Think You Have The Perfect Product? Think Again!
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We all have dreams of being able to set up our own business. However, for a lot of people, that’s just how they’ll stay: dreams. If you really want to get out there and start your own business, then you’ll need one thing above all else: a really great product. However, a lot of people assume that they already have that covered. They have an idea for a product that they think people really want and assume that they’re ready to get started turning it into a reality. However, this often leads to a lot of people getting started prematurely which inevitably leads to their new business failing before it has the chance to ever get off the ground. In order to help your business to avoid this fate, here are some details that you should never neglect when creating your product.
Figure out what makes it stand out
If you want to build an entire business around a product, then you want to be sure that it’s something that isn’t already being done by a thousand other companies. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to reinvent the wheel. It simply means that you’ve got to figure out what it is that sets your product apart from its competitors. This could be anything from providing high quality at a more competitive price point, to increased functionality of the product over other versions, to simply being something familiar designed in a more modern, stylish way. Plenty of products take influence from things around them; it’s often just about mixing together those influences until you come up with something unique.
Think about packaging
This is something that is considered an afterthought far too often by many businesses. They focus entirely on the development of the product itself but never consider how it’s going to be presented to the customers on a retail level. However, branding is one of the most important aspects of actually getting your product off the shelves and into consumer’s homes. Plenty of packaging market research shows that branding that is both distinct, consistent and fitting with your product is essential to getting customers to engage with it. Think about a company like Apple. They understood that, when it comes to consumer tech, customers want something sleek, simple, and elegant. If they’d stuck with the style of the older Macs, they would never have become the genuine cultural juggernaut they are today.
Know what your audience wants
This might sound like something incredibly simple. Surely you just ask your customers what they want and then provide that, right? Well, the truth is that often it’s your job to provide customers with what they want, but that’s not going to be the same thing for every customer. There’s a very famous story about the company Prego. They were trying to figure out what pasta sauce their customers wanted. However, what they discovered is that their customers didn’t want one single thing from their sauce. Some wanted normal; some wanted mild, some wanted extra chunky. Before this, Prego has never even thought about producing an extra chunky variety and doing so increased their profits massively. Make sure that you understand that your customers aren’t a monolith and offering them variety might be the best thing to do.
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