[stingraycharles]

What we did was making a landing page somewhere, "sign up for limited beta access", and gauge interest that way. We collected a few email addresses, but it was mostly for validation of the idea, that there was a genuine audience.

[Fergi]

I think this is a smart strategy, and is essentially using marketing in the same way that this post suggests using sales, to gauge customer interest in a potential product. The extent to which manual sales outreach or the kind of marketing technique described here should be used likely depends on the kind of product in question. B2B products with higher contract prices and a smaller number of total potential customers will likely require a sales strategy, where B2C products with lots of users and lower contract values may be better served with this kind of marketing tactic.

Great point, though! This is an important topic to consider with marketing and sales strategy development. Thanks for the comment.