New product development

If you have been successfully selling productsl for some time, then you understand much of what goes into creating a new product and getting it launched.

However, many small companies start with one product and stay there. But every product needs to go through a number of stages before it gets introduced to the market. New product development can be quite a journey, and it starts with an idea generation and moves on.

So let’s look at some of the steps that are involved in new product development.

Finances

Much like everything in business, you need to know that you have the finances to cover your new idea. If you could be making some profits over the last few years with your current product, then hopefully you have some set aside ready to put into a new product. 

If this is not the case, then you might have to look at alternative options then look at merchant cash advance. The cash injection can be ideal for getting your new products through all of the stages and introduction.

Idea generation

This is the actual first stage of new product development. Ideas can come from everywhere, which is why it is so vital to surround yourself with things that motivate and inspire you. It is better to have a large pool of ideas so that you can slowly choose the ones that make sense for you.

Here are some places where big ideas can come from:

●     You need to read through customer feedback and reviews, see if they have any suggestions about how to improve your current products.

●     Competition, conducting a competitor analysis might give you new product ideas about what your competitors are already doing.

●     A swot analysis will let you look in-depth are your weaknesses, opportunities, and your company and your competitor’s strengths.

●     Market research is one of the first things that you’ll be able to do. Reviewing the changing needs, trends and once within your target market.

●     Internal sources can be a great way to find new product ideas. People who work within your company already understand your market and your business goals.

Idea screening

Unfortunately, the more ideas you have, the more you have to go through. Ideas, in general, you can have thousands and thousands, good ideas can be plenty, and great ideas are usually very few. This step involves looking more deeply into products that are feasible. They are within your team's budget and ability.

You’ll be looking at your company's weaknesses, your company strengths, ongoing trends, the return on this investment, the food ability for your company, and the needs of your customer.

Constant development and testing

Your concept will be a detailed strategy, or perhaps a blueprint version of the idea for the new product. You need to develop every aspect of the idea and bring it into something more understandable and more detail. This is called a concept.

During the design phase of your concept, one of the most cost-effective ways comes from a relatively new piece of technology. Virtual reality solutions can help you fully realise the potential of your product, and are easily shared with an entire team. 

Each of the ideas that you deemed to be great will be pulled forward to the screening stage, and those will be turned into concepts for testing. You cannot launch, or instead, you should not launch a product without having some concept testing.

Your concept will be presented to your target market. You choose a small select amount of customers from the target group to test that concept. Information will be provided to them to help them visualise the product, and they will be able to ask a range of questions. You need to understand what your customers feel about the concept, do they want it, is it required? What price point with a patch on it when it hits the market?

Business strategy analysis and development

Assume that one of the concepts was successful. This will then move to be developed into a product.

Here is where an in-depth analysis of the market, branding, and all of your other business strategies is going to be undertaken. You need to have a clear idea of estimated product profitability, with which marketing avenues are going to pay off the best, and any other product strategy that will only work for this product.

You will need a lot of data in order to be able to complete this business strategy analysis and development. Analytics that will be included will be the costs involved in manufacturing and shipping. What is your pricing strategy going to look like? What is the breakeven point, and you’ll need to understand the competitive market of that product? And those are just the surface questions.

Product development

Here is where things can get very exciting. Now all of your strategies have been approved, either by your team, all yourself. The product concept is now going to be transformed into an actual tangible product. These prototypes will give you a clear idea of how they will look, feel and weight. 

You might even choose to have a limited production model run. So that you can have a range of the products to send out to the people who did the original concept testing. To see if that prototype, or limited production model runs, meet their expectations. And if not, why? This is your final space to really work out if you have met the needs of your consumers.

You will take all of the feedback that your customers give you and perform further changes. It might be that you need to have a complete rework of the product. If the concept and the product do not seem to have the same impact on your focus group. The process of changing your prototype into what makes sense for your customers is what is going to validate the concept that you created. 

And this is the only way that your product will be done ready for launch.

Commercialisation

You will have been thinking about marketing strategies from the very moment that you decided to create a new product. However, now it is time to put all of that to use. All of the final decisions on how and where you market this product is now going to be put into action.

Some of the marketing mixes that you had considered might not work. You will need to use the information that you have about your customers, and where they are, in order to market correctly to them. For example, if you are launching a brand-new piece of technology, then you really want to market your new product on tech blogs, tech media outlets, and anywhere there is a big tech chat.

If you are launching a makeup or beauty products, Instagram and YouTube, as well as beauty bloggers and influencers are going to be the way to go. There are so many different options when it comes to marketing new products now, and competition in every area is fierce. So you need to really make sure that you have considered all of the options when it comes to your marketing.

Marketing a new product

Now that you have run through all of the steps to getting your product to market, it’s really time to understand some powerful ways to market your product. Not all of these will apply to your product. However, they all work.

Sell the experience, not the product. What is your product going to bring to consume is life? No one truly wants to buy any products, but they wantwhat the product can give them. Tell a story about why your product is good, tell the consumer about the experience.

Stay true to your branding, try not to go too far outside of what your consumers expect from you. They can be a disconnect.

Market to your existing customers. During your testing and development, you will have already turned to customers to get their valued opinions. Well, let them be the 1st to know that there are new products coming because they are most likely to buy it first.

Try a breakout brand name. If what you want to create is incredibly outside of the rounds of your normal branding and story., it might be worth considering creating a brand within your brand. For example, Procter and Gamble have around 55 product lines, and each of those has a different name.

Making your product makes sense. Consumers need to understand how a product fixes their life and how it makes sense to them. For example, how does it make sense that people want to spend thousands of dollars on a new Apple iPhone? When they probably have one that’s only a few years old and has almost identical capabilities.

It makes sense for the customer to want it because they feel that they and Apple have something in common. They feel that they belong to that brand, and it means something to their lifestyle. And you need to create that all-absorbing branding.

You need to understand your new product, where it fits in the market, and the steps that you need to take in order to be able to have a successful lunch. The fact is that many products do you fail, but you can fail fast and move on.