How to Successfully Bring a New Product to Market

If you have a novel concept or innovative idea that you’re thinking of bringing to market, it’s important to understand that success requires making the right moves, an investment of time and money and a little bit of luck.

The biggest mistake you can make in bringing a product to market is to develop a product for yourself and assume it’s going to sell. Coming up with a new convenience or solution for your own life is a good place to start, but it’s not where you need to finish.

Here are the most important considerations for developing a new product and what you need to accomplish before successfully selling to your customers.

6 Steps to Bring a Product to Market

1) Refine your idea Refining your initial idea through questions. Collaborate with a partner or mentor to talk through some fundamental ideas like:

• How will the product work?
• Who are the primary customers?
• Why will they want to use it?
• How practical is this product? How affordable?
• Is it easy to make or manufacture? Where can it be made?
• Has someone already come up with this product?

You might be surprised to learn that someone already beat you to the punch with an idea. That’s why it’s important to perform some preliminary research and even a patent search to see if your idea already exists.

If it does — don’t despair, because there’s other followup questions you can ask:

• How can that idea be improved upon?
• How can that product be made cheaper?
• How can the product be more efficient?

2) Identify your target market When you feel that you have a solid idea nailed down, it’s time to narrow the focus of who the customers will be. Having a more precise target market means your market research will be more effective, which will save you time and money in the long term.

You’ll want to determine the ideal customers for this product. Here are some questions to ask:

• What are their demographics?
• What are their income levels?
• What are their buying habits?
• How are they currently solving the problem?
• How and where are they likely to purchase your product?
• Can the value proposition be quantified to justify the product or service price?

It’s okay to start with general assumptions, because the next step is where the real work begins.

3) Research your marketThis is where you’ll determine your product market fit through a process of customer validation, also called market validation. Essentially, you have a great idea of a product — but will people actually buy it?

In the product development process, it can take surprisingly longer to get the market fit correct than to develop an MVP. Rather than wasting time on creating a product that won’t meet the needs of your customers, you can save some effort by nailing down the “must have” features that you’re trying to sell. Sometimes you’ll need a strong proposal backed by a proven value proposition to secure the capital or investments needed to build a working prototype.

It’s important to note that, depending on technology development for your product, some features may not be possible to achieve. Maybe the features aren’t currently cost-effective, maybe the existing infrastructure can’t support it, or maybe it’s just not yet achievable.

Depending on how the MVP production goes, you may need to re-think your proposal and pivot on the market fit. For example, the state-of-the-art chip you’re developing can’t achieve the audio fidelity you’re after, but it is providing incredible video quality for low cost. Is there a market for that?

Start with identifying any similar products in order to make comparisons in price and functionality. If you’re introducing something new, it can be helpful to make comparisons (“It’s like Zoom, but…” “Think of a smart car but….”). You’ll need to conduct as many interviews with representative customers as possible, whether through one-on-one discussions, by handing out surveys to volunteers, or creating online questionnaires.

The answers you get constitute your market discovery period and will let you know if you’re on the right track. Here’s where you need to be prepared to pivot your idea based on the feedback you’re receiving:

• If the response is aligning with your original assumptions, you’re on the right track.
• If the main selling point isn’t clicking with your audience, but other elements are, make those the important attributes of your product.
• If nothing is eliciting a positive response, it may be worth re-thinking the idea. Maybe you got the audience wrong, or maybe the timing isn’t quite right.

It is vitally important to get the value proposition right. You do not want to move toward investing time and money in scaling a business until you’re able to determine that you have a market for your product and customers who are willing to pay.

4) Create a prototypeWhen you’re confident that you have a good product market fit, you can move forward with developing a proof of concept for your product, the minimum viable product (MVP). An MVP does not need to be identical to the proposed final product; it just needs to get the key value across and showcase what’s unique about your offering.

In the product development process, it can take surprisingly longer to get the market fit correct than to develop an MVP. Rather than wasting time on creating a product that won’t meet the needs of your customers, you can save some effort by nailing down the “must have” features that you’re trying to sell. Sometimes you’ll need a strong proposal backed by a proven value proposition to secure the capital or investments needed to build a working prototype.

