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Product Development Strategy – Tips to Develop a Successful New Product

Product Development Strategy - GID Company

As new products flood the market daily, the demand for improved product development continues to escalate. Various factors such as industry, product type, features, and more must be considered. Therefore, an exceptional product development strategy is imperative.

Many companies concentrate on their customers’ needs when developing a product, while others aim to address an existing issue with their product. Regardless, without a sound product development strategy, the chances of encountering failure are high. Even if a company has an exceptional idea and ideation process, it won’t amount to much without an effective product development strategy. If you prefer learning through video, you may watch the clip below, or skip ahead if not.

In this blog, we are about to discuss a lot of interesting stuff regarding new product development and product development strategy, so stay tuned and keep reading. Let’s get started.

So, What’s a Product Development Strategy?

A product development strategy involves a series of steps aimed at introducing a new product to an existing or new market. It entails conducting constant market research, conducting thorough tests, and careful planning of product concepts. Additionally, it may involve introducing an existing product to a new market. In some cases, a product development strategy may be necessary for a current product in the current market space, particularly if a new feature is being introduced, rebranding is taking place, or a new complementary product line is being launched.

As per the product life cycle theory, all products eventually reach a plateau where revenue growth diminishes. This is typically when companies adopt fresh product-led growth strategies, introduce new product lines, or implement a new marketing strategy. Some companies concentrate on new product development strategies to help augment the growth of their current products. Regardless of whether a company’s product is successful or not, a product development strategy can be employed to enhance growth.

A product development strategy typically complements a business strategy, and the product development process can vary depending on factors such as commercializing a new product, iterating on an existing one, or other considerations. Extensive market research through focus groups is typically conducted to determine the functionality of the product and gain insight into the needs of customers in different demographics and target markets. The development team can then use this data to brainstorm and formulate a suitable strategy.

Let’s Understand New Product Development Strategy Process (NPD Process)

The process of new product development (NPD process) can be condensed into eight key steps, which remain consistent for start-ups, SMEs, and enterprises alike. These steps are fundamental to the success of the product life cycle, and all development projects must undergo them.

Ideation Process

The initial step is idea generation, which involves systematically brainstorming new product concepts based on real-world issues, existing market products, and basic target audience research. To generate a few good ideas, it’s essential to come up with hundreds of them. Two methods can be used to generate ideas.

Internal idea sources involve existing company stakeholders and employees, such as research and development, product managers, marketers, and others.

Alternatively, external idea sources can be employed, including outside stakeholders, suppliers, competitors, and secondary sources of inspiration.

Screen the Best Ideas

Idea screening involves filtering all of the generated ideas and selecting a few of the best ones. The goal is to identify a specific type of idea and then pick the most promising one from among them. Once the official product development process commences, it is difficult to revert and incorporate new ideas. Changing methodologies mid-process can result in delays and setbacks.

When selecting ideas, two factors should be considered: profitability and utility. Profitability pertains to the company, whereas utility concerns the end-user.

For those interested in acquiring skills for creating an excellent product strategy, our product management certifications provide guidance on achieving this.

Product Concept Development (and Testing)

After selecting an idea, the subsequent step is to transform it into a product concept. The product concept is a more comprehensive and detailed version of the initial idea. Developing several product concepts for various ideas can be time-consuming, and it requires a significant amount of effort and resources.

To ensure the effectiveness of the product concept, it must be tested in an existing market. The precision of the product concept is vital, and testing enables this precision. Testing the concept with target audience clusters allows for a better understanding of consumer response, appeal, and reliability. During testing, consumers can be asked specific questions to aid in product design, pricing, and prototyping.

Develop Marketing Strategy

Once a complete product concept has been developed and tested, the next step is to create a viable marketing strategy. This strategy should be developed with the current market, market share, and target audience in mind. The marketing strategy typically consists of several key components, which may include:

  • Value proposition
  • Target market description
  • Profit and market share goals (focus on SMART goals)
  • Pricing outline
  • Marketing and distribution budget
  • Long-term profit goals, sales, and marketing mix.

The marketing strategy also allows you to track certain metrics.

Business Potential of Proposed Product

After the marketing strategy, it’s important to evaluate and analyze the effectiveness of the new proposed product. That includes viewing future projections, costs, and more.

To conduct this research, you can either go for market surveys or look at similar products by other companies. Developing a sales forecast will help you estimate costs, profits, and a timeline.

Product Development

Once the business analysis is complete, the product development process begins. Up until this point, your product was just a rough idea, prototype, or a potential product. This step is crucial in turning it into a fully functional product.

This stage often requires a significant investment, as you’ll be spending on research and development. The R&D department typically creates multiple versions of the product during this phase, which is called prototyping, and can take several months to complete.

Once you have a product prototype ready, it’s time to test it. Marketers usually bring in customers for product testing, which helps them get an idea of what the customer wants.

Marketing Testing

When your product is ready to launch, the next step is to conduct test marketing, which involves testing out marketing strategies in realistic market settings. This phase is essential for marketers to understand how the product is perceived, what needs to be improved, and what other investments the company can make to ensure the product’s success. The duration of marketing testing can vary depending on the product, but it’s crucial to be as thorough as possible and follow testing best practices.

Commercialization

The last step in the product development process involves making the decision to launch the product. By this point, you have a fully functional product, a marketing strategy, and all the necessary information to make it work.

Launching the product involves introducing it to the market and promoting it through marketing and sales. It’s crucial to carefully plan the timing and location of the product launch to ensure its success. Failure to do so may result in the product’s failure despite its potential.

We Can Help You Create a Great Product Development Strategy

The success of your new product relies heavily on your product development strategy, as the latter is a prerequisite for the former. It is also essential for product managers, product marketing managers, the product team, and the marketing team to effectively perform their respective roles. At GID Company, we have a team of strategist to help pen down the best product development strategy that ensures the success. The Product Development Strategy defined with the help of experts at GID Company will help you maintain consistency and thoroughness.

