Rather than getting so wrapped up in product features, it focused specifically on results. It might sound obvious. But without this breakdown in place, your product marketing efforts will feel a lot like being on a road trip without a map or a GPS. Fortunately, you have plenty of flexibility here in order to create a plan that works best for you and your unique product. With that self-reflection in place, you can begin hashing out different tactics and strategies to get your product to market.
However, remember this: You need to stay flexible. Launching a new product is a learning process, and your plan might require some tweaking or even major changes! Imagine your doorbell just rang. Any new product launch requires a high degree of customer education in order to be successful. You need to help your customers understand not just what your product is, but why they need it in their lives.
So how do you do this? By creating various educational materials that your customers can reference. These can include things like:. A short demo video that lives on your website or gets shared on social, like this explainer on how to use Toggl Track. An informative blog post like ours that walks them through how your product works.
A FAQ page that answers questions that are commonly asked by prospective customers. There are plenty of other things you can do. When businesses blindly assume that their prospects already have the information they need and are simply making a choice between brands, they shift from a learning-focused mindset to a competitive one, explains Mark Quinn in an article for Business Insider. When are you going to start drawing in more people?
There are tons of different ways you can do that, including but certainly not limited to! This free, comprehensive guide will teach you how to find great, newly trending products with high sales potential.
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Get started. With your product idea in mind, you may feel inclined to leapfrog ahead to production, but that can become a misstep if you fail to validate your idea first. There are several ways you can validate your product ideas, including:. However you decide to go about validating your idea, it is important to get feedback from a substantial and unbiased audience as to whether they would buy your product. You may want to run a feasibility study or an assessment of whether your proposed idea is worth investing in—or not.
Validation research will also inevitably involve competitive analysis. If your idea or niche has the potential to take up market share, there are likely competitors already operating in that space. Asking your own potential customers what they like or dislike about your competitors will also be important in defining your own competitive advantage. The information compiled from doing product validation and market research will allow you to gauge the demand for your product and also the level of competition that exists before you start planning.
The best place to begin planning is with a hand-drawn sketch of what your product will look like. The sketch should be as detailed as possible, with labels explaining the various features and functions. However, if you are not confident that you can produce a legible diagram that will make sense of your product, it is easy to find illustrators for hire on Dribbble , UpWork , or Minty.
Try to use your diagram to create a list of the different components or materials you will need in order to bring the product to life. The list does not need to be inclusive of all potential components, but it should allow you to begin planning what you will need in order to create the product. Along with the components, you should also begin to consider the retail price or category your product will fall into. Will the product be an everyday item or for special occasions? Will it use premium materials or be environmentally friendly?
These are all questions to consider in the planning phase since they will help guide you through not only your product development process but also your brand positioning and marketing strategy.
The packaging, labels, and overall quality of your materials should be considered as well before you continue to the sourcing and costing stages. The goal of the prototyping phase during product development is to create a finished product to use as a sample for mass production.
Prototyping also differs significantly depending on the type of product you are developing. The least expensive and simplest cases are products you can prototype yourself, such as food recipes and some cosmetic products.
This do-it-yourself prototyping can also extend to fashion, pottery, design, and other verticals, if you are lucky enough to be trained in these disciplines. However, more often than not, entrepreneurs will work with a third party to prototype their product. In the fashion and apparel industry, this usually involves working with a local seamstress for clothing and accessories , cobbler for shoes , or pattern maker for clothing.
These services usually can be found online by Googling local services in the industry. Most large cities also have art, design, or fashion schools where students are trained in these techniques.
Administrators from these university or college programs can usually grant you access to their internal job board, where you can create a request for prototyping help.
For objects like toys, household accessories, electronics, and many other hard-exterior objects, you may require a 3D rendering in order to make a prototype.
Artists or engineers who are trained in computer-aided design and drafting CAD software can be contracted to do this using UpWork or Freelancer.
There are also user-friendly online tools such as SketchUp , Tinkercad , and Vectary for founders who want to learn how to create 3D models for themselves. To get a 3D design turned into a physical model, makers used to have to get molds made for each part. Molds are typically expensive and involve setup fees for things like tools and dies that are used to cut and shape pieces of plastic and other hard materials.
