When you have a big idea that you want to get right, testing it before you bring it to the world can save you a lot of time and money. Concept testing allows you to refine a product concept, ad campaign or new logo, or even a landing page, by obtaining feedback directly from your target market. It can be as simple and quick or as iterative and sophisticated as you need it to be.

Concept testing is a market research method that helps you evaluate whether a product, message or campaign will resonate with your target audience. By testing early – before a full launch – you will reduce the risk of failure and gain insights that shape development.

You can test a single idea or compare multiple concepts (such as in an A/B test) to see which performs better. Results will help to refine your offering and provide data to support internal decision-making.

Surveys are the primary tool for gathering feedback in concept testing. They allow you to reach your target demographic via online panels and collect input about how people perceive your idea. Whether you’re testing a message, product design or visual asset, surveys make it easy to gather structured, actionable feedback in a consistent format.

Unfortunately, the consequences of pursuing a bad idea are often far-reaching.

A bad idea may result in your business gaining a negative reputation, which may well have a significant impact on your organisation’s ability to grow or remain stable. For example, hiring becomes 10% more expensive when a company has a bad reputation and the cost of retaining workers increases by more than 20%. Also, when your bad idea has an impact on a customer’s experience, 95% will share it with others, thus deterring prospects from purchasing your products or services.

Companies of all shapes and sizes are vulnerable to making mistakes if they don’t test their ideas first. Below are specific examples and a study showing that when a bad idea moves forward, it can be costly.

Expensive advertising: In the U.S., companies that publish annoying online ads pay $0.153 (£0.12) more per ad displayed. Given the number of times an ad gets shown, this can soon become expensive.

Ineffective package and logo designs: Package design can make or break product sales. Cigarette maker Marlboro, for example, was mandated by the Australian Government to stop using its logo and typeface on its packaging. This contributed to the most significant decline in Australia’s purchase and consumption of cigarettes in 20 years.

Logo designs can cost brands millions of pounds. This makes the prospect of failure even more frightening. As a modern-day example, BP (a UK-based oil and gas company) spent 136 million pounds on a new logo that has been widely controversial.

Do you ever have ideas that you’re confident will work but can’t get buy-in from your team? Proving that an idea is popular with consumers can convince your team to pursue it. After all, if consumers in your target market like it, who’s to say it won’t work?

Concept testing seems essential for marketers and product managers. But how do they feel about it? We went ahead and surveyed them directly, and this is what we discovered:

Despite the importance that they place on testing, fewer than half of those who we polled actually conduct concept tests. Creating your test may be a significant opportunity to gain an advantage over the competition.

You can also widen your competitive advantage by improving your ability to write surveys. For help with writing survey questions, check out our post on eliminating order bias. And before you look at your survey responses, learn about top 2 box scores.

There are four standard methods for concept testing. They are based on the number of ideas that you want to evaluate.

This method is also called comparative testing and is used to determine how multiple concepts measure up against each other. Survey respondents are usually asked to rate each concept according to specific criteria. Another way to perform comparison testing is to use ranking questions or to ask precise questions to determine which concept features are preferred.

In monadic testing, you split your target audience into smaller groups. Each group tests one product feature and provides feedback. There is no comparison between concepts; it’s simply an evaluation of features. Questions such as “Does this concept provide value for the money?” are common in this type of testing.

Again, the target audience is split into groups. Each group evaluates the concepts in a random, rotating sequence. Everyone in the target audience should get the chance to examine all of the presented concepts and provide feedback. Each group responds to the same set of questions at the end of the rotation.

A combination of sequential monadic and comparison testing, proto-monadic testing asks participants to examine concepts, compare features and choose the best fit at the end of the rotation.

When you’re ready to test your concepts, there are four steps to follow:

Consider how much time you have, whether you are testing more than one feature and which methodology will yield the best results.

Consider the motive of the test and the information that you want to obtain from your customers. This will be your objective. Make sure you design your survey questions in such a way that the responses will provide the data you need.

Carefully consider which components will make your questions clear to respondents and yield the desired data.

Likert scales provide an odd number of answer choices with a scale that might range from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. These questions are easy to answer and the data that they yield is easy to collect and analyse.

Images are necessary if you ask participants to provide feedback about a visual idea. For example, logo texting must include images rather than just text descriptions. Provide the photos of the different logos and either ask participants which one they like best or get them to rank them.

Demographic questions are necessary for any concept testing to ensure that participants are part of your target audience. You need to know whether your idea will be successful with your ideal customers.

Conduct a high-level review of your collected data to identify the concept favoured by your target market. Using your SurveyMonkey dashboard, you can dive deeper into each concept and find out which features fared well during testing and which didn’t, and why.

