Avoid This Major Product Development Pitfall
One of the most overlooked steps in developing a new product is figuring out how to sell the product.
It’s so easy to fall in love with our products with all of their cool features and use cases. Unfortunately, products can fail even when you do market research and know you are building the exact product customers want. That’s because building what customers want and helping them understand that you built exactly what they want are completely different skill sets.
You don’t know if have a viable product until someone pulls out their wallet and gives you money for it. That’s why I’ve started to think of marketing messages as one of my early MVP’s, and most critical steps in developing a new product. Product teams need to know if they can talk about a new product in a way that motivates customers to take action or not.
Tony Fadell shared a brilliant idea in his book, “Build”. His teams would write a press release for every new product they created. But here’s the trick. They didn’t wait until the end. They wrote it before they began.
Tony said, “To write a good press release you have to focus. The press release is meant to hook people—it’s how you get journalists interested in what you’re making. You have to catch their attention. You have to be succinct and interesting, highlight the most important and essential things that your product can do. Fadell, Tony. Build (p. 136).
Can you talk about your product in a way that really hooks people and engages potential customers? Use this exercise with your team to keep everyone laser-focused on the core vision for your product. Here’s a link to a guide for writing press releases.
