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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

When you’re not sure what customers want, risking money to expand your business makes your palms sweat. New geography, new product, new customer etc.

So everyone says you make an MVP to get more confident. But MVPs take days to build. You need customer reactions, FAST.

So today we’ll talk about how you can test customer reactions in minutes with short-form content.

Stick to the end and you can vote on with topic 13,000 people will receive next week.

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Alright so how do we get customer reactions in minutes?

Imagine you’re building a SaaS product.

You need to get customer reactions to your solution. So you spend 4 days building a rough version that you can put in front of people to get their reaction.

But 4 days is too long!

Instead, use short-form text content to run hundreds of tests to guide the direction of your solution to feel more confident you’re risking money in the right idea.

Let’s call this a “micro-MVP.”

Why short-form text?

Short-form text is the fastest way to get feedback.

With short-form text you can create 10 tests in the time it would take you to make 1 short-form video.

It also has more accurate tests than other types of content. Your results aren’t skewed by other variables (audio quality, video quality, graphics etc.)

So here’s what you do to learn how customers will react to your solution: 👇

The 3-step micro-MVP process:

Here’s the big picture: you post short-form text content about your solution and see how customers react.

Keep adjusting until you’re addressing a problem that’s painful enough for customers to pay you to solve it.

Twitter and LinkedIn are the best short-form text platforms to run tests on.

Here’s a few guidelines:

1) Test reactions

Explain why you think it makes sense to expand your business. This explanation will be what you test with short-form text.

3 things you’re testing:

Pain / Frustration

Confirm you’re solving a problem that’s painful enough.

One easy way to do this is to post questions that get people to tell you their pain.

Look through the comments to so if there’s pain that repeats more than others.

Example question:
Here’s how I learned businesses struggle understanding customers.

Another way is to write posts that sympathize with their pain. Compare how many people engage (“like”) a post and see which pain stands out.

Example:
I wrote a post about a founder’s pain when customers don’t buy that got 2x my normal engagement.

Messaging

Are you using words that actually get customers to have an “ah-hah” moment and wonder where you’ve been all their lives?

You can have the best solution in the world but if customers don’t understand that no one buys.

So let’s use micro-MVPs to find the wording that gets customers to understand how awesome you are.

Example:

For my own business, I learned the phrasing “build a customer-base, not a follower-base” resonates well. I’ve said the idea 100 times but that phrasing converts far better.

I recommend you do this through single tweets, but I learned this phrasing works in a thread. This phrase got 1,000 more “likes” than any other tweet in the thread.

Solution

Are customers excited by your method to solve their pain?

Offer solutions and see how customers engage. I do this through the weekly poll in my newsletter. You can poll on Twitter / LinkedIn.

2) Post on short-form text platforms

I prefer Twitter and LinkedIn for short-text platforms.

Each platform gives you different insights. So combine results from both to get more reliable results.

Here’s what I mean:

Demographic data. Winner: LinkedIn

When you post on LinkedIn, you can determine if your post reached the audience you expected. You can see:
• Job titles
• Location
• Industries
• Company size

Here’s a peak behind the scenes at the analytics on one of my LinkedIn posts:

These demographics are critical because you need feedback from potential customers. Not just anyone.

Troubleshooting: If you’re not getting the demographics you expected, make your content more targeted (so only your customer would care).

Qualitative Feedback. Winner: Twitter

I asked the exact same question on Twitter and LinkedIn (see the image below).

• Twitter: 287 comments
• LinkedIn: 7 comments...

So what’s going on here?

LinkedIn is your professional resume. Your boss can see what you’ve posted. People want to appear more polished so they engage less and their engagement tends to be more positive (which can be false positive signals).

Twitter is like your lunch break. People will tell you to your face when they think you’re wrong.

Negative feedback hurts, but it’s amazing for rapid feedback on your solution.

3) Review results and iterate

Layout all your results. Keep testing what worked. Come up with theories as to why the others didn’t work.

When you have a few more consistent winners, that’s a signal you’re heading in the right direction to build your MVP.

Troubleshooting

“Cool idea Brian, but what if I don’t have an audience (or I use IG / TikTok / YouTube)? How can I have enough customer feedback?”

Open a Twitter and/or LinkedIn account. Pay the platform to promote your posts.

They’re the best platforms for micro-MVPs.

• Here’s a guide to boost your LinkedIn micro-MVPs.
• Here’s a guide to boost your Twitter micro-MVPs.

Short-form text is the fastest micro-MVP

Micro-MVPs will give you the confidence that you’re moving in the right direction. Run several quick tests before your risk your money building an MVP that no one wants.

Now it’s your turn

Comment below and tell me how this tip impacts your business.

I read every comment. I’ll guide you to resources to help.

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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🛠️ Outlier Resources

Come up with Micro-MVP ideas:
If you’re struggling to come up with micro-MVP ideas, this thread from Dickie Bush is a great place to start.

Tool to send micro-MVPs:
I like Publer. The calendar view is awesome for tracking when posts go out across Twitter / LinkedIn.

Personal update:
My next city has become the #1 most polluted city on the planet! Every year farmers burn crops and Chiang Mai becomes heavily polluted until the rain washes it away in April. I’m now in Hanoi.

📚 Next Week’s Topic

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People like you make this community amazing. So I want to give you the opportunity to pick the topic that will help you grow your business the most (vote to choose next week’s topic below):