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Developing & Refining Your Product: |
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The following are some techniques to generate ideas:
- Periodically screen your products, and compare them with competitors' products to improve attributes and combine the features/benefits of several separate products into a single new product.
- Examine users' un-met needs that are not being satisfied by competitive products.
- Use idea-generation, such as brainstorming, to create a list of possibilities, and then evaluate each idea's feasibility and relevance to the company's mission.
- Improving a competitor's product upon introduction could be the least expensive, fastest, and less risky way to introduce new products to market.
- With your company's goals in mind, screen your ideas for potential profitability and fit. You can reduce product development risks with carefully marketing strategies. When you screen your ideas, make sure to take the following into consideration:
- Screen concepts against your company's marketing strategies.
- Screen new products against company sales and profitability minimums.
- Screen your new product concept with key customers and buyers.
- Develop new product prototypes to see how well the product really works and to "benchmark" against current competitors' products already in the marketplace.
- Prior to market introduction, test and develop packaging, pricing, and advertising strategies to adequately deliver your great market promise, then refine the product or service based on input received. Additional information can be found in the Packaging and Pricing section.
- Measure the success of the new product after introduction. Whether your new product or service is successful or not, you need to adapt your marketing strategies for continued growth or phase-out. Furthermore, you need to learn from the process to increase your product-to-market success rate.
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