Luckily, with the innovation of 3D printing, designs can be turned into physical samples at a much lower cost with a quicker turnaround time. The MVP is a version of your product with just enough functionality for early customers to use. It helps validate a product concept early in your product development process. It also helps product managers get user feedback as fast as possible to iterate and make small, incremental improvements to the product.
Startups release the MVP to early customers then run experiments to gauge interest, test price sensitivity and messaging, and more. It begins the feedback process to bring ideas and suggestions based on customer needs. This allows you to create iterations of the product and build something more valuable for your target market. While this phase will mainly involve finding manufacturers or suppliers , you may also factor storage, shipping, and warehousing into your choice.
In Shoe Dog , a memoir by Nike founder Phil Knight, the importance of diversifying your supply chain is a theme emphasized throughout the story. Finding multiple suppliers for the different materials you will need, as well as different potential manufacturers, will allow you to compare costs.
Sourcing several options is an important part of safeguarding your business for the long term. Marketing that doesn't address all three will fail to scale. All too often brands focus solely on attracting as many new customers as possible—the acquisition treadmill. But acquisition costs add up, and if customers only purchase one item and never return, those costs become hard to outrun.
So, the Three Multiplier Framework focuses on increasing the profitability of each hard-earned customer you acquire. These marketing efforts will work together to support this overall strategy rather than act in silos.
Your customer base is like a garden. If you tend to your customers, you often can grow both the value they receive as well as the value that comes back to your business. For example, a customer might get a lot of value from your flagship product, but unlock even more from buying your product again—or buying more from your full product line.
Loyal repeat customers compound in value, too. Once a customer makes a second purchase, you no longer have to pay the cost to acquire them, and they might recommend your shop to friends with similar taste. There are several common and effective marketing tactics you can use. Loyalty programs can be free or paid, and they offer special benefits to subscribers.
Loyalty programs can also be unpaid and use a points system, where a certain number of points earns customers different rewards. Other unpaid programs, like the one from clothing retailer Girlfriend Collective , offer both points and perks, like order discounts.
Hello, repeat customers! One of the most valuable sequences you can create is called a win-back campaign , a type of lifecycle marketing—marketing that seeks to engage a customer based on where they are in the customer journey. In this case, the customer is post-purchase, so the right message to send them is one that encourages a return trip. Drew Sanocki calls this type of win-back campaign a one-two punch , because its goal is to convert first time customers F1s into repeat customers F2s.
Who the email marketing campaign targets: Set up your email campaign to target first time customers. Each subsequent email will be sent to your list of first customers. Email 1: The first email notifies customers of another product that, based on their original purchase, they might like.
The item could be part of your core collection or, to drive excitement, could be a limited edition item. You could create an email that leads readers to a survey like this one from vitamin company Ritual:. If you choose to send an email like the one above, you can also offer to unsubscribe people who select one of the options. You can use pop-ups, paid social ads, a direct-mail postcard—whatever you think will resonate most with your customers. Email marketing is a great way to re-engage both current and prospective customers.
To get people to opt into your list, when they first visit your site consider using a pop-up that shares an offer if they subscribe. You can do the same SMS. Postscript is a Shopify plugin that allows you to keep in contact with customers through SMS messaging.
If you plan to offer new products often, consider scheduling product launches on the same day every week, or the same day every month. New releases keep customers checking back often. Mejuri , a website that sells fine jewelry for everyday wear, launches new products that follow a design theme every single Monday. Though it may not sound like marketing, offering a subscription to your products is a marketing decision. Giving your customers a way to subscribe essentially positions your products as ones that will become everyday essentials.
Still, building a subscription model takes more work than other marketing tactics, but it is an extremely effective way to ensure recurring revenue. If your product requires refills, you can create a subscription model that auto renews on a standard schedule. For example, Fresh Patch sells hydroponically grown grass patches to pet owners. Package Free sells environmentally friendly home and body products and allows shoppers to create their own subscription bundles from a large selection of products.
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