1 session inside Boa
Paul Waddy
Paul Waddy is an e-commerce advisor, chair of the National Online Retail Association and Australia Post's Customer Advisory Group, co-founder of ecomNation and author of Selling Online for Dummies and Shopify for Dummies.
The session
What Paul teaches
Test demand with a Photoshopped product and a $20 a day Google ad
Anaita Sarkar validated Hero Packaging before manufacturing anything. She built a single landing page with a Photoshopped image of a compostable mailer, three fields (shipping address, email, business name) and the offer "do you want a free compostable mailer?". She spent $20 a day on Google Ads targeting searches like sustainable packaging, compostable packaging, eco packaging and green packaging. She hoped for 20 to 30 signups and got 1,000 in seven days.
From Creating and selling products customers can't get enough of →Free samples only count as proof when people come back and pay
Sarkar's husband pushed back on the 1,000 signups because free is not a business. The samples cost about $7 each, so it was a real spend. She waited one to two months to see how many of those 1,000 would place a paid order. About 70 per cent did, giving her 700 paying customers and genuine evidence of demand.
From Creating and selling products customers can't get enough of →Take a service people already pay for and turn it into a DIY product
Dylan Mullan modelled Happy Skin Co on HiSmile and Bondi Sands, both of which took something you used to book in for (dentist teeth whitening, spray tan) and made it a home product. Laser hair removal fitted the same pattern: expensive, inconvenient, painful, and strangers in your business. The technology already existed with Braun and Philips on the bottom shelf of shaver shops, but nobody had marketed it on social media.
From Creating and selling products customers can't get enough of →Interview hundreds of real customers before you launch
Mullan and his co-founder asked roughly 200 to 400 women about their laser hair removal experience, using the gym he worked at in Western Sydney and anyone else in their lives. They found about 95 per cent were doing it or had done it. The complaints (cost, booking, pain, embarrassment) became the product brief and the marketing angles.
From Creating and selling products customers can't get enough of →
Watch the full sessioninside Boa.
Session notes are free. The recordings, the live advisories and the founders in the room are for members.