4 Tips to Improve Your Product’s Speed to Market
You have an amazing idea and you’re on your way to starting your own business with a new product on the market. While you want to take your time so you can provide your customers with the best possible outcome, speed is an important factor in your success. You need to use the best tools to gain an edge over your competitors and improve your product’s speed to market.
Use Crowdfunding
Building a product from scratch takes money. While you can wait for a loan to be approved or go through rounds of looking for investors, there’s a faster option: crowdfunding. With platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, you can create a campaign to raise money from friends, family, co-workers and like-minded strangers. You can set your own goals, parameters, and timetables, so you don’t have to wait to get started. Plus, the faster you have funding, the faster you can start completing other parts of your business process.
Set Benchmarks
It’s easy to get lost in everything you have to do to start your business. There’s a lot of moving parts to keep track of. This is why it’s important to set specific goals with due dates throughout your process. If you have a clear idea of what is already done, what still needs to be worked on and how long each piece will take, you’re more likely to get it all done in a timely manner.
Use a benchmarking or project management tool like Basecamp to get your project organized. With this tool, you can lay out all of your tasks, assign people to complete those tasks and set due dates. Because everyone on your team can see what’s expected of them and what needs to be completed, there will be less time wasted on meetings and figuring out what to do.
Build a Model With a 3-D Printer
You want your product to be at its best when it goes to market. You don’t have time to waste finding problems and coming up with solutions when you realize your product isn’t perfect right away. This is why you should build a model before making your final product.
Start by creating a model on a computer program to come up with your design. Then run simulated tests to see how it stands up to different temperatures, pressure, drops, spills and whatever else may affect the use of your product. Then, make a prototype with a 3-D printer. These machines have dropped greatly in price and will provide you with a physical object that you can hold in your hand. When you can see and feel your product in real life, you can find problems more easily and make any necessary changes before you make the final designs.
Determine Your Sales Channels
As you’re developing your product, you need to know where you’re going to sell it and what that process entails. For example, if you’re mostly selling your product online, you need to look into various eCommerce platforms. Make sure your product descriptions, metadata, images and other content makes sense for the platform you’re selling it on. If it will be on multiple sites, you can achieve keyword optimization for product pages using a tool like Content Analytics to edit, manage and syndicate your product content. You also can receive analytics reports to see how your product is doing on each eCommerce platform so you can make changes as necessary.
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