Category: Ideation

One thing you’ll see a lot of SaaS founders doing lately is building free tools to drive organic traffic. Sometimes it’s a simple info page or calculator. Other times, it’s a micro-app, maybe a GPT wrapper, built around a super-specific use case for their audience.

No matter the tool, the appeal is obvious: they let users hit small milestones when they aren’t ready (or willing) to pay for your product yet. And those milestones often lead to a sign-up.

Today, we’ll learn how to come up with free tool ideas that can achieve all of that effortlessly. And, as always, I’ve brought heavyweight insights from the experts who’ve done the work.

But First…What Makes a Good Free Tool These Days?

If you want your free tool to pull its weight in your funnel, it should do more than gather dust on your website. It has to work, obviously, but it needs to build a slippery slope towards your paid product.

Here’s what a winning free tool looks like:

It’s a Tool People Can Find

This is a not-so-obvious factor, and also an important one. Your free tool should be discoverable through organic search, community posts, or linking it in your content. Ideally, it solves a problem people are already Googling, so you’re meeting demand where it exists. If it’s buried, hard to describe, or doesn’t show up for relevant queries, it’ll quietly collect dust instead of bringing new people in.

It’s Been Validated Prior to Launching

Validation isn’t optional. If no one’s asking for it, building it won’t change that.

“The biggest mistake I see SaaS founders make with free tools is building something they think is valuable without confirming anyone actually wants it. I learned this lesson the hard way when I spent three months building a keyword clustering tool that nobody used because I didn’t validate the damn idea first.”

Tim Hanson, Chief Marketing Officer, Penfriend

It Connects Naturally to Your Paid Product

Let the free tool frame the problem so the paid product feels like the next step.

“I’m impressed with what Clearscope did with their Content Grader extension. It’s dead simple – just a Chrome extension that analyzes your content against competing search results. But it perfectly demonstrates the power of their main product while being genuinely useful on its own.

What made it brilliant was how perfectly aligned it was with their core offering. The free tool revealed your content’s lack of search intent optimization, while their paid product provided a complete solution.

Tim Hanson from Penfriend

Solve an Immediate Problem Through Genuine Value

Address something that actively annoys people, even if it’s a minor inconvenience.

“A free tool must add genuine value by addressing and simplifying a consistent user pain point. It’s crucial to ensure that it facilitates seamless user progression to paid services, thus enhancing the user journey while aligning with their needs.”

Magee Clegg, CEO, Cleartail Marketing

…with empathy and undeniable quality:

Build your free tool to the same quality standards as your paid product. I’ve seen companies treat their free tools like throwaway marketing, then wonder why they don’t convert users. People make judgments about your entire business based on that free experience. If your free tool is buggy or underwhelming, they’ll assume your paid product is too.”

Tim Hanson from Penfriend

Feel Frictionless

If it takes the slightest effort to try, most people won’t bother.

“What makes a free tool actually work for growth is when it feels dead-simple to try – ideally, no signup wall.”

Patric Edwards, Founder & Principal Software Architect, Cirrus Bridge

Be Transparent

Transparency builds trust, especially when people are tired of bait-and-switch tools.

“Users can smell a lead-gen trap a mile away. But if you lead with usefulness and follow with context, a free tool can become the top of your funnel and a silent proof of value.”

Patric Edwards from Cirrus Bridge

Keep Improving Based on User Feedback

Use what people do and don’t do to make your tool better every week.

“Gather feedback through analytics and direct surveys, helping to identify what potential users find most appealing or unappealing before full development begins. A free tool should seamlessly integrate into the user’s workflow, solving immediate, recurring challenges and evolving with user feedback.”

Rob Gundermann, Owner, Premier Marketing Group

All of the Above Tips Have Worked for GummySearch’s Free Tools

Ours is just one clean page called Free Reddit Tools. We just say what it is: free tools, totally free, and getting better every day.

People can click to:

• Check stats for subreddits
• See which ones are trending
• View popular products recommended on Reddit

It’s meant to be helpful from the jump. And whoever finds it useful might wonder what else we’ve built. That’s the goal.

SaaS Leaders Share the Best Ways They’ve Come Up with Free Tool Ideas

The Fake Door Test 

Tim Hanson has already told us he regrets not having validated one of his tool ideas in the past. What would he have done differently?

The answer is what he calls the fake door test. It’s simple: create a landing page for your free tool, drive traffic to it, and measure what happens.

“Create a landing page for your proposed tool with an email capture, drive some targeted traffic to it, and gauge interest through sign-ups,” he shares.

He also adds that what people ask you after seeing the page often points you to what features matter most. In his words, “those questions become your feature roadmap.”

Borets Stamenov, CEO of SeekFast, backs this up with a straightforward formula:

“Outline the tool, show mockups, and include a call to action – usually email signup or waitlist. Share it in niche communities (Reddit, Hacker News, Slack groups) and measure interest. If no one bites, don’t build it.”

Some founders even put a little budget behind their landing pages. Justin Mauldin, Founder of Salient PR, suggests running small paid tests to get a signal fast:

“I always recommend creating a waitlist landing page with clear value props and running small ad campaigns ($500-$1000) to measure click-through and signup rates before diving into development.”

This approach is also how Runbo Li, CEO of Magic Hour, green-lit his AI video tools. His team built a lightweight page, gathered emails, and used the feedback to shape an early version of the product.

“Based on that early feedback, we built a basic version that let creators transform short clips, which quickly generated 50 K+ views on social media and convinced us to invest more resources.”

Done right, a simple page and a few test posts can save you weeks or months of building the wrong thing.

Test It With Real Users First

There’s no better stress test for your tool than putting it in the hands of real people. Before investing time into coding or polishing, show the concept to the people it’s meant to help. Then, watch how they respond!

Burak Özdemir, Founder of Online Alarm Kur, recommends running small pilot tests with a limited group of users to confirm that you’re solving a real problem.

“Offer the tool to a small group of potential users in exchange for their honest feedback on what works and what doesn’t,” he shares.

Patric Edwards from Cirrus Bridge, follows the same philosophy. Before writing any code for their free API status checker, he mocked it up in Figma and floated the idea inside developer communities.

“The response was fast and pointed: people wanted it, but they also didn’t want another tool to log into.”

That insight pushed them to rework the concept into a Chrome extension instead, which ended up getting 10x the adoption they expected.

You’re not validating your product yet. You’re validating the problem and whether your proposed format makes sense for your audience.

It’s the same reason why tools like Clearbit’s Logo API took off. As Patric points out, it started small and solved a small (but very real) pain point for developers. In his words, “No hard sell. Just persistent, useful brand presence.”

Real feedback beats assumptions. Let your audience help shape what you build before you build it.

Start Where Your Audience Already Is

Chances are, your people are already active somewhere. You just need to show up there.

Magee Clegg from Cleartail Marketing puts this into practice by watching audience behavior on existing platforms. In one case, analyzing site engagement helped highlight the features users cared about most before building anything.

“After increasing a client’s website traffic by over 14,000%, I analyzed behavioral patterns on their site to pinpoint features users frequently engaged with.”

From there, his team developed a free LinkedIn outreach template generator aimed at solving a small but persistent problem: cold outreach messages. The tool became a smart bridge into their paid email marketing service.

According to Clegg, “This synergy resulted in a 278% revenue boost over 12 months.” (!!!)

In short: If your tool solves a problem and you do a great job of promoting it, the right people will use it. And if it connects naturally to what you sell, that’ll greatly increase their chances of upgrading.

How to Find Free Tool Ideas on GummySearch

Just to be clear, the goal here isn’t to copy anyone’s idea. It’s to get a realistic picture of what’s already out there.

Too often, we get super hyped about a concept that feels unique in our heads… only to realize later that five similar tools already exist. By researching upfront, you’re setting yourself up to build something better.

Even if your idea overlaps with existing tools, that’s fine. It just means there’s demand. Now you have a chance to create a stronger and more useful version based on what people want.

The Topics Tab

One of my favorite ways to come up with free tool ideas is by using the Topics tab inside GummySearch.

If I’m in the SaaS Founders audience, you’ll see around 137 topics already surfaced. I just go to the Search Topics bar and type in “free.”

Right away, GummySearch will hit me with posts where people are actively self-promoting their free tools. It’s a solid start for competitive research and inspiration, especially if I’m still figuring out what kind of free tool I want to build.

