I previously posted an entry that discussed 5 reasons you should market test your startup idea. Some of you asked, “Ok, but how?” Besides the traditional A/B testing approach with Google Adwords (which can be a bit complicated if you’re not familiar with it), here are other tools you can use for market testing or to de-risk an idea:

1. Facebook Advertising – Unlike Google Adwords, Facebook allows you to target your exact audience. Within their advertising platform, you can drill into specifics such as age, gender, location and a lot more. It’s a simple process – you create your ad, choose your audience, price your ad and you’re all set. For more information, check out the Facebook Advertising page. Better yet, try it for free by downloading Visa’s Business Network application and receive $100 worth of free Facebook advertising.

2. SurveyMonkey – Rolling out a new concept? Put together a free 10-question survey and send it to your clients and/or prospects to gain feedback on what they think. The key here is to ask the right questions. For better conversions, offer some kind of incentive (the best are those that allow you to cross-sell your own services).

3. Dneero – This services allows you to “create multi-question conversations” that you can have bloggers post about to gain feedback from your target market. Although I haven’t used this personally, it looks fascinating – drop me a comment if you’ve tried it. You can find more information on their site.

4. Google Insights – This free tool from Google allows you to look at all Google web searches since 2004. How can this help you? You can use the tool to gauge the popularity of a specific search term. Check out this screencast (I apologize in advance for the sound quality) I previously put together that takes you through a fictional scenario to see how you can benefit from using this tool for market testing.

5. Ideablob – A great platform that allows you to submit your idea with the chance to win $10,000 while obtaining feedback from voters. What do you have to lose? You either win $10k you can use for your concept or you gain feedback and advice from others.

Have you used any of these tools? Let us know how they’ve worked for you by adding a comment below.

If you decide to stick with Google Adwords, check out Steve Barsh’s 2-part series on ways you can de-risk your idea using Google Adwords.

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