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How to Bring Your Product Idea to the Market: 5 Expert Tips for First-Time Business Owners

If you have an idea to create amazing products to sell, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to tell you how you can bring your product idea to the market. Check out the five expert tips from Valerie Trent of Lee London Design, which can be especially useful if you’re a first-time business owner!

It might sound cliché, but what’s the point of having great ideas if they’re only in our heads, right?

There are a lot of debates and discussions about this, but many experts and observers believe that ideas are cheap, and executions are expensive.

So, what do you have to do to transform your intangible ideas into products that people can actually use?

Let’s find out how to bring your product idea to the market, especially if you’re a first-time business owner.

From Your Head to Reality: Taking Your Product Idea to the Market

A partner and colleague of ours, Valerie Trent, the Founder and CEO of Lee London, has helped us compose this article. As an expert in executing the process of taking products to market as well as market strategy, Valerie is no stranger to bringing product idea to the market.

Here are her five steps for turning ideas into products that you can apply to your business.

1. Survey your audience

Before you start anything else, research your audience so you don’t waste hours and thousands of dollars later.

Let’s say you want to create reusable, eco-friendly period pants. Here are some questions you can ask in your survey:

  • Who would want to buy and use them?
  • What kind of materials do they want?
  • How many sizes and colors should be available?
  • How much would they spend on buying these pants?
  • How often would they repeat their purchase?

2. Do your due diligence

What is a trademark? What’s copyright? If you don’t know the difference between the two yet, dedicate some to learning about them and how they could affect your upcoming business.

There are also other terms you should get familiar with. You can start by Googling them or asking your legal consultant right away. Either way, these properties can be an asset or distraction depending on your products.

  • Patent Search
  • Mechanical Patent
  • Design Patent

3. Find the right materials for your products

Bad materials mean a bad customer experience.

One easy trick to find the best materials for your products is by buying from several competitors. You can then test the feels, colors, and weight, and figure out which ones would suit your products best.

After finding out what you want, you can talk to an expert on how to manufacture such materials.

4. Map out your timeline

Did you know that it can take around 2–6 months to create the custom tools to create your products? That’s quite a long time and it doesn’t even include the other R&D phases — such as choosing materials, designing, and testing.

Plan accordingly and set some backup period in case something gets delayed and stuff.

5. Be meticulous with your budgeting

Established companies allocate up to half of their budget to marketing. As a first-time business owner and founder, you will likely need an even larger percentage for building awareness and doing several tests.

For example, you may need to create 3–4 SEM alternatives, A/B test your landing page, test different targeting on your Facebook ads, and so on.

Bringing Product Idea to the Market Is a Fun Challenge

Okay, after reading all this, we understand that taking your product idea to the market can seem daunting now. But you don’t need to worry. It’s going to be a challenging yet fun journey as long as you plan everything well.

And if you need some help with planning on how to turn your ideas into products, you can reach out to Valerie Trent and her Lee London team. Meanwhile, if you need any help with branding and digital marketing, feel free to contact us!

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