It’s important to note that, depending on technology development for your product, some features may not be possible to achieve. Maybe the features aren’t currently cost-effective, maybe the existing infrastructure can’t support it, or maybe it’s just not yet achievable.

Depending on how the MVP production goes, you may need to re-think your proposal and pivot on the market fit. For example, the state-of-the-art chip you’re developing can’t achieve the audio fidelity you’re after, but it is providing incredible video quality for low cost. Is there a market for that?

The Recursive Process of Product Market Fit and Product Development

Steps 3 and 4 are the most time intensive steps of the process, because they’re the most important. Getting them right saves you time and money, and getting them wrong can lead to sunk costs and wasted effort.

Think of this process as recursive: it’s testing, refining, getting feedback and then informing the other part of the process.

This process isn’t set in stone. You and your team will need to be flexible about how the market fit informs the product development and how your MVPs influence your value proposition. Just don’t make the mistake of doing your market discovery after your research and development; that never ends well. Recognizing that the discovery process to achieve product market fit is a separate process that informs product development is the key idea behind the “lean” approach many successful startups use.

5) Get a patentOnce you are confident with a product and a market fit, you’ll want to consider patenting your product. A patent is not required to introduce a new product to market, but it does offer protection from others copying or selling your product without your permission.

You’ll want to determine the most appropriate type of patent for your product:

• Trade secret – This is for innovations that derive their value from remaining unknown, including programs, methods, formulas and processes.
• Patent – These are publicly disclosed and must be reviewed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and gives exclusive rights to make, use, sell and important for a specific time period (usually 20 years).
• Provisional patent – This is a patent that does not get reviewed by the USPTO as it holds the place for the submission of the actual patent, usually within a year.

Patents aren’t cheap, so you’ll want to consider the funding that you’ll need for the application in your budget. Simple designs could be as little as $1,000, but more complex designs or processes could cost $10,000+ to patent.

6) Find a business model To bring your product to market you’ll need to make or produce it at scale. That means finding a business model that will allow you to efficiently develop and deliver products without eating into your profits. Generally you’ll want to consider one out of three business model paths: licensing, outsourcing or starting your own company.

What Entrepreneurial Path is Right for You?

Of the different possible business model “paths” available, you’ll want to select the one that best aligns with how your product will be marketed, your available network of contacts and your own set of skills and capabilities. Keep in mind that your business path isn’t set in stone — while you or your team may initially decide on one model, you alway choose to pivot later based on changing circumstances.

Licensing

This is where you initially develop the idea for a product, and then another company takes over the idea to manufacture, advertise and sell the product. The actual terms of the agreement are flexible and will vary based on circumstances like assumed risks, percentages, responsibilities, etc.

This model presents the least amount of risk, as you essentially sit back and collect royalties from sales, however this model also has the lowest earning potential.

Outsource Enterprise

Here you research the idea and actually develop the product, but outsource the manufacturing and marketing to partners. In this model the investing partner(s) will pay for startup costs and marketing, and so will share control of the idea (with the actual amount of control depending upon your agreement).

This model requires more investment from you, but is still relatively low risk compared to starting your own company. It also offers a quicker way to bring products to market if you don’t already have your own company.

Starting Your Own Company

This is where the biggest potential returns are, but also the highest level of risk and required personal investment. You assume all responsibility for design, manufacturing, marketing and sales — owning the entire process from start to finish.

You could start a brand that will grow and prosper for years, or you could crash and burn, losing all of your investment.

Note that these models are not mutually exclusive, as there’s nothing preventing your company from completely owning the development and marketing of one product, but choosing to outsource the manufacturing of another product. Roughly half of all companies will do a big pivot as they actually move into the market.

As an entrepreneur, you can usually get away with shifting gears, as your funding investors are comparatively amenable to a business model change — provided the move makes sense and you can make the case for it. Established business and intrapreneurs will find it more challenging to adjust their chosen business model.

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