How can you apply concept testing methods? We’re glad you asked us that! All sorts of business challenges can be solved with the right testing. Here are a few examples:

Do you need to understand how customers might respond to your new logo? Alternatively, are you trying to work out whether your new logo communicates a benefit (such as trust, innovation or fun)? Online surveys are a great way to test different creative concepts and designs in order to ultimately develop a logo that visually communicates your brand as faithfully as possible.

To help you brainstorm your survey questions, check out our survey-methodologist approved logo testing survey template.

Don’t want to create your own logo testing survey? Learn more about how SurveyMonkey’s Logo Design Analysis makes it simple to obtain quick and impactful feedback about your logo designs.

Are you redesigning your site or launching a new one? Sharing your design concepts with people who will one day interact with them is a great way to see what a sample of your target population thinks and, of course, to make sure you have got everything right.

Before you start collecting feedback about your website, take a look at the questions from our website feedback survey template.

Many online marketers test headlines, images and content on their websites to identify winning combinations of messages and designs. Which ad tends to grab the most attention? Is the ad compelling enough to click on? And do the people who click become customers soon afterwards? This method of testing can give your conversion rate optimisation efforts a real boost.

Move beyond the numbers and hear directly from individuals. Their feedback might push you in a new direction that you hadn’t anticipated or validate what the numbers that you already have tell you. If you need any help with brainstorming, our ad/copy testing survey template can help you ask the right questions.

Get fast, reliable feedback about your ad concepts without having to set up your own survey with our ad creative analysis.

Are you planning to offer consumers an incentive for upgrading to a new product or service? Are you considering a new pricing system? If so, you can use migration path tests to assess initial reactions and spot the key features and benefits that consumers are looking for. Then you can develop upgrade tests to see whether your new product line will result in a boost in sales.

The name of your company or product will have a big impact on its success in the target market. It tells people what you offer and the benefits that they can expect to receive, and it can even elicit certain feelings. To help you brainstorm the right questions for testing either company or product names, check out our name testing survey template.

SurveyMonkey’s Brand Name Analysis can give you crucial feedback from your target market about your brand name without having to spend time on survey design.

How price-sensitive are consumers in your target market? And are they typically satisfied or dissatisfied with the value of products in your category? Find out with our price testing survey template.

Learn what your packaging tells consumers about your product. Assess whether it’s unique, visually appealing and considered high quality by your target audience by using our package testing survey template.

Obtain high-quality feedback about your packaging designs, without going through the hassle of creating a survey, by using SurveyMonkey’s Packaging Design Analysis.

Will your messaging resonate with your target audience? Does it effectively communicate the value that your product or services have to offer? And is it believable? Ask your target audience in order to find out for definite. It may also be worth checking with employees to see whether they both understand and incorporate your messaging into their day-to-day work as well.

Find out whether your messaging and claims resonate with your target audience quickly and effectively by using SurveyMonkey’s Messaging and Claims Analysis.

New-product concept testing is used by some of the most successful businesses worldwide. Let’s look at some product concept testing examples from some of those companies.

Tesla

When Tesla launched its Model 3 in 2017, participants were presented with the concept and an opportunity to put down a deposit for one of their own. 

The feedback allowed the company to raise an additional $400 million (approx. £300 million) from investors.

Lego

Lego invested in concept testing to reach young girls because this was a demographic that they were not attracting with their traditional building sets. Their concept testing revealed that girls wanted to create full environments rather than standalone structures.

Lego used these insights to design Lego Friends, which was a successful line of building sets aimed at a female demographic.

Yamaha

Yamaha is a global manufacturer of musical instruments. When they were designing their Yamaha Montage keyboard, they used concept testing to find out whether their customers would prefer knobs or sliders for making adjustments. They managed to collect valuable data quickly and accurately to inform their decision to use sliders.

Find out which features a product should include and which ones add nothing to your bottom line. This often involves determining the manufacturing quality of your product and understanding its ease of use. Use product concept and usability tests to ensure that your product meets customers’ expectations.

Before you launch your survey, read about the best ways to ask for product-specific feedback. Also, check out our survey methodologist-approved, market research product survey template.

If this all sounds too time-consuming for your product testing project, our Product Concept Analysis solution can help you get feedback about your product concept without having to design a complex survey.

Concept testing can be used for new products, features, logos, advertisements and more. Before you move forward, find out what works and what doesn’t. Get started now with the SurveyMonkey Concept Testing solution. 

And make sure you explore our flexible market research solutions incorporating guided methodologies such as concept testing and AI-powered insights that reveal trends, quickly.