OER-CRAFT

How to define your product

BC_1  

 Title:
How to define your product
 Keywords
product image, logo, corporate design, business product, market analysis
 Author:
IWS
 Languages:
English
 Objectives/goals:
At the end of this training fiche you will have enough knowledge how to define your product.

 Description:

This training fiche is focused on how you can define your product. Pricing and packaging your products and services correctly for your target market is one of the most powerful branding activities that you can do. If your target group has changed, you need to review your business model to be sure that you can still offer what they need.  When you are defining your product it is important that you think of what the product has to offer, the so called the Unique Selling Point (USP).   

In a way, this is “bragging” about your product or service in such a way as to attract customers. It is therefore an inescapable step in setting up your business projects’ marketing process.




 Contents

• Define your target group, before you can start defining the product it is important that you think of who your target group is. Your target group is a big part of the success that your product will have. When you have your focus on the wrong target group, it will become harder to sell your product, so you will have less success.

• Define the solution that your product offers, before you start promoting your business it is important that your focus is on understanding your target group and that promoting is not your first priority. Offering a product or service is one thing. However, you still need to sell the product and that is harder than you think. Before you can start selling, you need to define the benefits that your product has to offer. You need to make sure that it is presented in such a way that it shows as “the” solution to your customers. The objective is that you try to provide an overview of the added value that your product has to offer.

• Talking about your Unique Selling Points (USP) means that you need to list all the advantages that your product has to offer, in comparison to any similar products that are offered by your competitors.



• Your product’s accessories and other complementary elements, after you have made a list with the benefits, features and the Unique Selling Points of your product, it is time to start describing its range. Along with the main solution that your product has to offer, you can think about what other needs can meet. It is important that you distinguish the product itself from its accessories and extra features. It is also important that you start describing the various options, advantages or partnerships that add benefits to your product or can be a complement to the product.

• Paint a picture of the customer, start to list all the different types of customers that suffer from the problems you solve. Once you have done it, you can start building up a picture of these customers. Group them by location - for example, high net worth individuals tend to live in certain postcodes. Group them by market sector - are they manufacturers, recruitment agents, and so on.

• Think about your market, today we live in the world of niche. For example, we are no longer prisoners of television schedules. We can watch what we want at our convenience from almost anywhere in the world; meaning every person can enjoy a unique viewing experience.

The web is fantastic at delivering personalized products and services, cutting out many of the distribution challenges that previously existed.

• Use product definition questionnaires, it can help you with making that list is asking yourself these questions:

1. Who is your target group?

2. What is the problem that your products tries to solve?

3. What solutions has the product to offer?

4. What are the most important benefits that your product has?

5. What are the main alternatives/ who is your biggest competitor?

6. Why is your product better than the alternatives?

7. What makes your product unique

8. Why should consumers choose your product and not the one that is offered by the competitors?

9. What are the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats of your product?

Once you are done you can put it all together to get your product definition:

For___, who need____, our products provides____. Our product is better than other solutions such as____ and___ because____



Advertising companies often have to convey a USP as succinctly as possible through words and pictures. Therefore, try looking at a variety of adverts in your business sector and indeed across sectors for comparison. How well do other companies convey their USPs? Can they potentially do this more effectively? Developing an effective USP can take time, but if you get it right, it can be a very powerful tool.


 Results

After reading this points you will have a knowledge about defining your product.



 Indicators



 Learning Outputs
Online learning


 Bibliography

http://www.shell-livewire.org/home/business-library/market-research/know-your-usp/





 





http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/four-steps-to-defining-your-product-vision-with-ag.html