Validating B2B2C With Small Batch Experimentation
A Sample B2B2C Flow
Many manufacturers I work with do not have their own end customer facing channels or market validation capability.
Because of this, any new product initiative ultimately devolves into a PowerPoint presentation about opinions and hypotheticals between the manufacturer and the retailer.
“If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” — Jim Barksdale
There are ways to hack your PowerPoint presentation with real customer evidence and inform your conversations with B2B partners.
Experiment With Your End Customer
Manufacturers I advise are now getting out of the building to gather evidence on their new product ideas with small batch experimentation.
Product, Design and Engineering
When forming your team to run small batch experimentation, I strongly recommend having a mix of product, design and engineering represented.
Small Batch Experimentation Team
Your in market experimentation should not only validate your value proposition but it should also inform your product design.
This doesn’t mean you build all of the features the customers request, but you need to get to the problems behind the feature requests.
Small Batch Experimentation
Customer Interviews — Teams are identifying what customer jobs their new product will perform and then experimenting in customer interviews. If they cannot intercept customers on the street, then they use services like UserInterviews.com to quickly source people. Those interview candidates blind rank the jobs to see if they are even remotely close to real world scenarios. The interviews deeply explore the problem space, to see if the value proposition of their new product resonates at all with real people.
Landing Pages — Once the teams have learned more about the words their customers use and the jobs they are looking to perform, they quickly spin up a landing page. Most manufacturers go off brand with the experimentation so that they do not draw a lot of unwanted attention. The landing page contains language from the customer interviews. Teams secure an advertising budget to run ads and drive customers to the landing page. Having a short video of your new product on the landing page helps create trust in that it isn’t vaporware. If you need a guide for CTA’s on your landing page, I suggest Unbounce’s benchmark report for industry baselines.
Minimum Viable Products— Once the CTA’s are looking strong, teams add in purchase capability to the landing page. Teams don’t have to worry about scaling production or end-to-end supply chains as of yet. Manufacturers I work with create fewer than 100 units of the product at a time and use 3D printing / demo grade tools. These teams look closer to rapid prototyping teams in Shenzhen than your traditional large scale manufacturer. Teams I advise have actually sold these products through their landing page and hand shipped units to customers. (Yes, legal approved it.)
Do things that do not scale.
This is the hardest lesson for large manufacturers to learn.
Injecting Customer Evidence
Once you have proven that your value proposition resonates and people do want your product, then you can choose to shut down your small batch B2C experimentation entirely.
Package up the qualitative / quantitative customer evidence and bring it to your retail partner.
Use Customer Evidence For Leverage
Retail: “But there isn’t a market for this product, we…”
You: “We’ve interviewed 100’s of customers, identified the jobs they are trying to perform and how this product can serve those jobs.”
Retail: “Ok, but no one will buy…”
You: “We’ve sold over 200 of these to real customers and then kept in contact with them to get feedback on the product.”
Retail: “...”
Besides, with this small batch experimentation you aren’t building a new distribution channel to rival your retail partners. You are merely experimenting with customers to inform your product design and sway the partner conversation to your favor.
Not Just For Retail
The idea of experimenting with the end customer is not just for retail either.
Many manufacturers I work with create components that are a part of an end consumer product, or create chemicals that are used for other processes to create products.
In all of the use cases, it is inherently risky to manufacture one piece of the puzzle and assume that others can execute a solid go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
Instead, spend some time experimenting with the end customer to better understand the jobs they are trying to perform and if your value proposition resonates. The evidence you generate will help you make more informed investment decisions.
