Product Development Stages: How to Create Your Product and Sell It Successfully

The development of a new product in marketing is a multi-stage process that includes the inception of a concept, the creation of a project, and implementation. The release of innovative products helps companies remain competitive in the market, adapt to changing customer needs, and increase loyalty. In this article, we consider the main stages of development, types of products, and possible errors.

Why do you need new product development?

Organizations that plan to release a new product pursue the following goals:

• Attract consumers, increase awareness. Product development helps to increase the assortment, expand the target audience.
• Increase competitiveness. New products, fresh solutions that meet the interests of consumers attract more attention.
• Scale profits. The company's new offer becomes an additional source of income and improves the financial situation.
• Modernize finished products. The market is constantly changing. In order to remain profitable, it is important for businesses to take into account trends, fashion, and offer products that meet consumer demands.
• Maintain customer loyalty. It is important for companies to maintain communication with the audience, to propose new projects in order to maintain interest and attention. This will strengthen the connection of customers with the company.
• Improve your image. The release of an original modern product will demonstrate that the organization follows trends, is ready to develop, taking into account the desires of consumers.
• Adjust to the economic instability of the market. Due to independent circumstances, companies have to produce a cheap analogue of products or change the field of production. Sometimes the release of a new product is a flexible solution that helps to save the business.

What are the types of products

New Product Development (NPD) includes the creation, testing, and launch of goods on the market. There are different types of NPD for business:

• Innovative approach. It is associated with the development of proposals by manufacturers that change standards and technologies. Examples: iPhone, Tesla, Airbnb.
• Imitation approach. It includes adaptation, modification of profitable projects that already exist on the market. Examples: Samsung Galaxy (similar to the iPhone), Toyota Prius (similar to Tesla)
• Product improvements. It involves updating the company's finished products to meet new market needs. Examples: improvements to iPhone models, new flavors of Snickers chocolate bars.
• Formation of partnerships. This type of NPD involves the creation of products in collaboration with other companies. Examples: The collaboration between Adidas and Kanye West to create a shoe line for Yeezy, Starbucks, and Nestlé to produce coffee capsules.
• Launch of a new project for a specific territory. For example, the opening of the Teremok chain of Russian restaurants in Krasnodar.

Stage 1. Research and needs analysis

New Product Development, that is, the development of a new product, consists of 7 stages. The first of them is the analysis of consumer demands. To do this, you need:

• Study the needs of the market
• Determine the target audience, consider interests, life values, financial situation
• Research competitors' offers
• Analyze technical complexity, required resources
• Prepare a forecast of profit, return on investment
• Think about intellectual property protection

For example, during the survey, it turns out that there is not a single company in the city that would offer environmentally friendly cosmetics for personal care.

Some firms skip the market research stage, rushing to start launching. Follow each stage of project preparation to avoid serious mistakes. The more thorough the marketing research, the higher the chance of achieving more sales.

To clearly define the needs of the target audience, conduct a Customer Development interview in order to get more information about customers and their expectations.

Stage 2. Project planning

At this stage, an idea is formed that will take into account the needs of the audience - developing a strategy, setting goals, determining resources for the project:

• Brainstorm ideas to work on the concept
• Do a SWOT analysis. Study the advantages, disadvantages. This will help to form a unique selling proposition, to stand out favorably among competitors.
• Prepare a business plan, financial calculations, budget planning
• Determine the timing of preparation, implementation

If the company's task is to produce a new product, for example, sweatshirts, decide in what quantity the first batch will be produced, with what results the company is ready to increase the volume of production.

Insufficient planning and incorrect allocation of resources lead to serious losses. Work through every aspect of the launch to ensure that the project has enough resources.

Check how much the consumer needs the product. One of the main mistakes of manufacturers is to create products that solve a non-existent problem. The success of the project depends on how correctly the company understands the wishes of the client. For example, Figma in 2012 released a tool for creating user interfaces that works in a browser. This innovation has made the development process accessible to users with different technical skills.

Stage 3. Product Design

The product manager is responsible for the preparation of the product project. The tasks include:

• Create a prototype, design
• Define functionality
• Develop technical specifications

To design the product most accurately, develop a prototype and test it on the target audience. Analysis of the results will help to make the necessary changes and improvements.

A preliminary prototype is a minimum viable design, a simple sketch, or a computer model. It is needed to find out the risks and analyze the feasibility of the project before creating the final result. A prototype can be released to speed up the start-up, and missing parts that expand the functionality of the products are more cost-effective to add later.

When developing a design, you need to:

• Find Materials
• Maintain communication with the designer, monitor the progress of work in order to follow the plan
• Analyze the finished design with the whole team, collect opinions, make edits

Stage 4. Development and creation

After creating and testing the prototype, you can move on to the development of the finished result — programming, manufacturing, assembly. At this stage, it is important to pay attention to quality control, to provide production processes with the necessary resources.

Formalize all solutions for creating a product in the terms of reference and transfer them to the development department. At this step, a project manager joins the work and coordinates the activities of the entire team.

The development includes different tasks:

• Sign contracts with suppliers, manufacturing enterprises
• Monitor product compliance
• Apply Scrum, Agile, Kanban methods to manage the development process — take into account all the details, follow deadlines, monitor the progress of work

One of the common mistakes at the development stage can be an incorrectly assembled team. If there are unmotivated employees in the team, there are not enough specialists, it will become more difficult to achieve a high-quality result.

Stage 5. Testing and debugging

Before release, you need to check the functionality, software, and consumer readiness:

• Involve employees and beta testers for diagnostics. It is important to analyze the code review, that is, to check the code from the point of view of logic.
• Assess whether the sales department is ready to introduce a new product, whether all employees know the product, whether there are enough call center staff.
• Correct mistakes

During the creation of a project, many stages will have to be done manually to track possible inaccuracies. When the launch is established, some processes should be automated to achieve profit growth. Automation requires order in the system. Raw processes cannot be optimized. Therefore, the testing phase is especially important to eliminate bugs.

Stage 6. Implementation and launch

To inform potential customers about a new launch, you need to perform a number of tasks:

• Launch an advertising campaign
• Organize points of sale, distribution
• Conclude agreements with retail chains, marketplaces for sale.

In the course of promotion, marketers use various tools: SEO, contextual, targeted advertising, email newsletters, social media management, banner placement. Experts create the company's image, increase awareness to attract the target audience.

Stage 7. Feedback and Improvement

For a successful business, it is important to be customer-oriented, ready to improve the project, taking into account the wishes of consumers:

• Arrange service
• Maintain feedback, answer customer questions
• Run promotions, loyalty programs

When evaluating the results of the launch, the following are taken into account:

• Sales
• Customer reviews
• Effectiveness of marketing activities
• Estimating the profit and return on investment in development

When improving a product, it is important to consider the speed at which the world and people's needs are changing. To remain a successful company, you need to be flexible, adapt the product in accordance with trends in society.