Do you have an idea for a product or service?
If yes, you’re probably making plans to start a business and start offering the product or service. Right? Not so fast!
Before you bring a product to market, it’s essential to establish whether it has adequate market demand. Market demand is what drives sales. If you’re selling a product or service that doesn’t have good demand in the market, there’s only one path for your business: failure.
This brings us to the question: how do you determine whether a product has market demand before you even start selling it? This article seeks to answer this question.
Read on for deeper insight.
Run a Kickstarter Campaign
Kickstarter is a digital platform that enables entrepreneurs to crowdfund for their creative product ideas. You publish your campaign and interested backers buy your product on the premise that you will deliver it once it’s ready. This means you must clearly explain what your product does and provide production and delivery timelines.
Thousands of Kickstarter campaigns are running at any given time, and not all meet their targets. Either way, this is an ideal way to gauge the interest people have in your product. If you meet your Kickstarter goals, that’s a good sign that people are loving your product even before they get their hands on it.
Running a Kickstarter campaign is similar to taking pre-orders for a product. You can develop a business website, promote it, and encourage potential consumers to make pre-orders. You need to incentivize them, such as by offering a good discount on their pre-orders.
Evaluate the Competition
If your product idea is similar to what’s already on the market, evaluating the competition can help you forecast the market demand your product will generate.
If the market has a few competing companies and they’re all thriving, you can conclude that there’s strong market demand for the product. It also means the market doesn’t have a specific preference for one brand; otherwise, only one company could be thriving.
What if you notice that there’s fierce competition in the market? This can be both good and bad. Good in the sense that the consumer market is active, but bad in the sense that there might not be space for a new entrant. Don’t rush into an overly competitive market. You might not be able to penetrate, especially if you don’t have the budget to run aggressive marketing campaigns.
Use a Market Research Service
There are different types of market research companies that can provide you with the market demand information you’re looking for. If you already have a prototype of your product, a company like Pinch Me will take your samples, send them to its product testers, who will then provide consumer feedback.
With this feedback, you’ll not only be able to determine whether consumers like the product but also gather useful information, such as the price consumers are willing to pay for it.
Test for Market Demand Before Launching a Product
It’s prudent to test for market demand before launching a new product or even turning in a prototype for mass production. There are different ways to test the market, as fleshed out above. The method you choose will depend on the nature of your product.
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