2 builders who never spoke to each other

Buy a little traffic to answer one question

Paid clicks are the fastest way to put strangers in front of an idea, so cap the first experiment at pocket money and treat the spend as the price of information rather than as an acquisition model. Search beats social here because the visitor typed the query and already wants the thing. Set your own bid well under the suggested price and see whether it still delivers: one maker capped bids at half the recommended rate and still got the qualified traffic he needed, and a few hundred dollars of competing ad sets can settle a positioning argument in a day or two.

The method

1. 01

   Cap the whole first validation experiment at a token ad budget, since the question is only whether anyone wants the thing.

2. 02

   Treat ad spend during validation as the cost of information rather than as a customer acquisition model, and only work out organic traffic once the funnel looks viable.

3. 03

   For a validation test buy search ads rather than social ads, because search intent guarantees the visitor already wants the thing you are testing.

4. 04

   Set your own bid well under the platform's suggested cost per click and see whether it still delivers the traffic you need.

5. 05

   Validate the positioning with a few hundred dollars of competing ad sets and read the winner in a day or two, rather than waiting for a finished campaign.

What it returned

• $20

  Zue committed up to $20 of Adwords spend for his first Place Card Me test.

• $0.50

  Google recommended over a dollar per click for Zue's keywords; he capped bids at $0.50 and still got enough qualified traffic to run the test.

• Zue's plan was to prove the funnel with paid clicks first and solve traffic without ads afterwards.

• Zue chose Google Adwords over cheaper Facebook ads specifically to reach people typing queries like printable wedding place cards.

Sources

• How to Find (Not Guess) Your Target Audience: A Data-Driven Approach - SparkToroAmanda Natividad · sparktoro.com · Validate and Test Your Insights · 2025-04-09
• Testing an MVP with Google Ads and AnalyticsCory Zue · coryzue.com · Defining the Test · 2017-05-17
• MVP PricingCory Zue · coryzue.com · Running the Test · 2017-06-11