3 Lessons in Building a Successful Product

As a startup or new business line within a large corporation, building a successful product is paramount to success. The best ideas are just that, until a team comes together to create something special. Great products that people love should always be the focus. Without a great product, all the marketing and PR in the world won’t matter. Building a successful product takes identifying market trends, analyzing the competitive landscape and building a team that can execute.

Identify Market Trends

Where is the market today and where do you see it going? How will technology or market pressures effect the space in the short and long term? These are the types of question you need to ask yourself when trying to identify market trends. Your goal should be to see short term success with a long term vision in mind. We’ve all seen disruptive technology change entire industries like Uber disrupting transportation. You will want to look at things like how the smart phone is or will potentially change how people interact with the industry that you are looking to launch a product into. These types of trends can inform how and what you create.

Competitive Due Diligence

Doing your competitive due diligence helps to deepen your understanding of the marketplace and should be performed along with identifying market trends. You will need to have a deep understanding of who your competitors are, what they are doing today and what they are planning to do in the future that differentiates them from the market. This research will help determine where competitors’ strengths and weaknesses lie, and therefore how your product can be superior.

You can start this research by joining trade publications and going to conferences to see what your competitors are doing and where they plan to go in the future. Ultimately, you will need to invest in market research to get the full breadth and depth of the market and your competitors.

Bring the Team Together

Building a team that can execute on the product vision is the most crucial step in creating a great product. You can have all the market research and the most innovative marketing strategy in the world, but if you don’t deliver a product that people love then you won’t succeed in the market. This all starts with leadership knowing what they want to create, how it should be created and identifying resources that can help them achieve this. Once the team is together, it’s up to leadership to articulate the vision and create a roadmap for success. A great example of this is when a leading gaming company, 888Ladies, steps readers through the process of how “an endeavor like the creation of Treasure Fair involves dozens of people across numerous teams in a multidisciplinary organization like 888: creative teams, product management, development, QA, marketing, and more.”

While these aren’t the only considerations when launching a successful product, they are some of the most important. Whether in the startup phase or getting company buy-in for the next great product idea it’s important to study the market, learn from your competitors and build the right team to make the next great product.