Every product available today began as an idea in somebody’s mind. From the cell phone to a software platform, most things you can buy became animated through the procedure of the invention. But all of these ideas got some help from outside polling at one stage or another.
The road from idea to a completed product can be a long one, and the individuals who travel it regularly confront various snags and difficulties. In any case, equipped with the right data and resources, you can put yourself on the way to offering your invention for sale to the public.
Designing a new product or technology requires extensive idea and planning. One of the problems inventors or product designers regularly face is in knowing where to begin the design process. Knowing what the first step is when designing a new product or technology can give you a jump-start on the entire process. Developing a design plan is the first step when creating new products and technologies, but the plan itself consists of several smaller steps.
Your first steps before outside polling
The first phase of the planning process when creating any new product or technology is to conduct research so you can examine the feasibility of your idea, things you need to know before moving forward with your design are whether there is a market for your product, how large that market is and how much the product will cost in terms of start-up. A nicely designed product with no market or need could be a waste of time.
Planning is much more than just a team building exercise, but one of the benefits of using the inclusive planning process outlined below is building a strong product.
Here are six step processes to build an actionable strategic plan for developing a product.
- Orient participants
- Review your current mission, goals/objectives
- Prepare your situational analysis
- Formulate your strategy
- Prepare your implementation plan
- Prepare for monitoring
Once you have finished the planning phase and have a design blueprint in place, your product can be developed to create a prototype. The prototype allows you to test your design to ensure that it meets quality standards and does what you originally designed it for in the first place.
The necessary steps of Outside Polling
An outside poll or a survey can and should be conducted to know the opinions and preference of people in your target market. Keeping these in mind, you can then work toward the creation of their product. Providing incentives to participate can greatly improve your response. And, this is some of what can assist people who already have their product or service put together can use. Often, the product or service is good, but the message isn’t helping people to understand what the product can do for them, what problem it can solve, or what pain it can alleviate. Ask your current clients how they use the product or service, what is the most important thing it has helped them with, how does it fit into their daily lives, etc. Often these types of questions can shed light on things you may not have even known your product could do. Let the market guide you to the highest and best use of your product or service, then take the market’s lead and make it even better, and use what they are telling you to educate other consumers about the benefits it offers.
Outside Polling will help build the concrete foundation of a solid business and help you redirect the scope and vision of your original plan. Once you have determined the feasibility of the plan, you have to determine to what extent your will product will be used by the market you have identified. If your market is limited to existing customers who already use a similar product, your plan may simply involve modifying an existing design, rather than create an entirely new design. The scope of the project ultimately determines how the design process is carried out.
In conclusion, collecting the right data early for your product is a big deal, and good use of outside polling can make a big difference. Bad data can skyrocket the cost of product implementation and bring your entire marketing program to a screeching halt. When collecting data, they typically use forms to ask specific qualifying questions, which is how they then screen prospects and segment campaigns for relevancy to the target audience. But prospects sometimes input false or misleading information and this can have a huge effect on how and if they get funneled through the sales pipeline. To make your data actionable, you must gather explicit and implicit data and measure the recency and frequency of your customers’ behaviors. And by gathering data over time, you’ll capture more accurate information from customers that you can use to more effectively nurture them through the buying cycle.
Photo Credit: Voting Key/ Mike Lawrence / CC BY