Now, let’s say I already have a niche in mind, like AI tools , and want to see what people are building right now. I switch over to the Ask ✨ feature inside the Topics tab and try a quick question:

“What types of AI tools are people creating?”

Behind the scenes, GummySearch pulls 100 relevant Reddit posts that answer that question, saving me just over an hour of going through threads manually. It’ll show me real tools people are working on, like one founder who shared a project that turns your entire code repo into a single markdown file for fast, copy-pasteable context. Genuinely cool.

GummySearch also links me straight to the original Reddit thread. I can click through, read the comments, see what real users are saying, and even engage if I want to ask questions or validate ideas.

And sometimes, you’ll find people who already built something very close to what you were thinking. The above founder posted his free tool, only to get a comment saying:

“RepoMix exists for free.”

Turns out, he had built his version 8 months ago but never launched it properly. If he’d used GummySearch earlier, he might’ve avoided building something that already existed for free.

Are People More Likely to Trust Free Tools From the SaaS “Giants” Over Small Founders?

This was a genuine question I had.

We all know there are amazing free tools out there like Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker, Ubersuggest, and Canva. But these are the big names. They’ve already earned people’s trust.

What I wanted to know is: do users trust free tools from smaller teams? From indie founders? From SaaS products they’ve never heard of?

If you’ve read any of my other guides, you know this is usually where I drop into a step-by-step tutorial using GummySearch and walk you through how to apply it for persona research, content ideas, product validation, that sort of thing.

But this time, I wanted to show you a different use case.

Yes, GummySearch is great for finding problems to solve and ideas to build. But it’s also great for validating hunches and mini-assumptions, like what makes people trust free tools.

The Audiences Dashboard

Whenever I’m starting a new search, the first thing I do is head to the Curated tab on the GummySearch dashboard. This is where we’ve already pulled together some of the most active, relevant communities by theme.

And since our curated audiences cover pretty much every major niche, there’s a solid chance one of them already lines up with what I’m looking for.

In this case, I wanted to dig into conversations around SaaS and free tools. So I clicked into the SaaS Founders audience. It covers six subreddits, including heavy-hitters like r/SaaS, r/microsaas, and r/b2bSaaS. All together, 381,000+ users.

And this is what the Audience dashboard looks like. This is a pretty chunky dashboard, in the best way. You’ve got tabs for:

• Topics: What people are talking about most.
• Themes: Categorized conversations, both scoring-based and AI-powered.
• Products: Tools and services being mentioned by name.
• And of course, Keyword Search, Patterns, and Ask for when you want to get granular.

I could have started with the Topics tab – after all, “free” popped up as one of the trending topics. But I quickly realized something: most of those posts were buried in self-promo threads. As in, recurring megathreads where founders can drop a link to their tool. 

Those are great for product research if you want to see what people are building lately. But they aren’t necessarily ideal for hearing how real users feel about these tools. Most of those posts sit quietly with one or two comments, if any at all.

So I decided to take a different route.

Keyword Search + Sentiment: What Do People Really Think of Free Tools?

I kept it simple and searched for “free tool.” It’s a basic term, sure, but backed by all the context I already had in mind. I wanted to see how people talked about them.

Right next to the Results, Patterns✨, and Ask✨ tabs, there’s a brand-new one: Sentiment✨.

As the name suggests, this tab runs a full sentiment analysis on the keyword you searched based on the posts from your audience. For “free tool,” the sentiment came back generally positive, and GummySearch gave me the breakdown.

It also showed:

• Why the sentiment skews positive (driving organic traffic, showcasing proof of concept, etc)
• Where the negatives show up (like “no one cares” or “won’t get anywhere”)
• A timeline of how sentiment has changed. Great, if you’re wondering whether interest in free tools spikes seasonally

Some of the cons stood out to me, especially the one that said user distrust. I mean, that’s part of the question, right?

I wanted to go further into that. So I clicked over to the Results tab and immediately found a post titled “Why do users distrust free tools?”

The poster explained they’d built a tool similar to AnswerThePublic (the keyword research one), only theirs returned more results. Still, users seemed to automatically question the data quality and sources. 

The assumption was clear: if it’s free and relatively unknown, it must be sketchy.

Valid concern. But what are other people saying? Because, as always, one post isn’t data. I say it all the time: you need to triangulate.

This post had four comments, one of which was extremely useful.

The poster went on to say something that I think sums up the challenge perfectly: “There is rarely such a thing as a free lunch. Whether your tool is free or paid, you still have to build trust. People don’t trust things that sound too good to be true.”

And then, they dropped the final piece of advice:

“I build trust by clearly declaring who I am, where I’m located, the name of my company, and why I’m doing this. You can click my Reddit profile and see exactly who I am and what I do.”

Transparency all the way!

Of course, this Redditor was openly promoting their free tool, sure. But they knew that being a real person with a name, a backstory, and a reason was the main trust earner.

Regardless of whether you’re sharing your tool on Reddit, a landing page, or through a tweet thread… that lesson holds up.

It’s easy to feel like everything’s been said already. Especially now when the internet’s overflowing with content on every possible topic.

But honestly, it doesn’t matter if others have already said it. New people face the same problems every day, and they might need a different angle or a fresh perspective on a widely known problem. So here’s a mindset shift to try:

As long as there are humans, content will be created.

And that’s exactly what I’m exploring today: how to use that mindset + Reddit to create awesome content that connects with your audience and drives organic traffic.

“But Wait…What Kind of Content are You Talking About?”

When I say content that drives organic traffic, I’m not talking about ads. I’m also not talking about a viral tweet, a LinkedIn carousel, or an email campaign. Those have their place, but they don’t necessarily bring new people to your site from search or discovery.

I’m talking about content that gets picked up by Google. That lives on your site. The kind of content that builds compound traffic over time.

That could be…

• Blog posts: Educational, opinionated, or helpful articles that match what people are already searching for
• SEO landing pages: Pages designed to rank for specific search terms
• Help center or FAQ content: Answers to specific, often long-tail questions that your audience is asking
• Guides or resource hubs: Evergreen content built to teach, compare, or curate
• YouTube videos with links back to your site: If they show up in Google or get shared in niche communities
• Case studies and customer stories: Especially when they’re keyword-rich and address common problems

What makes this kind of content work is that it’s…

• Searchable: Google can crawl it, index it, and surface it for the right queries.
• Linkable: People can share it in forums, Slack channels, Reddit threads, or newsletters.
• Evergreen (ideally): Meaning it has a longer shelf life than your average social post.

It brings people to your turf, where you can convert, educate, or build trust.

How Smart Creators Find Traffic-Worthy Content Ideas 

Reddit keeps surfacing in conversations with founders, marketers, and content folks for a reason. The communities and posts might not look like traditional research, but when you’re paying attention to the right communities, you’re getting a constant stream of ideas rooted in your audience’s perspective.

Here are a few ways creators use Reddit to find content angles that are grounded in what the right people care about.

They Use Pain Points as Raw Material

The one good thing about pain is: it’s a step closer to a solution. On Reddit, you’ll typically find more pains than solutions. For content creators, that’s one hell of an opportunity.

But that doesn’t mean chasing every single complaint and jotting them down as content ideas. These complaints become useful when they show up again and again. That means you’ll be solving a problem for several people at once, and there are multiple ways to go about it:

You can write a guide breaking the pain points down and offering solutions (directly on Reddit or on your website), pull quotes directly from communities (with proper credit), and add your solution. Or use it to shape the next blog post or FAQ.

As Yuvraj Pratap, Founder of Supplement Launchpad, puts it:

“I look for recurring topics and concerns within relevant subreddits to understand what problems people face. Once I pinpoint these pain points, I craft content that addresses these specific issues, offering clear, practical solutions.”

They Transform Reddit’s Language Into a Blueprint

Some people treat Reddit like a giant billboard and immediately get swatted down by the community. Tim Hanson, CMO at Penfriend, takes the opposite approach – and it works.

Instead of dropping links and praying for traffic, he spent six months just being helpful. Answering questions. Talking to people. Listening. That’s how he built trust and figured out how people actually talk about their problems.

That last bit is tremendous. Tim builds entire blog posts around real questions users are asking. And when it’s time to write, he doesn’t sanitize the language for SEO. He suggests people do the opposite:

“Use the Reddit language as your H2s and H3s, then build your keyword research around that.”

So, how’s that working out for Tim? In his own words:

“We currently rank above some huge websites for some massive terms because our content perfectly matches how real people actually talk about their problems.”

