Lots of people have great ideas and dream that their idea will be the next big thing. However, getting a product from conception to market, is no mean feat. Many people fail at the very first few steps, as they realize that their idea is not as popular as they thought, or not financially viable. It is important to research the market before investing any money into the product you have invented. The following steps will help.
Is your idea commercially viable?
Before you embark on the next stage of the journey, in order for you to market your idea, you need to assess if it is financially worth pursuing. Although you may think that your idea is totally unique you need to make sure that no one has patented the idea before you. You can easily do a basic search using patent search engines, this will show you products that are either exactly the same as yours or similar. If everything looks good to go after your initial search, you can pay for more detailed searches to be carried out. If you find a similar product don’t be put off, as this is good news in that someone else has considered the idea worth patenting, meaning that there is the possibility of a strong market for your product.
Continue to evaluate your products viability by contacting manufacturers to see how much your product will cost to make and is this going to allow sufficient profit? How much outsourcing will be needed to create the product and is there a lot of competition?
Another aspect you need to identify is whether your idea has a unique selling point (USP). Your idea needs to be able to stand above the crowd in order to attract customers. If it is too similar to ideas already out there, is there any way you could make yours different£ For example, if your idea was to be offering domestic cleaning services, could you make your service a little different by offering an eco-cleaning service?
Market research
When you were developing your idea, you will have had a target market in mind (or at least you should have!). It is time to narrow down your target market by looking at their age bracket, family situation and income. Does your product still fit? Ensure your target market has enough disposable cash to buy into your product or service.
The next step is to test your idea out on your target market, this is called market research. During the market research process you need to determine what your target markets think about your product, do they like it and what parts of the product or range do they not like? Do they think that your pricing strategy is correct? If your product has competitors, what does you target market like about them? Do they use them, and ultimately would they choose your product as an alternative to the competitors? Look up resources such as Helpfull, which enable you to create surveys from specific demographics of people based on your target clients. From this, you can get a report of your target market’s feedback, thus helping you to offer better services based on clients’ needs.
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Shopping habits – It is important to identify the way that your target market shops. Internet shopping is extremely popular and it is important that your website has a commerce aspect. If this is something you would like to outsource you will want to ensure you work with the Top Magento Developer you can source, who can deliver a personalized shopping experience for your customers.
Market research can be conducted via surveys, questionnaires and focus groups. It would be a good idea to have a prototype of your product available or a brochure clearly identifying the service you have to offer. You can also use market research companies like Circle to help get the best out of your research.
Some of the feedback you will receive will be negative, it is important to listen to this and if the majority is negative you need to decide if you can make adaptations to your product or abandon your idea. Don’t just focus on the two positive feedback reports and ignore the not so positive ones. Use the feedback as your guide, it is an extremely important step to getting a product or service to market.
Create your brand
If the feedback has been positive and you have the necessary funding in place, the next part to getting your product to market is to create a brand. Creating a strong brand is essential to the success of your idea.
It is hard to define what aspect of branding is the key to success, it is a combination of your logo, colors that you use, packaging and marketing strategies. Your logo and colors used need to have maximum impact on your customers and it needs to be memorable – think Apple! Your logo and brand literature needs to be flexible and adaptable, in that it can be used across all media. .
A strong brand differentiates itself from the rest of the marketplace. Your brand needs to be strong and memorable. It is important to fit your brand to your target audience, ensure your brand connects with your customers and use inspiring, influential messages within your branding.
Your aim is to create an emotional attachment in your customer base. Get your brand out there. There’s no point in creating an amazing brand if no one actually sees it!
As with the market research you did for your actual product or service, it is just as important to do market research on the effectiveness of your brand. It is necessary to check that your brands message is being communicated effectively and that people understand what your service or product is offering by the packaging and advertisements created. As previously this research can be done by questionnaires, surveys and focus groups. If your message is not getting across clearly, it may be worth returning back to the drawing board and possibly outsourcing to branding experts.
To conclude, before you start to think about launching your product or service, there is a lot of research to be done first. Skipping any of these steps could be seriously detrimental to the success of your new product.
Successful entrepreneurs and inventors will have a whole host of products that they designed that didn’t make it to market, but they will learned through each process in order to successfully launch an idea that really works!
