Designing a new product is a good thing, but designing it well is even better! Therefore, taking time to build your new offering is essential to offer your customers the most relevant product for a successful launch.

Knowing your customer is crucial

First of all, let’s talk persona.

The persona is the representation of your ideal customer. In any marketing activities, you have to bear in mind who he is and use it to stay relevant to save time and pilot your future actions whether for product development, communication content, choosing the right communication medium… So why being customer-centric? Quite simply because he is your mainspring: without any customers, you cannot do any business, and even if marketing can sometimes come from intuition, it is above knowing your client to address him a convincing but fair speech and offer. So spending a little of your time to get to know your persona doesn’t seem completely useless!

To define your persona, you will need to draw up the identity of your typical client by defining his age, sex, place of life, family situation, but above all by describing with as much detail as possible his way of life. To do so, you need to be able to answer the following questions:

✔️ What kind of job does he do? What is his socio-professional category?
✔️ What are his habits? What is his lifestyle?
✔️ What does he believe in? What are his values?
✔️ What media does he use for both information and entertainment?
…  and any other relevant aspects related to your business.

Some websites could help you build your persona but also provide you templates to fill the data in and save it: Xtensio, Hubspot, or WeLoveUsers.

The 4-steps development process

Product development can occur either by the need to broaden your offer or by identifying a business opportunity that comes in your way and you do not want to pass up. In either case – except the idea generation step – the development process remains much the same.

1. Generate ideas, then sort out

It can be a long way before finding a relevant idea for a new product, so it worth working on it even before you need it.

👉 Keep an eye on the competition

The best way to generate new ideas is competitive intelligence. Keep an eye and track your business segment but also the others, follow your competitors’ news, be aware of what happens on your local market but also abroad, be aware of technological, environmental, political news and advances… Besides helping you come up with new ideas, competitive intelligence is the main tool to better understand your market.

👉 Pay attention to your consumers’ comments

Put your consumers into the loop as of now, as they are the ones best suited to give you information about their expectations or needs. Read carefully the messages sent to you, but above all have a look on the web forums and pay attention to their comments on social networks which are sincerer and more genuine than speeches addressed directly to you.

👉 Brainstorm as a team

Brainstorm with your collaborators and relatives to pool your ideas and exchange views to both generate as many ideas as possible but also to sort them and only retain a shortlist.

Skimming should help you to focus only on ideas with potential: depending on the following criteria, review these ideas:

✔️ Your persona’s desirability towards this idea
✔️ Its potential from a market point of view: degree of maturity of the market?  does the identified market is overflowed or not (if it is, it could be difficult to get into it)?
✔️Idea relevance for your company (complementarity of the current offer? link with your DNA? …)
✔️ Feasibility whether for legal or technical reasons for example. Indeed, if the idea retained implies entering a new market, make sure to check its key factors of success to find out if your company holds the required skills and knowledge or if you will need to hire or subcontract.

This is a not-insignificant step since it will make you sure to focus only on ideas with potential interest for your customers and therefore not unnecessarily spend your time and money.

2. Upgrade your ideas into concept

Once the most relevant ideas for your business selected, you will need to fine-tune, clarify and shape the ideas to turn them into a customer benefit (also called value proposition) in order to switch from the simple idea stage to the concept stage.

How to identify and develop a good value proposition? 

Develop a value proposition is drawing up a concrete and unique solution that answers a frustration from your persona. In other words, it means being able to answer the following questions: what problem should I try to solve? how will my product bring something unique and attractive? what concrete result will it achieve? The value proposition can cover different aspects: product performance, sensorial identity, technical description or composition, price positioning, distribution.

While it can seem tiresome at first, taking time to develop your value proposition will let you know how to stand out, what is your advantage over competitors, and on which assets rely your communication.

When writing concepts, you may realize that for various reasons some of the ideas will move apart from themselves.

If several concepts are still in the game, if you need to polish one or even if you consider the concept achieved, it is still interesting to deal them with the market reality as it is not because a concept seems attractive to you that it will find its audience. So consider getting your current or potential customers involved as of now by asking them for their perception and interest in the product you plan to develop.  To collect their opinion, all ways are good:  marketing studies like focus groups if you can afford it, asking them directly on the street, in your workplace if you run a shop for example or through online surveys, or even via an Instagram survey.  In the first place, sounding your relatives is a quick and effective option to take the temperature.

3. Create, test, and learn

Once your concept validated, now it’s time to move on to the prototype development. The aim is not only to materialize the concept but also to test the technical and economic feasibility. Do not be afraid to develop various versions of the same product to determine which one is the best, but above all introduce them to your target consumers to ensure not to pursue on a wrong track even if your prototype is not on its final draft. Thanks to that, you may identify other objections you did not think of previously and so quickly fix them ahead of large-scale production and save time and money!

Testing your product on a large-scale study is always more interesting as it will ensure representative and complete insights. However, if due to financial means you cannot afford it use the tools above mentioned.

4. Go for it

Finally, once you completed all these steps you are ready for the next and last big one: market introduction. Even if a failure is not ruled out, taking time to ask yourself the right questions, to test your concept and your prototype, ensures that you will launch under the best possible conditions. However, keep in mind that you will always be able to improve your product later.