They Use Reddit Content to Strengthen SEO 

What a lot of people miss is that Reddit isn’t just useful as part of research. It can also show up in the content. You’re not limited to using it as a background resource – you can treat Reddit posts like living documentation of your audience’s opinions.

Plus, adding in actual conversations and perspectives shows you’ve done the work, keeping your content nuanced and human.

Brendan Aw, a longtime founder and editor-in-chief featured in places like Entrepreneur and Hackernoon, puts it this way:

“To align Reddit-sourced content with SEO best practices, I recommend embedding trending Reddit discussions directly into blog content with proper attribution. This creates natural keyword opportunities while maintaining authenticity. Not only that, it balances out any biases the article might have.”

He’s even seen positive results:

“On my website, I’ve noticed a slight recovery of some blog posts that got hit by the helpful content update last year by incorporating Reddit user perspectives.”

If you’re already doing research, you might as well show your work!

Another Point in Common Between Those Thought Leaders: GummySearch

All of these thought leaders are clearly onto something. A lot of them use GummySearch too, which isn’t a coincidence.

Personally, I love raw Reddit research, but know it can take you for a ride sometimes. It’s easy to fall into side quests that seem promising, only to realize later that if you had just seen a different post first, everything would’ve “clicked” sooner.

That’s why I built GummySearch: to help you get to the cream of the crop much faster. With the right searches, it surfaces posts that reflect your audience’s best conversations, organized in a way that helps you spot patterns, pull quotes, and turn what people are saying into awesome content.

As always, I like to show GummySearch in action. So, let’s walk through a practical example.

What Type of Content Would Drive Organic Traffic in the Photography Niche?

Alright, for this example, I’m taking on the persona of someone who runs an online store that sells cameras and photography gear – everything from camera bodies and lenses to SD cards, lights, straps, bags…you name it.

Lately, my blog content hasn’t been performing well. Rankings have dipped, traffic’s slowing down, and I know some of these posts just aren’t it anymore. I’m not here to copy competitors. I want fresh content ideas that are rooted in what photographers are debating right now. Plus, I want to be able to plug my products naturally into those blog posts.

Here’s how I’d do it.

First Things First: Audience Setup.

I could’ve built an audience from scratch, picking subreddits manually based on where I thought photographers hang out. But lucky for me, GummySearch already has a curated audience for photographers. So I just picked that.

This audience includes 11 subreddits, with a solid range: r/photography, r/analog, r/AskPhotography, and a few others that focus on specific gear or techniques. It’s a nice mix of massive, high-traffic communities and smaller, more niche ones, which means I’ve got plenty of perspectives in my favor.

What Are Photographers Talking About Right Now?

Where to start? Depends on your goal.

I’ve seen one thing again and again: everyone uses GummySearch a little differently. That’s kind of the point. There are a bunch of workflows to go for, but they all have the same end goal: delightfully efficient research.

In this case, I’m trying to write content that does a few things at once. I already know what kind of posts have worked for me before (how-to guides for photographers trying to choose the right gear, avoid common pitfalls on shoots, or troubleshoot problems.) That kind of stuff tends to drive traffic and convert, since I can naturally link to products we sell.

So, how about I start with what’s popular right now?

I head to the Themes tab in my photographer audience. There are six tabs total in the audience view, but for this use case, Themes is the best choice. There are two sections here I could focus on:

• Hot Discussions
• Top Content

Hot Discussions shows what people are talking about this week across the photography subreddits. It’s a quick pulse check on what’s got people fired up. Meanwhile, Top Content surfaces posts that performed well (as in, upvoted, commented, shared) within the audience. 

Obviously, there are a lot of discussions happening this week. If I had an entire day to go through every post manually, maybe I could comb through them all. But that’s not happening since I’m busy juggling a product, customers, and content creation.

So here’s what I do instead.

At the top right of the Hot Discussions tab, I’ve got a few ways to sort through the conversations. I can sort posts by category,  by recency, or by upvotes. All are useful, but even after filtering, there’s still a ton to look through.

But that’s okay. Because just above the results, there’s the Patterns ✨  tab . I click that, and suddenly I have a clean, high-level summary of everything happening across 98 hot discussions.

Just by looking at the patterns, I’ve saved myself over 30 minutes of digging.

The results from Patterns ✨ tab are scored by frequency. So if I’m seeing “concerns about over-editing photos” as a top pattern, I laser-focus on that.

By the way, I’m not just seeing the topic labeled “over-editing.” I can expand that pattern and peek into the actual posts and phrases people are using. I’ll find stuff like someone saying:

“Is it editing I hate, or am I just terrible now? How do you get past it and have fun again?”

That’s someone losing their passion and trying to claw it back. I want to pay attention to this kind of visceral language.

Now GummySearch doesn’t just stop at the post. I’ll see the top comments too – the advice, the empathy, the debates. Those will help me shape real solutions around the problem, beyond identifying it.

So let’s say I’m building a blog post. I could start with something like:

“You’re Not Terrible at Editing, You’re Just Burned Out. Here’s How to Get Your Mojo Back.”

What Are Photographers Biggest Pains? What Are They Frustrated About?

Another way I like to dig into frustrations is by heading back to the Themes tab and focusing on the AI-based themes.

There are loads of themes here, all helpful depending on what I’m after. But for this research, I’m zooming in on one in particular: Pain and Anger. Yes, it’s as useful as it sounds.

GummySearch gives me a big-picture summary of what photographers in the audience are venting about. That’s already useful if I want to stay updated without reading too much. But if I want to go deeper, Pain and Anger (as well as any Theme inside the platform) also have their own Patterns ✨tab, as well as the Ask ✨ tab.

I noticed that wedding photography comes up a lot in the patterns, specifically from people feeling burned out by it.

Say I wanted to write something for wedding photographers, maybe a landing page for a course or a video script for Instagram Reels. The format doesn’t matter as much as the direction: I want to speak directly to those photographers.

But what’s the real source of their frustration?

It’s super simple. I go to Ask ✨, and type in:

“What are the biggest frustrations wedding photographers deal with?”

Boom. GummySearch gives me a scannable breakdown of the most common issues. It’s usually sorted into three main blocks (and I can dig deeper if I want).

Here’s what surfaced this time:

• Problems with camera equipment reliability
• Difficulty achieving the photo quality they want
• Stress from managing the pressure and expectations of big events

All super helpful, but now I want to hear it in their words and absorb their language. So I click through to the original post, and right there, someone says:

“I’ve had multiple cameras crap out on me, so I haven’t been able to jump back in as fully as I’d like.”

Then they continue:

“I know a lot of those cameras are old, and it’s just part of the game to a certain extent. But I’m really just looking for something reliable, serviceable, suitable for intermediate level photographers, and won’t break the bank.”

If I were creating content based on that post alone, I wouldn’t lead with a generic headline like “Best Budget Cameras for Weddings.” Instead, I might try:

“You Deserve a Camera That Works (Even If You’re Not a Pro Yet). Here’s What to Look For.”

This person told me what matters to them: something that works, something they can afford, and something that makes them feel like they’re not being punished for being mid-level.

This is what good and deep research looks like, and it’s sitting right there in your GummySearch dashboard.

Why Stick to the Same Tired Workflow?

Some of us are just as burnt out on content creation as photographers are on wedding gigs. It feels as though we’ve run out of traffic-generating ideas.

But when you feel that way, remember: these aren’t supposed to be our ideas, but our audience’s. Knowing this gives us the confidence to stop recycling the top five SERP results and start creating content with perspectives and passion.

If you’re tired of spinning the same wheels, GummySearch might just be the thing that gets you out of it. Try it out for yourself. 

People can stick with a product they love for many, many years. Back in the day, changing their minds used to be harder. Now, all it takes is one convincing TikTok, a Reddit thread full of recommendations, or a single frustrating experience to send them scrambling for alternatives.

That doesn’t happen because your product suddenly got worse, but because your audience’s needs change. Even if they’re thrilled with your product today, options are everywhere and they’re not immune to trying something different.

Before their flip switches, you need to start asking questions like:

• Am I keeping up with my audience’s needs?
• How can my product accompany their changing needs?
• Which competing products could they gravitate towards, and why?

Knowing these things in real-time gives you an edge. You can adapt, improve, and engage as your audience evolves. This guide walks you through the best ways to track audience shifts, monitor trends, and stay relevant in an industry where preferences change fast.

Cover All Your Listening Bases with the Right Keywords and Tools

There are a million ways to start addressing your audience’s needs, but the first one is to listen.

