called Walkamole that sold more than 80k€ in only 6 months of activity (the product was priced at €5 price point on average).

Since the beginning, we always thought how important it was to validate our marketing ideas with the market.

I remember telling my parents that we should always share the idea with as many people as possible, particularly with everyone within our target market – we had our audience so well defined that we even invented a fictional character to represent the exact lifestyle of our ideal customer:

Jayson, the dude!

– in honor of The Big Lebowski

So for some months we were only sharing this idea with our close circle, and we’ve done our best to grow enthusiasm around our business.

After all, we knew that you cannot easily find Mexican food in Portugal, but there are a lot of Portuguese guys traveling and eating at Mexican restaurants.

The critical moments in which we asked for the opinion of our target audience were the following:

1. They helped us decide which would be an appropriate name of our business

2. They also helped us pick the layout of our Street Food vehicle

3. We invited a small group of 15 people to taste our first recipe and to give us feedback

4. We then performed a quick survey to understand how we should price the Burritos

5. On two birthday parties, we were invited to sell at the food cost price, and we created a 3-questions survey to gather feedback

6. Finally, we also asked for help when choosing our brand slogan.

We always presented some examples; we wouldn’t leave the question open-ended. For instance, we had doubts between choosing green or black for our vehicle color, so we presented both options to our public.

As you can see, we’ve tested a lot, but mostly we knew from the beginning that we were generating an exciting buzz around Walkamole. We wanted to make people feel like this was also their business and a product of their personal taste.

It ended up working out pretty well, and that’s the reason why I personally wanted to share this story with you.

This is the ultimate reason why I really recommend you should spread the word about your business idea, even before you have a business.

There will be people telling you not to overkill with the transparency, that you want to keep some secrecy to gain an early move advantage.

You can keep some things in private, like how much money you expect to make or what your costs are, and so on – things that aren’t that sexy in the eyes of your audience.

But…

when it comes to your product and your brand, ask people for their opinion and GET THEM involveD

Before you notice, you will have a crowd of loyal customers even before your product is finally released.

Thanks for reading, hope it was insightful! Let me know if you are encouraged enough to reveal your business ideas to others!

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