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Product Development Life Cycle – Understanding The Steps and Stages!

Product Development Life Cycle - GID Company

The product development life cycle consists of many important aspects to consider when you want to develop a new product from scratch. As an entrepreneur or product creator may know, the product is the sole reason behind creating interest among customers and driving sales. However, the process of taking your half-baked idea from inception to product launch is hectic and somewhat complex. One should know that each process of the product development life cycle will be a little different based on the end product. However, the process is almost the same when looking at the main steps of product development.

A step-by-step plan is indeed crucial when we are talking about new product development, of course, if you want the product to succeed in the market. Each and every phase of product development has its own importance in the product development cycle. Whether you are a newcomer or an experienced entrepreneur opting for building a creative and powerful product from scratch, you will need to find an expert product development company such as GID Company. Let’s move forward to find out more about the product development life cycle and process.

What is Product Life Cycle?

The product life cycle is the amalgamation of stages a product goes through from its launch in the market to termination. There is a minor difference between the product life cycle and the product development life cycle. That’s the reason why most people often consider both terms the same. You will get more ideas by comparing the important stages of the product life cycle and product development life cycle. The main stages of the product life cycle are as follows:

Introduction

The product is in the introduction phase and new to the market. The introduction phase begins once the product is launched in the market for the end user. The customers or end users will use the product for its specific purpose.

Growth

When the product is becoming popular among its customers, it will be gaining traction and grow consistently. The growth stage will depend on various factors such as the quality of the product, the price range, and how useful it is for people.

Maturity

The product reaches the maturity stage in the product life cycle when it reaches peak market penetration. The product reaches its maximum limit to grow in the market and eventually, will keep holding its position or degrade over time but not exceed the peak point.

Decline

The product will lose its market share over time after it obtains the maturity stage. The product may have to be discontinued under circumstances where the product owners deal with the loss for a considerable period of time.

Product Development Life Cycle For New Products

Basically, a product life cycle is a process of developing a new product by generating a new idea and defining the development process to creating a product prototype model and later on, developing, and launching the actual product. The product development life cycle actually describes how a product goes through each and every stage from inception to launch.

The process actually explains how the new product ideas are actually brought to the market after their successful and precise design and development. The product development experts will craft a well-planned and efficient process to ensure reducing the risk and maximize the chances of leading the product in traction. The product development life cycle defines the accurate path for new product development.

7 Stages Of Product Development Life Cycle

Product development is a process that involves the creation of a new product or service. It starts with an idea, which is then developed into a prototype and can be tested for viability. The process then continues to the production phase, where the product is manufactured and sold to customers. Finally, the product can be improved or changed in order to meet customer needs. Highlighting the different ways to categorize steps in the product development process, here are the important 7 key stages of the product development life cycle. 

Ideation

Generating new ideas for new product development is indeed the first step in the product development life cycle. The main motive of the product development company is to identify new problems as well as opportunities and have a clear idea of how to resolve them. The best thing to not do in the ideation stage is to judge the feasibility of the idea. Take the help of professionals if you want to let creative ideas flow through the product you are developing. The ideation stage involves market research, competitive research, and customer analysis to define the product scope, features, and needs.

Validation

Following through the ideation stage in which you might have a list of creative product ideas through brainstorming, the second stage of product development begins. The validation stage actually is taken into account to filter through product ideas that are worth investing in and product ideas to avoid. In this stage, one can speak directly with potential customers to get a clear understanding of what they need in a product. It will be an advantage if you are trying to pre-sell the product in the validation product development life cycle stage.

Prototyping

Before moving on with the prototyping stage, you should ensure to have a list of the features and functions your product should have. Based on the defined requirements and scope, the product prototype model of the actual product is built and developed. Using wireframing tools such as Figma or Sketch, it will be easy to build a working prototype model. The prototype model is then tested by product testers and improvised accordingly to make it flawless.

Marketing

As soon as the product prototype model is developed successfully, it will be time to identify your potential customers and reach out to them with an effective marketing strategy. Consider marketing on social media and your current customer base if any and request them to share feedback and pain points. Ensure to establish the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) using your preferred advertising mediums such as paid advertising, blogging, social media, etc. A well-planned marketing plan can offer you the desired results. 

Development

Start with the product development phase once you have finished with the marketing strategy of your actual product. With our years of experience, we believe that the end goal of the product development stage is to get the product to the market at the earliest. It will be better to define a deadline for a product launch in the market and divide the time into small manageable works to get you one step closer to the finished product.  

Launch

When it is time to launch the product into the market, there are several things to finalize such as finalizing integrations, billing, user tracking, and analytics. The main thing when launching the product is to ensure everything is running smoothly and up to expectations. The product should be well-tested from each and every angle possible. You can opt for a product launch event to boost your product’s marketing and increase mouth-to-mouth advertising.  

Improvement

As you know, product development is not a one-time thing, a product will have to keep improvising with time. Once your product is launched into the market, you need to keep tabs on how it is performing and identify the flaws or weaknesses of the product and work on improvising the actual product for customer satisfaction. Take note of the end-users behavior, then tweak your existing features and functions of the product or add a new one. With consistent improvement in the product, it will be gradually successful in the market.  

Get In Touch With Us & Clear Doubts About Product Development Life Cycle

With an expert and well-experienced product development company like GID Company, it will be possible for your business to reach new heights and success in the market with a newly-launched product. We are here to help you find the right product development experts to serve your product design as well as development requirements. To clear all your doubts and questions, please feel free to give us a call at +1714-323-1052 or Contact Us. To get the latest updates, please connect with GID Company on Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.