Don’t overthink it. I’ll walk you through my process using a pretend product as an example: a productivity tool for bootstrapped startup founders.

The first few things I’d like to listen to are:

• Chatter around my product/brand
• Chatter around my competitors (useful for smaller brands, where your name might not generate much noise)
• What my audience likes and dislikes about solutions like mine
• Solutions they’ve tried before or are currently trying, and why those worked (or didn’t work) for them

Those are great starting points, but they aren’t the research itself. To trigger those conversations, we first need to find and track the right keywords.

Which Keywords Are Worth Tracking?

While you can add or remove certain keywords depending on your research goals, here are a few staples I never miss out on:

• Product category: Broad terms like “task management for startups” or “productivity tools for founders.”
• Customer objectives: What my target audience wants, like “how to manage tasks as a solopreneur” or “tools to stay focused while bootstrapping.”
• Pain points: Specific struggles, such as “alternatives to Notion” or “simpler task management for busy founders.”

Sure, I could pop these into a Google search, but if I want the raw stuff, social media (particularly Reddit) is where I’ll find it. People are often more candid on platforms like Reddit, where anonymity encourages honesty.

Plus, I need to focus on recency and accuracy. A blog post from 2020 won’t do justice to an audience that changes its mind day after day. In this case, it’s best to stick with the socials.

Tracking the Right Keywords with the Right Tools

Manually keeping track of these keywords every day is a hard pass, even on social media. I’m busy, you’re busy, and automated keyword tracking makes it all doable. It also ensures I’m not missing anything, even if it was mentioned weeks ago on a niche subreddit or buried in a TikTok comment thread.

To make sure I’m catching all the conversations that matter, I automate my social listening across multiple platforms:

• Reddit → GummySearch: GummySearch makes it super easy to catch honest and often brutally raw Reddit threads. We’ve created this tool so it can filter through millions of Reddit posts using AI, save tons of reading time, and only dive deep into the most important conversations. Because I’m looking for likes, dislikes, and other potential solutions, the “I love”, “Looking for”, and “I hate” keyword filters are extremely helpful.
• Instagram & TikTok → Brand24, Mention: You can use these tools to track comments and discussions, not just tagged posts. While posts could be paid partnerships (read: polished and biased), the comment section is where real conversations happen.
• Google Reviews & News → Google Alerts:  You can set alerts for your brand, competitors, and industry keywords. It’s a great way to stay on top of what’s being said outside the social bubble.
• X → TweetDeck (Now X Pro), Hootsuite: You can keep an eye on industry conversations, relevant hashtags, and direct mentions. People often use X as a stream of consciousness, which is exactly what you need.

Any Social Media Platform Is Great for Keyword Tracking. But Here’s Why Reddit Is the Best

More often than not, I can hit all four of my key tracking areas in a single search.

For example, if I search for something like “productivity tools for startup founders,” I might land on a post where someone is actively looking for advice, laying out their whole backstory, what they’ve tried, what they’re struggling with, and what they need.

Take a look at the following example:

The above user is asking for productivity tool recommendations to help them work faster. In a single post, they…

• Give me context on their situation: they’re 24 years old, juggling multiple projects, and looking for ways to be more productive.
• While they don’t explicitly list struggles, I can infer that time management and efficiency are challenges since they’re looking for tools to help them work faster.
• Specify they’re looking for apps, software, or strategies that help with staying on top of tasks and boosting productivity.

Then, the replies roll in. Other founders jump in with their experiences, recommendations, and critiques.

And suddenly I know what tools similar people use, what they love about them, and even the best features of each. I can dig even deeper by going over to GummySearch’s Product Report and triangulating these insights with the tools my Audience already uses. I just need to type in the word “productivity” to start looking for discrepancies and overlap between productivity tools. (Don’t worry, we’ll be talking about GummySearch up next.)

This way, I get rich, discussion-driven data instead of scattered one-off opinions. That depth is hard to find anywhere except for one-on-one customer interviews.

By the way, check out my social listening article if you’d like to get more out of your audience insights!

Practical Example: How I Track Important Keywords Using GummySearch

First, all I need is to create an Audience using the subreddits that resonate with my ideal users. In my case, my audience is called Startup Founders and it’s made up of 16 subs which accounts for 12.5M members. This should bring up a lot of interesting conversations.

Next, I start tracking keywords that match the previous criteria. So, if I’m running a search on “best productivity tools” and decide this keyword is worth watching closely…

…I simply hit the “Track 🔔” button in the upper right after running the search.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to make sure every notification counts so that you’re not getting pinged for lukewarm conversations. When I want to be extra sure, I fill in the “AI Match Criteria” field, as it helps me specify the types of posts I want to see. While this filtering might generate fewer results, those will be much sharper when compared to the outputs from a broader search.

This is important: Before tracking any keyword, I double-check that it makes sense in the first place.

• Are they relevant to my audience?
• Are there enough mentions to be worth tracking, but not so many that I’ll get overwhelmed?

If I’m happy with the way things might go, I add the keyword to my tracked list. From that point on, anytime a new conversation pops up containing that keyword, GummySearch will notify me inside the app.

All tracked keywords live in the Conversations 💬 tab. If I want to go beyond just tracking and actually analyze performance, I toggle the “Stats” view. This lets me see how often any keyword is mentioned and how active those conversations are.

Stay in the Loop About Your Audience’s Interests, Even Outside What Your Product Category

It’s easy to think that audience research starts and ends with my product. Shouldn’t I just focus on addressing their needs by tracking product mentions? Isn’t that more efficient?

Not quite!

My audience is made up of real people with full, complex lives. First and foremost, I should know that bootstrapped startup founders most likely don’t wake up thinking, “I wonder which productivity app I’ll use today…”

Nope! They wake up thinking, “I have 15 things to do before noon, I barely slept, and I need to figure out how to grow this startup without losing my mind.”

Knowing what they’re talking about (funding struggles, mental health, AI tools, even TV shows!) gives me an unfiltered look into their world.

If I only focus on conversations about, say, time management skills, I’ll be missing a much bigger picture. On the flip side, if I’m tracking discussions like “Is bootstrapping worth it?” or “I can’t find time to build and market at the same time”, I suddenly understand their deeper struggles, desires, and interests and how I can continually meet their needs.

“But How Do I Find Out What People Are Saying Within Four Walls?”

The truth is, I can’t be sure. I can’t truly be 100% sure about anything when it comes to product development – I can only go with my most data-driven insights and make adjustments as I go.

GummySearch will give me data-driven insights by telling me what the current “buzz” is within my ideal audience and how popular those topics are. There are two special features for that: my Audience’s Hot Discussions🔥 and Top Content 👍 – two of the scoring-based themes from GummySearch. 

The great thing about these themes (or any Theme inside GummySearch) is that they give me an accurate AI-generated summary of the top conversations. Of course, I can always click the “Browse All” button to jump into individual posts when I have the time.

I can also extract Patterns from these conversations if I’m short on time (which I often am)…

And I can also ask GummySearch’s AI pointed questions if I want to discover something more specific. And for each answer, I get every single source.

GummySearch gives me well-rounded, year-round updates, simply because Top Content gives me the top posts of the month…

…while Hot Discussions gives me the top conversations of the week.

If I take a peek at the Startup Founders’ Hot Discussions every week and their top posts every month, I’ll stay up to date with their shifting needs at all times – with very little effort.

Stay Updated the Easy Way with GummySearch’s Monthly Email Summary

Even if I follow all of the above steps, I’m only human. Some insights can and will slip through my fingers. The good news is that GummySearch will pick them up for me and pack them into a monthly rundown of key discussions based on my tracked keywords.

Just so you can have an idea of how detailed this is, here’s everything it tracked for my Startup Founders Audience.

1. The top 10 growing topics within my Audience

2. All of the keywords I searched for

3. The most common themes throughout conversations

4. The most popular posts that month

5. The fastest-growing subreddits (great if I need to cover more ground)

6. And lastly, the similar subreddits I can include to my Audience

Having a roundup like this can keep me in touch with my audience even during crazy-busy months. And I’m sure it’ll do the same for you.

Don’t Remove Yourself From the Process (Your Audience Notices!)

Yeah, automation is incredible. This entire article is about how to stay on top of your audience’s changing needs in the smartest way possible.

