This is a dilemma every new entrepreneur faces. He or she has built a product that is relatively unknown even though it may be good. Entrepreneurship venture is often a one or two person adventure. It is hard to gather the resources that are needed to make the product popular on a massive scale. A poorly marketed product may not be successful.
The best strategy in this case is to go small and cover less bases at a time. Sure , it is a tempting thing to just go out and try to win a large market share ( for example by splurging on ads) but it is important to first ask, can one handle the demand that market will place on the product and entrepreneur's team. Often the initial success leads to euphoria that the product is doing extremely well and the entrepreneur is tempted to expand his territory. The reason for a new product doing well may be pent up demand which was till now unfulfilled. The entrepreneur may thus read the demand completely wrong.
One way to have sustainable demand is to listen to what your current customer base ( or to be customer base) is telling you. The next is to implement them. That means working on the demands is priority and devising solutions that help the customer in solving their problem. In other words to create a product that caters exclusively to the demands of your customers.
Soon the entrepreneur will notice a market that is ready to buy his product. It may be a very small segment of the overall market but if the product caters to more than 60-70% of that segment, it can be considered doing extremely good. It does not matter if the overall market for the same kind of product is much larger. The important part is if the segment that entrepreneur is operating in, is profitable enough to survive. The entrepreneur may not have the muscle to win the market share from the competitor but at least he has cornered a significant portion of the submarket.
The discovery of such a segment is not easy and it is not possible to accurately pinpoint such a segment even if market research is carried out. Yes one can get a good idea of what sells but then even observing what people buy can give a fair idea of what works.
By creating some sort of exclusivity for your product and segment, you can attract a significant portion of untapped market. You know your business best and the things that work over there.
I'm on the same page as you when it comes to product creation and marketing. In developing my product it was because so many people came to me in need of the same questions. Although it is not on the market YET… it will soon be.
It is like many others you will find on the market. But it is mostly targeted to many people with the same questions over and over I get. Instead of teaching them one by one, I decided to pool all this information together and put it out there.
As for my marketing: I'll start with my own list and another list I've been keeping which I named "My Question List" then go on from there. Do I want to sell this product to everyone? No…just one targeted market! From that one product, I'll go on to expand it.
I have tested my product with an MLM company that just loves it. They don't know anything about getting on line, but now the picture is clear. Still tweaking!
Well that was spot on Ashvini!
I remember when learning about what to create it was always said to me to of course ask your own readers and subscribers first. Even if you have to use a similar product as an example of what you want to create just try to either improve upon that model or add something that was overlooked.
We all learn differently so perhaps your audience will appreciate learning those things from you then the other guy anyway. This is always an area we can beat ourselves up over but hopefully more and more people will just jump on it.
Thanks for sharing and hope you've been having an awesome week.
Well, one thing that must be done is that, an Entrepreneur should do some research in the market first and then deliver solutions. It is true that with planning proper marketing strategy the product wont succeed. Therefore, Knowing your business along with the market demands is the best combination along with right marketing strategies.
Next post: Don't fall for entrepreneurship , really!!!