Starting a product-based business requires validating and verifying the demand for your product offering. All too often, businesses skip this step and needlessly invest time and capital in creating a product that consumers aren’t interested in. Capitalizing on the latest trends isn’t always the best way to create a viable product that sells. The two most important questions any product-based business should ask are whether the product is market-viable and if the product itself is viable.
Product and Market Viability
Market viability is your business’s ability to tap into a specific market, and this can be done with a market-viability analysis. There are three main factors to consider when determining market viability. You need to assess the market size and whether it’s large enough for new competition and if there’s room for growth. Then, you need to assess if your target audience has the discretionary income to afford your product. Lastly, you need to consider the market competition and how you can compete with their strengths and weaknesses.
Product viability is your business’s potential to captivate your target audience with your product. This entails an analysis of the market demand for your product offering and of the profit margin if you sell a product at a competitive price. Products with too little demand or a low-profit margin aren’t worth the time or capital.
A great example of an in-demand product or service is scale calibration. The accurate measurement of scales and other types of weighing equipment is legally required for goods that are sold by weight or measurement. SWIA’s scale calibration service ensures that weighing equipment meets trade approval. The calibration company can build, perform preventative maintenance, adjust, and repair your weighing equipment to ensure quality assurance and issue a certificate of accuracy. Their balance calibration services are appropriate for all situations including weighbridges, silos, in-motion check weighing, analytical balances, and more.
Why Product and Market Viability Matter
It’s important to evaluate the viability, profitability, and customer requirements for any potential new product. Performing due diligence helps your business reduce the risk of losing money on deadstock, inventory management, and marketing. Other expenses you need to consider include the domain name, web hosting, e-commerce platform, email marketing, web design, and content. The more capital you invest in a new product, the greater the chance of success.
When it’s time to put your data findings into a readable form, it helps to have a uniform way to present your findings. Instead of having team members put together their own charts, spreadsheets, or graphs, you should leverage a brand-template solution. Lucidpress’s templated graph maker makes it easy for team members to transform data into pie charts and bar graphs that align with your brand. The intuitive online chart and graph maker is user-friendly, and smart templates make it easy to create various chart types and graph types. The ability to store and access brand colors, logos and fonts ensures consistency in the look and character of presentations. The online graph maker easily integrates with Google Sheets, YouTube, Dropbox, social media, and InDesign so team members can import existing brand content into any graph template.
Considerations of Product Viability
There are several factors to consider when performing a product-viability analysis. Conducting a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis is the easiest way to gain insights into your market depth and competitiveness. Completing a competitive analysis allows you to identify the competition, examine their websites, analyze their sales funnels, break down their marketing strategies, and reverse-engineer their business models.
Determine your target audience by analyzing the demographics and psychographics to create a set of buyer personas. With a buyer persona in mind, you can better determine the criteria behind a successful product. When performing a product-viability assessment, it’s important to consider the product weight and size, as bulky products complicate logistics. Consider product fragility and how product breakage can affect your profits and brand image on social media. Determine the right product pricing to ensure you are competitive but able to make a profit. Finally, keep seasonal demand in mind and the product’s life span and the length of time customers can use it.