Will your new IT Product IDEA succeed?

Connecting dots between the product and the market.

“In the era of new normal, we have been caught up in the stories of start-up successes strongly aspire to repeat the same success for the budding ideas that we have in our minds”

A survey conducted by the CB Insights highlights the other side of the story. CB Insights found that 9 out of every 10 tech startups fail. While we understand that start-ups fail when they are not solving a market problem, what we often miss is the role of marketing strategy might have played there.

It goes without saying that you need to know your audience before you can sell. First and foremost, spend a good time doing market research and understand what the user wants. Then do comprehensive competitive research and understand the existing products that your competition offers.

“Build a solid user persona and SWOT analysis of competitors against your product”

The next step is to derive buyers’ persona from market research. Understand who buys your product against who uses it, is vital for success. Define the characteristics of the buyer to gather a sound understanding of your target audience’s needs and what they want to avoid.

“This will help you in positioning your product as a problem-solving tool that stands out from the crowd.”

Now, since you know your user, buyer, and competitors, you can proceed to define the positioning. Its time to put your thoughts on products into something that makes sense for users and buyers. Don’t get blown away by the technicalities of the product a lot. Factors like for whom you have built the product, what is the problem it will solve, how it will solve the problem etc. are critical at this stage.

Another important thing is to identify the existing and alternate solutions that partially or completely solve the problem.

“Give a final touch to your pitch by defining what makes your company or product unique as compared to these products or solutions.”

Substantiate this with a strong messaging which is simple, resonate with the user, focused on benefits, which also reflect the brand. Something like

• Apple iPhone – The Experience IS the Product or
• Slack – Be More Productive at Work with Less Effort.

As the saying goes, everything bakes down to pricing. Choosing a competitive or value-based pricing is important. As you are aware, traditional competitive pricing is the easiest way to set the price. You can set your price based on how much your competitors are charging. If you have a product that offers other benefits than similar products, you can charge a premium. While it is easy to price it based on competitor’s pricing, it is equally important to look at the balance sheets of your competitors to see if they have the right costing guidelines to make enough profits.

By looking at how fierce the market is I would recommend value-based pricing to create a tangible volume of users. You can make the pricing flexible in such a way that organizations or users will not shell out a tangible amount to try out the product. And when it comes to marketing, we should understand that the dynamics have changed significantly. It’s no longer enough to have a website or run some unfocused Ads campaign. Not having integrated digital marketing strategies working for your business means time is working against you.

“So, what exactly do you need to succeed? To maximize your investment in marketing initiatives, organizations should look for strategies and tools that have the most potential to engage decision-makers..”

If you don’t have an integrated digital strategy, it is time to revisit your marketing plan and investment in marketing. Let us look at how you can create a strategy that works.

Organizations should define strategy and set goals for marketing. These could be to increase reach, grow audience, build brand awareness, increase online and offline sales through optimization, and build customer loyalty and advocacy.

Some of the major areas that you need to focus include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing, Webinar Production, Content Marketing (Blogging & Article Writing), Downloadable Content Offerings (eBooks, Whitepapers, Webinars), Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Video Production, Website Design A/B Testing, Landing Page Strategy, Call-To-Action Strategy, Link Building/Earning, Infographic Design, Marketing Automation, Lead Nurture Strategy and having a strong Public Relations (PR).

“It is critical to understand – Marking is a journey. When a product is at the market, your task is to understand what is working in your favor and what is not.”

Evaluate the marketing strategy by looking at which channel is bringing your actual sales. Adjust your strategy accordingly. While improving market penetration, you need to concentrate on net promoter score and return on investment by continuously innovating the product.

Developing an innovative product that skyrockets to massive success isn’t easy. One can only work towards increasing the probability of success by dividing the bigger product launch cycle into smaller activities such as doing research, defining user and buyer persona, understanding competitors, developing an integrated marketing strategy, building right team, defining the right pricing, and preparing for launch along with development.

If you’d like to understand more about product development and launch strategies, please connect with us via consult@enterprise-infotech.com