Your product or service should meet an existing market demand rather than trying to create one. Too many entrepreneurs do this wrong—they develop an idea and then try to find a market. When you start with known market viability, you have a better product overall.
What Makes a Product Successful?
You might feel strongly that your product idea meets a need, but what determines whether a product is successful? Your concept should meet a few criteria if you want it to sell.
- Is your product valuable? Does it fill a need or solve a problem?
- Most customers will find a more accessible alternative if your product is too difficult to use or understand.
- Given the budget, supplies, and sustained customer demand, can you continue producing this for years?
- Can you build on this offering to expand your business in the future?
- You must ensure that your customers can only imagine life with your product once they use it.
How to Test if a Product Will Sell
Determining the market viability of a product isn’t about guesswork. You can use several strategies to test whether your potential new product will be popular. Here are 5 steps you should consider to identify high-demand products to sell.
- Market research: Conducting market research is essential for product viability. Start by identifying your target audience and monitoring industry trends. Look at the types of products that sell well and identify gaps your new product could fill.
- Competitor analysis: Look at your competitors in your industry or aspire to join. What are they offering? How can you improve on it or meet a need they’re missing? Can you do it cheaper, better, or faster? Can you provide a related product? You can tap into their existing customer base if there is a market for your competitors.
- Consumer feedback: What are your potential future customers telling you they need? If you have an existing business, you can solicit customer feedback or look at your reviews to see what your users say. If you’re starting your business, look at your competitors’ reviews to see what else customers want.
- Product testing: Testing a product in small focus groups of people similar to your target audience can help you identify potential weak spots before the full-scale rollout.
- Lead generation: One way to guarantee a market before you sell is to generate leads before investing in creating the product or service. You can set up a landing page on your website where you can describe the product and then let customers sign up to be notified when the product is ready. You can see right away if there is demand for your idea.
Identifying and creating profitable products to sell is just one aspect of running a successful business. For more great tips on market viability, click here to receive my weekly business articles in your inbox.
Coach Dave
Dave Schoenbeck is a professional business and executive coach who translates complex business methods, processes, and strategies into actionable plans to dramatically improve financial results. Read more about Dave here.
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