That said, if you automate everything without being intentional, you lose sight of the reason you built your product in the first place: to connect with people. This is overly cliché, but the only goal of automation is to help you quadruple down on the human side of things, like…

• Replying to their comments and engaging in discussions.
• Reposting user content and highlighting community voices.
• Acknowledging and fixing concerns.
• Interviewing them face-to-face.

Those methods are even more effective in helping you stay updated on your audience’s needs. That’s them, handing you the data on a silver platter!

Anyway…the question isn’t if your audience will change – they’re quite literally changing as you read this. The question is, will you change with them? And the answer is always yes.

Every founder has their “lightbulb moment” that feels like a million-dollar idea. And Sara Blakely wasn’t wrong when she said everyone has at least one of those in their lifetime.

But an idea alone isn’t nearly enough. It needs refining to become something people want to buy, like raw gold. That’s why validating your startup idea is what separates potential from success.

In this post, I’ll teach you how to validate yours!

Why Validating Your Idea Matters

Validation helps you answer the big questions: Is there a real problem to solve? Are people willing to pay for my solution? Does the market need my product right now?

By validating these, you’ll save time, money, and a whole lot of heartbreak.

And speaking of heartbreak…

Startup graveyards are littered with great ideas that never found their market, an eerie reminder of how critical validation is. 34% of startups fail due to a lack of product-market fit.

Founders often scramble to try quick fixes (like limited-time offers or urgency tactics) hoping to move the needle. But foundational problems can’t be patched up. If the base isn’t solid, nothing you layer on top will stick.

Validation is how you reduce such risks and give your idea the best chance to succeed, no matter if you’re a first-time founder or a seasoned entrepreneur.

Steps to Validating Your Startup Idea

Define Your Goals and Hypotheses

In this post, I’ll play the role of a startup founder testing the idea of a pet wellness app – a solution for pet owners struggling to keep track of health records, vet visits, and wellness needs all in one place. 🐶🐱🏥

Before I jump into research, I should take a moment to clarify what I’m trying to achieve. Am I…

• Gauging demand for the app?
• Understanding what specific features pet owners value most?
• Validating whether convenience and personalization are enough to make pet owners adopt the app.

Then, I’ll write down my assumptions and turn them into hypotheses. For example:

• I believe the ability to track vet appointments and health records in one convenient place will be valued by busy pet owners.
• I believe pet owners are frustrated with scattered information and are willing to pay for a simple, all-in-one solution.
• I believe older pet owners may prefer offline solutions, while younger ones will engage more with an app.

These hypotheses will guide the rest of my validation process, helping me identify deciding factors and understand which audience segments are most likely to stick around.

Research Your Market

Understanding my market is essential because it shapes every decision I make, including what to build, how to position it, and who I’m building it for. For a pet wellness app, my primary goals are to understand 

1) Existing pet wellness apps that match my audience and 

2) How their target market currently responds to them.

“Prototype” Your Audience

Since the app doesn’t have any actual users yet, I’ll be finding the closest thing to a real audience without the guesswork. For this task, there’s no better companion than GummySearch. The platform scours Reddit for the most relevant insights about my specific target audience, where people openly share detailed thoughts on niche topics.

I just have to create a free GummySearch account. It takes 2 minutes. I’ll click the “Add a New Audience” button in the dashboard and include as many relevant subreddits as I wish.

In my case, I’ll add multiple subreddits that involve pets – because my audience will certainly be talking about solutions there, including pet-related apps. 

The more subreddits I add, the more insights I’ll find. I didn’t even have to add the subs myself, as GummySearch has a full collection of Curated Audiences – Pet Lovers included!

That’s 31 subreddits. Over 20 million users. That’s a whole lot of user research gold!

Next, Discover What People Are Saying About Solutions Like Yours.

Nope, that doesn’t mean you’ll have to go over a never-ending amount of Reddit posts. It does mean you’ll ask GummySearch’s AI a pointed question, and it’ll bring you only the most relevant submissions based on your request.

I’ll go to my Audience’s (Pet Lovers) dashboard. Then, I’ll simply click the “Ask ✨” tab and ask a specific question, such as…

“Have people talked about pet apps to track vet appointments and similar solutions?”

(Mind you, this single search saved me 24 minutes of research!)

After waiting for all of 7 seconds, GummySearch brought me:

• An accurate summary of discussions involving my query.
• Sources to all of their claims
• Relevant posts in case I want to dig deeper.

Based on the above results, I was able to find the following competitors:

• VitusVet
• AirVet
• Puppr
• CatsMe.app

That’s awesome. But what if I want to compare more competitors?

The great thing about GummySearch is that there’s always more than one way to look for (and find!) spot-on, updated information.

If I were looking for even more competitors, I could go to AI-Based Themes and click on “Self-Promotion”, where people share their products and services.

Once I click it, the platform will fetch an accurate AI-generated summary, followed by the most relevant conversation topics. The topics “Made” or “Created” will almost always be #1, as they refer to the solutions people are making/creating. That’s where I want to go.

Because that’s where I’ll find gems (and competitors) like this one…

…with real, varied feedback like this, which I can jot down for my validation purposes.

Use Your Competition as a Validation Parameter

The sole fact that similar solutions exist already indicates good product market fit. But I need to dig deeper with a few important questions:

• How big is the target market?
• Are competitors thriving or struggling?
• Are they growing, raising funds, or expanding?

I can look at concrete indicators like LinkedIn pages to see if they’re hiring, expanding, or announcing funding rounds. If they are, it’s a strong signal of demand. I can also check their customer reviews and feedback to spot common complaints or gaps in their offers. These can become opportunities for my app. Platforms like G2 or Trustpilot are great places to gather this type of insight.

Ask Your Target Audience About Everything You Need to Know

There’s no substitute for direct conversations. This is where you’ll validate your hypotheses by hearing straight from the people you’re trying to help.

“But how do I talk to people if I don’t have any users yet?”

You guessed it: Reddit!

Reddit is a great place because it’s brimming with kindhearted people who genuinely want to help, despite the trolls. But remember: it’s a community-based app. And its community-driven nature doesn’t often sit well with market research. Unless I can do two things well:

1) Approach potential users with a genuine question or advice request.

And…

2) Clearly state I’m posting for research purposes.

Do you want to see a masterclass on this? Check out the following post-GummySearch fetched:

This post is honest and to the point. It doesn’t hide the fact that it aims to perfect a pet app. Most importantly, it starts with a discussion and gently segues into a solution.

The only thing I’d change is: that instead of asking people to DM me for a survey link, I’d drop the link in the comments. After all, Reddit comments are often less moderated than posts, and I don’t want to make my survey feel like a chore!

Having a survey handy is great, here’s a peek at how much insight you can gain from the right Reddit sources alone. Take a look at the following exchange in the comments:

This is proof that a piece of feedback, positive or negative, helps me better understand my audience. Depending on the commenter’s age, it circles right back to my hypothesis: “I believe older pet owners may prefer offline solutions, while younger ones will engage more with an app.”

Even if someone isn’t a potential user of my app, their reasons can reveal gaps in my approach, help refine my messaging, or validate my assumptions about the market.

Once I’ve gathered enough insights like these, the next step is turning that understanding into action by building a minimum viable offer (MVO).

Build a Minimum Viable Offer (MVO)

Before going all-in on my product, I should create a lightweight version to test the waters with the lowest possible risk. This could be:

• A simple landing page with a call-to-action that explains my solution.
• A prototype or mockup.
• An explainer video showcasing my product’s value and offers.

Tools like Unbounce make it easy to set up a landing page, while Figma can help with visual prototypes. I’ll go with creating a prototype and then showing it to my audience, as there are different ways to validate an app.

Next, I’ll share the MVO with the right audience and gauge their reactions.

Test and Gather Feedback

With my MVO and audience insights in hand, I’ll run experiments to further validate my hypotheses. Again, there are several ways to go about this. I could…

• Use tools like GummySearch and ideacheck.io to validate your idea fast. It collects feedback straight from your target group in just a few hours.
• Try Lyssna or UserTesting.com to see how real people interact with your app’s design and flow. It’s a great way to catch potential issues before launch.
• Directly ask for feedback in the Reddit communities I’ve been engaging with. 
• Run targeted Facebook or Google ads to direct traffic to a landing page and gauge interest.
• Ask questions or post polls in online spaces where your target audience hangs out, like Reddit or niche Facebook groups. 
• Offer a free trial or a discounted pre-order and see if people are ready to back my idea with their wallets. Nothing says validation like a paying customer!

