Who should be your Beta customer?

Here are a few pointers to choose ( yes you have all the right to ! ) your Beta customers of your product.

1. Beta users are your very first customers, but need not necessarily be your best friends or relatives or even your investors. Your close pal would obviously be very happy and proud to tell the world about your achievement of making an idea into a product, but that might not be just enough to take it to the next level. Carefully select a few among your target users.

2. So now you know that the beta user should be from the relevant target industry. But make sure that he is also somebody who actually needs your product. You might have evaluated your idea at concept stage with industry veterans, but on all probability they might be too big to need your product. Choose somebody who actually has the problem you are trying to solve. Mentors might give you a whole lot of ideas and direction but in the end say that they don't need you !

3. Stay away from people who turned you down in during your initial market research. They might have turned away because either they felt your product is not viable or they might be using an existing alternative (read competitor !). In all right, you would want to prove they are wrong and how your product is better. STOP right there, understand this is not the time for it. The purpose of beta testing is to refine your product, don't get carried away at this stage.

4.  Understand the difference between marketing and beta testing. This is no time to increase user base and market your baby, simply because it is still a baby. Get a small but trusted number of users, respect and respond to them.

5. Make sure your beta users have the time to not only use the product but also to give valuable feedback about it. There are loads of survey methods and software tools to capture user feedback. Give incentives to attract beta users to provide feedback. Take it, refine and fine tune your product.