How I Launched a Minimum Viable Product with a Zero Dollar Investment

Today’s blog post is one of my favorites, because we are talking about launching, and Facebook messenger bots. This post will help you validate your course idea before you launch your course, so that you don’t waste time, money and effort creating something no one wants to buy. Let’s get into it!

What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

A Minimum Viable Product is kind of a prototype of your complete product, that you launch to a limited set of people to gauge market interest and get feedback.

Since I am a digital marketing strategist, I am going to talk about it in the online sense.

An MVP is a prototype of a course, service or digital product that is released for a limited time, and that can help you improve and optimize your final product.

Some advantages of using a Minimum Viable Product are:

You don’t have to spend a ton of time in creating launch assets, you can go to the market with your idea and a basic product
You can work closely with a small group of people to get their feedback so your product is better equipped to solve your target audience’s problems
This also helps you test demand for your product and whether or not it will fly
Since you are working closely with your customers, you will know what to add or remove from the final product. This means your product has a higher chance of success.
You are able to collect testimonials from this small group of customers that you can then use for your final product launch
Although you will be putting in time and effort to create a minimum viable product and launch it to the market, all of these points indicate that you can drastically cut your costs when you launch a minimum viable product, in turn avoiding large losses.

When should you use the MVP model?

If you are planning to launch a high ticket course or group program, creating an MVP first, and testing it will a small group is a great way to test your product. This helps you avoid spending a ton of time and money on something that no one in your target audience wants.
I generally advice my clients to use the MVP model when they are planning to launch their first product. The great thing about your MVP is that it does not need to be perfect. You work, together with a small group of customers to make it perfect.
One of the other scenarios for you to use an MVP is when you don’t really have the time to create a complete product. The way I teach about the MVP, the launch process takes place even before you have created the complete product. You are letting people know that this is a “beta-launch” of sorts and you then create the product/ course as you go.

For example, you will release a new module every week, so basically you are creating modules as you go. Launching the product in this way makes sure that people have paid you for the product/ course, that is, the idea is validated before you actually start creating the product/ course.

The story of my MVP:

The course topic:

I started off in the online space as a service provider, offering Facebook ads and Facebook messenger bots services to coaches, consultants, other service providers and course creators in the online space. I had build my authority inside of Facebook groups enough that I used to be tagged in posts looking for experts in these two areas.

So, when I decided to create my first course, I knew it was going to be either on Facebook ads or chatbots.

The Facebook ads course market is exhausted, and I really enjoyed talking about bots so I decided to create a course on Facebook messenger bots.

Although it was a new, and buzzing topic, a lot of online business owners were not completely aware of how they could use bots in their business, so I wanted to make sure my course idea was validated because I could spend time and effort creating the course.

This is when I decided to launch that course as a minimum viable product.

The lead magnet:

I realized that if I were to sell a course on the topic of Facebook messenger bots, I would have to share some advantages and opportunities with regards to bots, and also give some value upfront before selling the course.

I create a 5 day video series with short 8-10 minutes videos where I not only shared the opportunities with used bots for business, my clients’ and my results but I also showed them how they could create the basic messages and setup for their own Facebook messenger bot, connected to their Facebook messenger business page.

You can go through the funnel here.

Goals for the MVP launch:

I decided that although my course would be high ticket, for the purpose of the MVP launch, I would price it at $47. In order to validate the idea, my goal was to enroll 10 people at $47 each.

Also, since I was not investing in tools at all, all of this money would be profit.

The Sale:

I did not create a sales page for the purpose of this launch. In the last video of the lead magnet video series, I pitched my course, and sent them to a paypal link. Simple, and easy. Since I only needed 10 customers for this launch, this was the easiest way to do it.

The tools I used:

Loom

Loom is a video creation tool. IT is one of the 18 free tools I recommend for your business in this post.

I created and edited my lead magnet videos using Loom. Once the videos were edited, I downloaded them.

Manychat:

This is the secret of this entire launch. Manychat is the tool I use to build Facebook messenger bots for myself and my clients.

If you don’t know what a messenger bot is, you can go through my free course on bots here.

The Manychat features that I used for this launch are free to use.

I created a landing page in Manychat.

Minimum Viable Product Launch — The landing page in Manychat

Once they opted in through the landing page, they received a bot sequence over 5 days, each consisting of one video. A bot sequence is very similar to an email sequence.

Basically, I automated everything by spending a couple of hours to create the sequence, so when people opted in, it was all automated.

Paypal

Like I mentioned earlier, I pitched my course in the last video and used a direct PAypal link for payments.

Facebook group:

I used a lead magnet video series like a challenge to increase engagement. As part of each video, I asked the subscribers to share that they completed the video by posting in my Facebook group.

Here is what the message looked like:

I drove traffic to my lead magnet by posting about it on my social media accounts, in my Facebook group, in other Facebook groups.

I did a few livestreams in my clients/ online friends’ Facebook groups as well.

Since Facebook messenger bots are new, a lot of people were interested in learning more about them.

I had over 100 people subscribe to my lead magnet, and from those, I was able to reach my goal of having 10 people sign up for the beta launch of my course.

This is how I not only validated my course idea and got testimonials for my course without investing a dime, but I also made some profit on it.

What are some ways in which you validated your course idea? Let me know in the comments!

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