Analyze the Results

Next, I should analyze the results by asking myself (and documenting):

• What feedback patterns emerged?
• Did customers show interest or willingness to pay?
• Were there unexpected objections or concerns?

I’ll use what I’ve learned above to answer what’s possibly the most important question for this exercise…

“Should I Move Forward, Keep Iterating, or Pivot Completely?”

The answer will depend on the consensus. 

• If validation is positive, I can move forward with confidence, knowing there’s a real demand for my solution.
• If validation is mixed or negative, I should identify opportunities to pivot. Could I solve a different problem or target a more specific audience? 

For example, let’s say users felt overwhelmed by the app’s many features for tracking health records, vet appointments, and wellness tips. Instead of scrapping the idea, I could pivot to focus on just one core problem, like an app that simplifies tracking vet appointments with automated reminders.

Release It Into the Wild Now

Don’t jump straight into the building. Talk to the right audience, listen carefully to their feedback (even when it stings), and refine your approach based on what you learn. Validate, validate, validate. That’s your new mantra.

Every business will face problems like low sales, poor engagement, or inconsistent results. For solopreneurs, the stakes are higher because your success hinges on your personal productivity.

But there’s good news: Even if you’ve invested time, energy, or money into an idea, it’s never too late to step back and ask the right questions so your product or service fits your audience’s needs. 

In fact, the most successful businesses are the ones that evolve after revisiting their core assumptions. (Dyson went through 5,126 vacuum iterations until one worked!)

Here are essential questions to identify meaningful problems, generate valuable insights, and create something your audience will love – with the help of GummySearch. 🙂

Understanding Underlying Problems to Match Your Messaging to Your Audience

Solopreneurs often jump straight to building a solution without assessing whether the problem is big enough. Asking the right questions can help you validate that your solution truly fits their needs, such as the following:

• Who exactly is my audience?
• What problem am I solving for that audience, and why does it matter?
• How can I ensure I’m addressing the most significant problem?
• How do customer needs and frustrations evolve over time, and how can my product adapt?

Let’s bring this to life with an example: a small candle business.

Using GummySearch to Find Meaningful Answers

Click the “Audiences” icon on the left side of your dashboard, and then the “Make a new audience” button.

After creating your audience, GummySearch lets you pick relevant subreddits because there’s nothing like hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. 

For example, searching for “candles” might fetch communities focused on candle-making, scented candles, and enthusiasts. These subreddits act as a broad audience base, with the option to add more communities later.

GummySearch also highlights key subreddit details, such as activity level, size, and engagement metrics, giving you a clear snapshot of your audience’s potential reach.

Here’s what the “Candle Enthusiasts” audience looks like:

You’ll discover key sorting-based themes like Hot Discussions, Top Content, Solution Requests, Money Talk, Pain Points, Advice, Ideas, and News – ranked by how frequently people discuss them. But you’re not limited to these. 

If you want something specific, browse AI-based topics like candle scents, sales trends, deals, or seasonal promotions.

For even faster research, GummySearch’s AI-powered “Ask” feature answers your questions with information and patterns from real Reddit posts, with sources.

To understand your audience, whether your product meets their needs, or if your messaging aligns with their preferences, a single reverse-engineering question like, “Why do people buy candles?” can reveal patterns, motivations, and preferences.

And just like that, GummySearch filtered through 100 relevant submissions based on my question, saving me 34 minutes by speed-reading 8,352 words. 

Here’s the summary it found for me:

The data tells us that… 

• The audience loves unique scents.
• They love creating moods and memories with different scents, even repeatedly buying from the same brands due to an “attachment” to certain scents.

There’s a lot to unpack, but we know that scents come up often.

As a bonus, you’ll naturally start learning about competitors – what people like and dislike, and where opportunities lie. 

Identifying Awareness Problems 

Your solution might be amazing, but if people don’t know it exists or understand its value, success will always feel out of reach.

Many solopreneurs face scattered marketing, unclear messaging, or their audience doesn’t see them as the solution. Questions to address these problems include:

• Are my marketing and branding efforts reaching my ideal audience?
• Is my messaging clear, consistent, and memorable?
• How do my competitors stand out, and what lessons can I apply?

Platforms like the Five Second Test help you quickly measure a user’s first impression of your landing page, site, or campaign design with real users. 

To find competitors, use the Products tab in GummySearch as your go-to spot. 

Here, you’ll see product categories sorted by discussion frequency. The most talked-about categories are at the top, followed by less-mentioned ones. Each category includes reviews, star ratings, and mention counts.

Every GummySearch session can lead to surprising discoveries. 

While researching why people buy candles, I found a comment saying HomeWorks and Yankee Candle are “rock-bottom quality right now.” 

Naturally, I clicked the blue View button.

It took me straight to the Reddit threads with more competitor discussions.

Source

Turns out, you can outperform Yankee Candle, even though you’re not as big. 

Customer Acquisition and Retention

Understanding why customers choose your product (or go elsewhere) or what’s stopping them from returning helps you address issues before they escalate. Focus on questions like:

• How do I encourage repeat customers and create loyalty?
• Am I pricing my products or services appropriately?
• Are there untapped opportunities for additional revenue streams?

To understand your audience, ask them. If you have a customer base, leverage one-on-one interviews and targeted surveys. 

When direct feedback isn’t an option, or you want to cross-reference your findings, use GummySearch! The Solution Requests tab shows what customers are asking for across different communities.

I discovered people love fragrant products (confirming our existing data), mason jars for decor, seasonal scents, limited editions for collections, and aesthetically pleasing items. These insights point to upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

You can easily validate these findings. Try posting a poll on Instagram Stories asking, “What scents or products do you want next?” 

When it comes to pricing, the Money Talk tab in GummySearch is best. 

People discuss value perceptions, budgets, and spending habits. Just like the Solution Requests tab, GummySearch’s AI summarizes and organizes posts by frequency, with the most featured topics at the top.

For deeper insights, click the Common Patterns button. 

This feature highlights recurring themes – whether people think prices are too high, if they’re overspending, or if a product feels like a good deal.

One pattern stood out: someone questioned if $24 for an 8oz candle was reasonable. GummySearch links to the original Reddit post where you can explore the discussion.

When I did that, here’s what the rest of the post said:

“Dropping $100 on candles seems absurd to my penny-pinching sensibilities. Tell me that the margins for these companies aren’t padded. Tell me that it’s art more than science. Tell me whatever will push me over the edge for this kind of spend.”

If your audience is someone on a budget, you’ve hit the jackpot with gems like this one: 

That’s a whole class on candle-making, pricing, and marketing. Plus, this proves some high-intent buyers are willing to stretch their budget if your product exceeds their expectations.

Combining Money Talk insights with a pricing audit helps you move from guesswork to strategy. When auditing competitors, consider your audience and brand positioning. Are you targeting budget-conscious buyers or premium customers seeking artisanal products? 

The goal isn’t to copy pricing but to understand its context and make informed decisions for your own pricing strategy.

Problems Aren’t the Enemy. Guesswork Is.

The goal isn’t to avoid problems but to expect them and have systems to spot and address them as your business grows. Instead of guessing what your customers want, you can listen, observe patterns, and validate your ideas in real time.

Reminder: going back to the drawing board isn’t a failure. Taking a step back allows you to ask smarter questions and fine-tune your approach. 

Those small foundational fixes lead to the biggest breakthroughs!

A market gap is essentially a disconnect between what people need and what’s currently available in the market. These gaps could be due to missing features, poor user experience, or even an entirely untapped niche.

As a real-life example, if Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp hadn’t identified a huge market gap when building Uber, we’d all be frantically waving our hands trying to hail an overpriced taxi to this day.

So how can you track and identify gaps in your market? Read on!

Methods for Identifying Market Gaps

A quick note: there’s no cookie-cutter way to uncover market gaps. However, combining multiple strategies can increase your chances of finding big areas for improvement. Below, I’ll walk you through tried-and-true methods you can mix and match, with examples to inspire you.

Review Mining

Review mining is exactly what it sounds like. It involves parsing through reviews on platforms like Amazon, G2, Yelp, or even App Store ratings to give you precious customer insights that mention market gaps.

That said, there’s a sweet spot for mining those reviews: the ones belonging to 3-star and 4-star ratings. After all, five-star praise – particularly on G2 – is likely to feature comments like “I can’t think of anything to dislike.” On the other hand, 1-star reviews are likely to be “this absolutely sucks,” with no insightful additions whatsoever.

