What Is Product Planning and Development?

Did you know that 20% of all businesses fail within one year? As time progresses, the rate of business failure increases as well. Businesses fail for a variety of reasons and one of those reasons has to do with poor product planning. 

If you're aiming to market a product, you need to make sure plenty of development is behind it. Otherwise, no one will be interested in your product once it launches. But what is product planning and development anyway?

What kind of product planning tips should you follow to make sure that your new product is a success? Keep reading and learn all about the details with this product planning guide.

What You Need to Know About Product Planning

Product planning is not as complicated and daunting as it might sound. In reality, it is all about creating a plan to market your product. You can do this in a variety of ways, but before you jump into the marketing aspect of it, you'll need to start thinking about your goals and plans. 

For example, what kind of market do you plan on targeting? It is important to have a target market for a variety of reasons. First, you will be better able to design your product to satisfy that particular market. 

Second, you can analyze that market to see what kind of products the people would like to see in the future. That way, you can plan ahead to ensure that your newest product will be a big hit among your target audience. If you simply release a product and don't have a specific group of people in mind, you'll find that there won't be a lot of people flocking to buy your new product.

More than that, having a target market will help you better focus your product creation efforts. So, you won't have to worry about draining your energy into a product that no one cares about. You will also want to think about the goals for the product itself. 

Important Product Planning Questions to Ask Yourself

For example, how many products do you want to sell within a given period of time? How much do you want the product to sell for? How long do you plan to keep the product on the market?

Is the product going to be available only for a limited time? All of these questions are valid and you should come up with answers so that you can better plan the future of your product. The net gain of a particular product, of course, is very important. 

You don't want to pour a bunch of money into the development of a product only for it to make very little money in return. Instead, you will want to pay a certain amount of money to develop the product and then make a large net gain. That way, you can use the excess money to continue fueling your future product endeavors. 

But what should you do once you have everything planned out for your newest product?

What You Need to Know About Product Development

Product development is very similar to product planning, but it goes far beyond the planning stage. It mainly focuses on bringing a product from an idea to reality. This can be difficult depending on how complex your product is.

You may start with a simple design that you might like your product to resemble. You may also have an idea of how you want your product to work and what it should do. Such a product may also require certain materials or products for it to work. 

Whatever the case, the product development stage is the stage in which you will discover whether or not some of your product ideas are realistic or not. For example, you might want your product to work in a particular way, but something might prevent this from coming to fruition. As a result, you may need to redesign some aspects of your product before it can be made a reality. 

Don't be afraid of having to tweak your product in one way or another. Most products require plenty of redesigning and tweaking before they are ready to enter the market. Usually, simple designs are best. 

That way, the amount of redesigning is kept to a minimum and you can focus on the overall function of the product. This can be a lot for one person to handle which is why there are services that exist that can help you develop product prototypes. When you consult with these services, you can get a second opinion on your product and advice on what might make the product better.

Getting Different Perspectives on Your Product

This is important because if you are mainly working on a product by yourself, you will only be to see your product from one angle. But by adding other perspectives into the mix, you can see your product from many different angles. You can also ask others what might make the product better and what should be removed to improve the design. 

Many people don't like the idea of listening to others when it comes to the design of their products. Many prefer to keep the product's design exactly how they imagined it. However, compromising and occasionally changing your perspective on things is important when it comes to product planning and development. 

Once you streamline your product, you will find that it will be much easier to put it into the development phase. Once your product is finally developed, you will be able to examine the product in the flesh. This is important because you can see hands-on what makes the product good or bad. 

You can also see what might need to be improved, removed, or refined. Of course, the process of product planning and development is not quite so straightforward. There are a few more things you will need to consider before you create a product and make it available for purchase. 

How to Keep Your Customers Satisfied With Your Product

The point of creating a product is to satisfy a certain group of people, as mentioned before. If you are unable to satisfy your target audience, your target audience isn't going to be interested in buying your products or any future products you might have. This, of course, is a recipe for disaster for the future of your business. 

If you don't have any customers buying your products, you will soon be out of money and you won't have any funds to continue producing new products. But how should you go about keeping your customers happy with your products? Customer retention is a very important aspect to consider. 

Customer retention involves not only getting customers but getting them to come back and buy more products at a later time. This can be difficult. This is because many customers are one-time customers. 

They might see a product of yours that they like, buy it, and then never buy from you again. Even though having new customers is always good, having only one-time customers is not ideal. Fortunately, transforming one-time customers into long-term customers isn't as difficult as you might think. 

Retaining Your Customers With High-Quality Products

All you need to do is keep them entertained with your products in one way or another. For example, offering discounts for your upcoming products can make customers buy from you again. Sending out notifications for new products can also intrigue customers.

You will also want to make sure that your products are high quality to begin with. You're not going to get a lot of permanent customers if your products are cheaply made or unreliable. Your products should do exactly what they claim to do. 

If they do anything less, your customers aren't going to be happy and they won't want to buy from your brand again. Fortunately, you can sort out all of these problems while your product is still in the planning and development stages. Even if it means raising the price of your product, you should make sure that your product is the best it can be. 

That way, people will be thrilled with how well your product works. If they like your product enough, they should come back as repeat customers and you should gain new customers in the process as well. 

What Is Product Planning and Development?

What is product planning and development, you might ask? It all has to do with turning the ideas for a product into reality. You can do this by creating goals for your product, targeting a certain audience, streamlining your product, and so on. 

If you're interested in developing a product, contact us here and learn how we can help.