When you’ve established a degree of stability for your new business, whatever it is, from local hairdresser to fintech startup, you’re going to want to start thinking about expansion. Expanding your business gets you more customers, in more markets, from different backgrounds. It leaves you more able to weather some of the shocks that come with running a business – a larger more broadbusiness is less likely to be affected by a single sudden shock. If customers move on from one branch or one product, you have others providing revenue to help take up the slack.
One of the major components of business growth is new product development. This keeps your offering fresh, both attracting new customers and giving existing ones something new to focus on and potentially spend more money with!
The development process is an important one: there is no guarantee of success in the world of business, but good planning and research can give you the best possible chance. It’s important to let the facts guide your plans, rather than decide what you wish to happen dictate your plans and seek out facts to conveniently match.
Market Researchers
It’s important to partner with an expert market research firm. If you try to take on your research yourself, you not only run the risk of asking the wrong questions and interpreting data incorrectly, but you also limit the results you can get to customers who’ve already chosen to spend their money with you! If you want to attract new customers, you need someone with the reach to find out what they want, why they’ve not worked with you before and how you can draw them in!
Iterative Design
The most important design principle you can incorporate into your development process is iteration. This means having multiple rounds of design and testing and incorporating the results from each round into the next one.
Create a prototype, if only on paper and submit it for market research and testing. Make sure the concept is clear. If customers can’t understand the most basic concept behind the product you’re developing, they’re not going to spend their money on the finished article!
You can subject your marketing to the same principle, ensuring both product and advertising are optimised to speak to the people you need them to.
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