Prioritize the “good enough” and “meh” reviews, where people talk about what they wish the product could do better.

The Problem with Review Mining

Review mining is a double-edged sword. It’s easy to enter a massive rabbit hole and get lost in tabs after tabs of research. Plus, you may stumble upon “encouraged” and fabricated reviews, which could eventually skew your data.

In this case, the place to go is Reddit. There, completely anonymous folks with goofy usernames can be bluntly honest about their likes and dislikes.

However, Reddit has 73.1 million daily active users and around 550 million posts. That’s a massive rabbit hole all over again. In this case, I should introduce GummySearch.

GummySearch helps you organize and analyze Reddit posts, eliminating the need to manually comb through thousands of posts for market gaps.

With GummySearch’s AI-powered features (like asking AI anything or finding patterns in Reddit posts), you can save hours of reading, measured in AI minutes. This keeps your research accurate, quick, and efficient.

Cool. Now, Where Do I Start with Review Mining In GummySearch?

You’ll start by creating a new Audience for your product or solution. Click the “Audiences” icon on the left-hand side of your dashboard, and then the big “Make a new audience” button.

(This process works whether you’re trying to find market gaps for an existing or potential product.)

Next, you’ll select different subreddits that most reflect your audience. Here’s an example:

Let’s say I have an app for fitness enthusiasts who want to determine what competitors lack. In this case, my subreddit choices would be, say, r/GYM, r/fitness, r/AdvancedFitness, and more. That’s where people will be voicing their beliefs, desires, and frustration for fitness.

Note that you can always add or exclude subreddits as you go. 🙂

Here’s what my fresh audience, “Fitness Enthusiasts,” would look like:

This audience might only contain 5 subreddits, but that’s ‌17.6M members. There’s no way I’ll manually sift through all of that!

That’s why I’ll leverage GummySearch’s AI-based themes to help me find the most relevant themes in a fraction of the time, including:

• Advice Requests
• Solution Requests
• Pain & Anger
• Money Talk
• Ideas
• Opportunities
• Self-Promotion
• News

(If there isn’t enough data to extract patterns, not all of them will be available.)

I’d like to find out which solutions people are looking for so that I can potentially incorporate new features inside my fitness app. 

Going back to our example, when I go to Solution Requests, here’s what AI tells me based on what 76 people are saying:

All those requests are worth noting. But let’s say I’d like to be more granular and find requests specifically for fitness apps. All I need to do is directly ask AI by clicking the “Ask ✨” tab, and it’ll fetch any mentions with respective sources for me.

From the above analysis, I can already see a few potential gaps worth filling:

• There’s room for a simpler way to track macros and calories while also sharing recipes or collaborating with a partner.
• Many apps could do better at showing progress with clean, engaging visuals like graphs or infographics for workout completion or tracking over time.
• Real-time sharing features for progress, recipes, or workout plans are lacking, which leaves a gap for collaboration-focused tools.

Sentiment Analysis in Market Gap Research

Companies that connect with their customers’ emotions see major payoffs. Every single purchase or subscription you make has an underlying emotion at play – be it anger, fear, guilt, or hope. That’s why sentiment analysis should be a non-negotiable step in your market gap analysis.

GummySearch has a special corner for one of the most powerful human emotions: anger – and the pain that often precedes it. It’s called…drum roll…Pain & Anger.

This is the section where people will open up about their concerns about existing solutions and the status quo.

In my case, I found several points to explore:

Of all these frustrations, what are some common patterns? All I have to do is click “Common patterns ✨” to summarize 68 submissions and save 51 minutes of reading.

Here’s what the AI identified:

I could identify several potential gaps from the above. These could be features that…

• Highlight micro-progress, such as small improvements in form or reps.
• Offer adaptive exercise plans based on user-specific challenges.
• Offer customized plateau-busting plans.

And more.

Customer Feedback (Both Quantitative and Qualitative) in Market Gap Identification

Quantitative Feedback for Finding Market Gaps

Quantitative feedback focuses on scores and statistics.

For example, surveys are a great way to get meaningful numbers you can analyze. If you already have a product, you could ask users to rate how easy it is to complete a specific task in your product. If the scores consistently hover around a 6/10, that’s a sign you’ve got room to improve.

If you don’t have a product, a great way to look at your competitors’ ratings is to check their star ratings. 

On your GummySearch dashboard, click the Audiences icon, then click the “Products” tab. This is where people will be specifically talking about and reviewing products.

Remember the 3-4 star rule? It applies here as well!

When they say it may not be too different from any other app but it’s what they’ve “gotten used to,” that’s what you’re fighting against: inertia and the status quo. 

The deeper your market gap analysis, the stronger and more competitive your product can be.

Qualitative Feedback

Qualitative feedback focuses on the “why” behind the “what.”

Open-ended questions like, “What’s the most frustrating thing about using this product?” can generate long, insight-fueled answers that go over what led people to choose a solution.

Ideally, you’d ask this type of question during customer interviews, where you can truly connect with customers and ask follow-up questions. But if you’re short on time, GummySearch can be just as helpful.

AI-generated summaries and analyses can help pinpoint the right Reddit posts/comments to dive into. But for authenticity reasons, I’d suggest you read and document relevant submissions word for word. That’s how you can find use cases, “sticky” language, and eye-opening perspectives.

Behavior Analysis

Watching how users interact with your product can reveal pain points they might not articulate directly. Here’s where tools like heatmaps, funnel analysis, and session replays are useful. Apps such as UXCam help you identify friction points in journeys and discover the reasons why users might not be taking action.

For example, if users frequently drop off (or rage-tap their screens) during a specific step in your onboarding process, that’s a red flag. Addressing this gap could improve user retention and satisfaction.

Keep an Eye on Market Trends

Market trends can reveal emerging needs or shifts in consumer behavior that create new gaps to fill. You can use tools like Google Trends to track rising interest in certain search terms.

Or, you can use GummySearch for social listening. This way, you’ll be tracking relevant keywords and never miss a mention!

Let’s say I want to stay in the loop whenever people mention anything related to fitness apps. I’d click on “Advanced Search (the 🔍icon)” on the left-hand side and type in the keyword I want to track for my Fitness Enthusiasts audience.

GummySearch displays results that include exact matches and related keywords. Depending on the types of results I get, I can decide whether a keyword is worth tracking. The mentions I see here are quite recent, so I’ll give this one a shot.

To track it, I’ll just click the 🔔 icon in the upper right corner. And that’s it!

Final tip: Whenever available, don’t forget to check valuable AI-based themes from GummySearch, the “News” and “Opportunities” themes. 

This is where people will be talking about news, events, and potential improvements!

Not All of Us Can Be the Next Uber…

…and that’s okay.

 In my perspective, we shouldn’t be approaching innovation and product development with the intention of creating “the next big thing.” 

Instead, our intention should be to meet customer needs incredibly well. Because even the big names started as a means of addressing problems no one else cared to solve at the time.

Once you’ve found market gaps to fill, it’s time to test them in the wild. I wrote a guide on idea validation that will be helpful when deciding which solutions are worth your time versus those you should rain-check. Give it a read!

Product ideation is what turns pain points into solutions that create happy, returning customers.

In this article, I’ll show you why product ideation matters, the stages involved, the techniques that work best, and how to validate your ideas before going all-in.

But first…

The #1 Problem with Product Ideation (and How It Can Be Misunderstood)

Many founders make the mistake of getting too excited about a product idea and building it without first validating it with potential customers. This often leads to disappointment when the product fails to gain traction, as it doesn’t address an existing need. Failing to understand customer needs is one of the top reasons why businesses fail.

Yes, ideation is supposed to be a fun and fulfilling process. But before that, it should be a data-driven approach based on relentless customer focus.

Why Product Ideation Matters

Innovation

Innovation comes in two forms: incremental, improving existing products, and radical, creating an entirely new market-disrupting product. Ideation is key to both, as it generates and refines ideas that push boundaries, whether through small improvements or groundbreaking changes.

For example, you could discuss how incremental ideation led to iterative improvements in digital painting apps, while radical ideation sparked the creation of entirely new categories like 3D sculpting tools.

In real life, you’d think of Uber as an incremental innovation: a better alternative to taxis, which were often too volatile and costly. You never knew what you’d end up paying by the time you reached your destination.

On the other hand, Facebook was a radical idea – it created a way to connect that we hadn’t seen before. 

