Why does product development strategy matter? According to the Harvard Business School survey, the biggest problem faced by entrepreneurs at the launch is the lack of preparation. At the same time, 42% of shutdown startups offered services of gadgets that actually didn’t solve current user problems.
That is, preparation and strategy are obligatory for your success. In this article, we’ll figure out what a product development strategy is, its key stages, and examples.
What is Product Development Strategy?
Let’s begin with the product development strategy definition. It is one of the basic approaches focused on offering new or updated products to market segments that you have already mastered.
A strategy for product development includes different actions for the gradual development of a new product or improving the effectiveness of an existing one. It is a plan that can include brand architecture and identity, customer service, business model, design, features, market niche, pricing, promotion, risks, and so on.
Why Product Development Strategy Matters?
The creation of any project must be based on a product development marketing strategy. You should clearly understand what you are doing and why.
When choosing a product development and marketing strategy, you think over all the methods and techniques that you will use at all stages. This way you can think through all the problems in advance and find the most successful new product development strategy in marketing. Also, strategies can help you make existing projects better, discover new niches, etc.
A product planning and development strategy is the basis of its life cycle. If you want to build a reliable and successful product development growth strategy, pay attention to its aspects: vision, goals, ideas, and initiatives.
- The vision includes market opportunity research, positioning issues, target audience, competitor analysis, etc. It describes your customers’ needs and the ways to meet them.
- The goals must be clear, relevant, measurable, and time-specific. You should define what results you want to achieve in a certain time frame.
- The ideas and initiatives are efforts that you need to achieve your strategic goals. For example, improving the user interface, optimizing performance, and more.
New Product Development Stages and Marketing Strategy
A product development strategy is divided into 5 stages:
- development of the idea itself;
- prototyping;
- analysis;
- market testing;
- commercialization.
Below we will focus more on a marketing strategy of new product development, as marketing plays the key role in any business.
Stage 1: Marketing Research and Testing
Your main goal is to make your users satisfied. Therefore, you should learn more about your clients and their pains.
Find answers to these questions at this new product strategy development stage:
- What is the purpose of your project?
- What are your product’s basic features?
- What customer problems will it solve?
- How does it differ from your competitors’ offers?
Also, product testing by real customers is useful at this stage. You can ask a small group of target customers to get acquainted with your prototype. Then collect their opinions and analyze them. This will help you improve your product-development strategy according to the real user experience.
Stage 2. Tell About Your Product
Once the focus groups have tested your offer, and you have made changes to your product and service development strategy, it’s time to launch a landing page. Add the ability to subscribe to your updates for interested users and come up with a lead magnet. It is something your users will get for leaving an email or phone number. For example, you can send them free samples or offer a discount on their purchase, and so on.
Create your landing page (your company’s online business card) on Weblium in just a few hours. Use our beautiful templates or create website from scratch with ease. With our simple interface and a huge variety of integrations, you can customize your site the way you want. You can also track your visitors with built-in analytics of Google Analytics, chat with them right on the site for higher conversions, chase them with tasty offers using Facebook Pixel, collect their data using lead magnets and contact forms, send automated emails and a lot more!
And remember, the sooner you create a website, the more people will know about your business. Which is highly important for you, huh?
Stage 3. Set Goals and Budget
Product development and strategy require planning ahead. You need to understand what goals you plan to achieve in the short and long term to define product development strategy. Also, plan your budget for each marketing channel and product development stages. You should understand how much you will spend in order to calculate the cost of your project and stay within the budget.
Stage 4. Marketing Support
As we said above, without comprehensive marketing activities, even if you have the most innovative and interesting project, nobody will learn about it. Your new product strategy development should include channels that are effective for you.
Think about how you will share information about your offer. Will you be shooting educational videos, writing blog articles, developing your social media profiles, or reaching out to bloggers? Or maybe your path is offline marketing? (Which we don’t really recommend since it’s way too outdated in 2020.)
You should consider these questions and come up with a clear plan of action.
Stage 5. Implementation of Product Development Strategy
It is important here to ensure that all stages are implemented in a timely manner. We also advise you to track your results. For example, the simplest thing you can do is connect Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel to your Weblium site. This way you can see where your users come from and how they interact with your site, and whether or not they are interested in your offer.
Be sure to keep track of how well what you are doing matches the original plan and make changes if necessary.
Top 5 Product Development Strategy Examples
Well, we have figured out what a product development strategy is and what it consists of. Let’s now take a look at how these strategies are actually developed and implemented by large companies. You can look at some of the best examples of product development strategy below.
Mcdonald’s Product Development Strategy
You might say, “Why would I look at McDonald’s if it’s a giant company and I have a small business?” But it’s worth learning from the best, and if you look at McDonald’s product development strategy example, you will see many interesting tricks that any company can use.
- Traditional dishes. McDonald’s always has several dishes on the menu that do not change. For example, their classic hamburger and cheeseburger, the Big Mac, and so on. This is how McDonald’s works with conservative consumers.
- Seasonal dishes. At the same time, McDonald’s often introduces seasonal offers on the menu. Some of them appear from year to year, others were on the menu for only a few weeks and disappeared forever. This way, McDonald’s satisfies the demand of those who like to try something new and tests new dishes at the same time.
- Localization. In addition to the usual menu, McDonald’s introduces regional dishes or prepares classic burgers taking into account local specialties. For example, in India, the Big Mac is made without beef. In the Netherlands, there is McKroket on the menu with a local Dutch kroket.
More Product Development Strategy Examples in our article.