Customer-Centricity

Many businesses fall into the trap of focusing on the product first and the customer second. It’s crucial to start by understanding the customer and the pains they’re facing, as solving problems later may require completely rethinking the product.

I like the straightforward way MailChimp put it: “Ideation strategies force businesses to think from the customer’s point of view to create products that meet their needs and address pain points.”

Here I want to add a disclaimer: develop products for the problems people are facing, and not products they think you should develop. Often, people will tell you what kind of product they need – only to realize that it won’t meet their needs at all. By all means, focus on their pains, but create the most effective way to resolve them. 

Competitive Advantage

In saturated markets, ideation helps you spot gaps and stand out with unique value propositions. 

When you keep a vigilant watch on the market, you know exactly which differentiator can make your product the no-brainer alternative. Be it cheaper, quicker, more convenient, functional, reliable, or durable.

The Stages of Product Ideation

While many articles focus on brainstorming as the first step in product ideation, the real starting point is problem identification.

I can tell you that the real first step is one a lot of product-focused founders ignore, after talking to over 200 early-stage founders who are validating, building, launching, and growing their products:

Problem Identification

Since this is the stage that will make or break the success of your product, I’ll spend a bit of extra time on it.

The first step for every product-focused founder, regardless of whether you’re improving an existing product or starting from scratch, should be problem identification. But for this article, we’ll consider a hypothetical scenario where someone is trying to build a successful product from zero.

So, where to begin?

I’d say: start by considering frustrations you’ve had in your areas of interest.

Let’s say you’re someone who’s struggled with digital painting apps throughout your art career. As a result, you want to build a solution to help artists like yourself. You know the problems you deal with, but you put on your customer-facing hat, remove bias from the process, and get to work.

You could go about researching problems to solve in a few ways:

• Googling your way through potential issues
• Analyzing reviews (both good and bad) from competitors
• Going guerrilla and having casual conversations with people in your target market
• Scrolling through platforms like Reddit

These are all great options, but the manual work can quickly become overwhelming. So you go to GummySearch to have all the above options in a single place – powered by raw, unfiltered Reddit conversations and reviews.

Since Reddit is bustling with digital artists and painters of all walks of life, you build an audience based on popular art subreddits such as r/Painting, r/DigitalPainting, and r/Art. All these communities have over 30 million members!

If you need help building your audience, check out my guide on finding subreddits.

That’s a huge number, and it would be a never-ending amount of work to sift through those communities and topics manually. 

But within GummySearch, you have an array of filters to choose from: Hot Discussions, Top Content, Solution Requests, Pain & Anger, and more.

Bonus tip: Ask AI to summarize the findings for you!

The research process isn’t linear because there are so many scoring-based themes. It’ll depend on what you’d like to discover.

So, if you wanted to cut down on research time, you’d try to discover which solutions people are already asking for inside “Solution Requests.” 

To your amazement, most mentions involve digital art devices, such as iPads, tablets, and others.

But still, you’ll want to validate the idea that the quest for better Digital Art solutions is currently a pressing problem. So you’d move on to “Hot Discussions” and look for Patterns (which GummySearch collects, sorts, and groups in a matter of seconds).

According to data, the outstanding topic is indeed digital art. Within it are several discussions about which affordable device is better, and which apps to use.

You already know that if you were to focus on a new device as a solution, you’d be competing with Apple iPads in terms of pricing and apps like ProCreate. However, you want to take an impartial look at what digital artists are saying about competing solutions.

That’s where you’d start a market gap analysis to uncover gaps such as usability issues, missing features, or accessibility concerns.

In the Audience dashboard, you’d go to “Products” to find out who your direct competitors are.

There you go! You can see the top products and look at reviews straight from GummySearch.

Thanks to your research, start thinking of problems to solve, and potential solutions. Let’s move on to the next step:

Idea Generation

Here, quantity matters more than quality. 

This stage is about exploring as many ideas as possible with methods like mind mapping, “How Might We?” questions, and good old brainstorming. So, even if you already have a product, it’s time to consider other solutions.

Start with the problems you’ve analyzed in your research. In the digital art scenario above, these could be:

• Problems when devices don’t work well with specific systems (e.g., MacBook Pro not being compatible with certain tablets).
• Devices having screens that are not bright enough or suffer from glare affect the quality of the drawing/painting experience.
• Artists resort to communities like Reddit to solve their problems, where they may not get the specialized answers they seek.

Now, here’s how you could start applying idea generation to solve the problems.

“How Might We?” Questions

Ask yourself or your team:

• How might we make the digital drawing process feel as natural as using physical tools?
• How might we help artists manage their workflow across different platforms more efficiently?
• How might we make collaborative art projects easier and more engaging?
• How might we help digital artists solve problems in real time and support each other throughout their creative process?

Brainstorming & Letting Loose

Set aside time to generate as many ideas as possible, no matter how wild.

• A holographic tool that lets artists sketch in 3D space using hand gestures.
• AI-powered brushes learn an artist’s style and suggest improvements in real time.
• A wearable glove that mimics the texture and feel of different brushes on a tablet screen.
• A community-based app featuring live Q&A forums or even direct connection features, so users can troubleshoot problems together in real time.

Mind Mapping

Use a central idea, like “digital art tools,” and branch out to related themes: ease of use, collaboration, creative inspiration, hardware, etc.

• Ease of use: Develop a voice-activated app that lets users change brush settings hands-free.
• Collaboration: A multiplayer canvas where multiple artists can co-create in real time.
• Creative inspiration: An app that analyzes trends and generates daily drawing prompts.

Realistically Evaluate the Ideas You’ve Generated

Now it’s the toughest time of product ideation: the reality check. It’s where you use prioritization frameworks such as RICE to evaluate ideas based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort.

Source: Plaky

Let’s say you need to measure the feasibility of a community-focused app for artists versus a brand-new digital art device. 

A community-based app offers higher reach, lower effort, and greater feasibility, making it a more practical choice compared to the resource-intensive hardware device, despite a new device having potential for high impact.

You decide to go for this idea. Great – but you’re not done yet!

Pre-Development Validation

Before you pour time and resources into development, you’ve got to make sure your idea is worth the effort. 

At this point, you’ve already used GummySearch to identify your audience’s frustrations, feature requests, market gaps, and more. The only difference is: that before, you were testing ideas. Now, you’ve already picked your idea, and you’re laser-focused on validating its potential. And GummySearch can help with that, too! 

Here’s how:

Once you have your idea down pat, it’s time to understand what your audience might be searching for on Reddit when looking for solutions just like yours. And there’s no better way to do this than by tracking the right keywords. 

On your GummySearch dashboard, click the 🔍icon in the left-hand sidebar to access the “Advanced Search” feature. 

Next, enter the audience you’d like to analyze and the keywords you’d like to explore. 

In our case, useful keywords would include “community apps” and “best digital art apps.” Think of this step as traditional keyword research for SEO, where you’re connecting existing searches to your solution. 

The awesome thing about this feature is that it’ll ping you whenever people start using your chosen keywords in a conversation. Just click the 🔔icon on the upper-right corner to track the keywords you judge important. 

This way, you don’t need to be on the edge of your seat, constantly checking if new mentions popped up. GummySearch will let you know! 

Watching real-time conversations unfold helps you confirm that your solution is something your audience is actively looking for. It’s a powerful way to validate your idea and confirm you’re on the right track before investing in development.

“Okay, but I’m new to this. How do I know the kinds of keywords to track for my specific product?” 

Don’t worry – I wrote a guide on keywords you should track on Reddit using the Advanced Search feature. If you haven’t already, give it a read. 

But also, open up to the following validation tactics:

Lean Methodologies for Product Ideation (and Validation)

Run quick and inexpensive tests to gauge demand. You can create landing pages describing your product, drive traffic to them, and measure interest. Crowdfunding campaigns are another great way to validate demand while securing funding.

Early Prototypes and MVPs

Once you’ve narrowed down your ideas, create a test and development plan.

Often, this begins with building a minimum viable product (MVP) to gather early feedback. For an app, this means focusing on the core feature – such as a community forum for artists to share their work and receive feedback – while skipping advanced functionalities for now.

Next, launch the MVP to a small group of target users (like a community of digital artists) and collect feedback through surveys or in-app forms. Use this input to refine the app and validate that the audience would pay for a product like it to solve their problems.

And there you have it! A brief yet comprehensive product ideation guide. If you’d like more insights, check out my other guides on finding problems to solve and validating your ideas. More guides are coming soon! 👀