The 4 Essential Steps to Guaranteeing Your Product or Program Will Sell... Before You ve Even Created It!

Transcription

1 The 4 Essential Steps to Guaranteeing Your Product or Program Will Sell... Before You ve Even Created It! The 4 Essential Steps Lesa R. Townsend

2 The 4 Essential Steps to Guaranteeing Your Product or Program Will Sell Before You ve Even Created It! By Lesa R. Townsend Feel free to pass this report on to anyone you feel could benefit from it. This document may be freely distributed in its original form only. Any editing and/or rewriting of this document for content or layout, without the expressed consent of Lesa Townsend and LesaTownsend.com is strictly prohibited. You may not charge for this document in any form. Doing so will be considered breach of copyright. Copyright Lesa R. Townsend

3 Introduction The truth is that developing any product or program, or starting a business, is an enormous amount of work. Don t get me wrong, it can be fun and enjoyable too, but it is always a TON of work. And, it s always a lot more work than you expect it to be. I want you to know how to create products and programs that sell. That is why, when you finally get the thing out there and it doesn t sell, it is so tragic. All of that hard work wasted. Well, I don t want you to ever be one of those people who builds a great product or program, or starts a business, only to never make a dime. I want you to know how to create products and programs that sell. I want you to know exactly what your customer wants.. so all you have to do is give it to them. There is a way to guarantee sales even before you have anything to sell: To know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are on the right track. And, by knowing what your customers really want, that whole complicated process of creating your

4 product or program --or launching your business-- just got a whole lot easier! When you follow The 4 Essential Steps to Guaranteeing Your Product or Program Will Sell, Even Before You ve Created It, you will know that every hour, every dollar, and every bit of effort you invest in your business will be rewarded with sales. To illustrate the 4 Essential Steps, let me introduce you to Bob. Bob and his cousin are planning to open a restaurant. They ve chosen the best location, on the corner of a busy intersection in their community, and lined up great staff. Now, they have to choose a cuisine so they can finalize the plans for the building s architectural design and the menu. Bob wants to serve authentic, traditional cuisine from his home country, Liechtenstein. His cousin is a bit more pragmatic and wants to serve American fare burgers and steaks. Let me introduce you to Bob and his idea for a Liechtenstein restaurant. They are fighting constantly: Bob doesn t want to give up on his dream of serving the cuisine of his youth and his cousin doesn t want to risk his share of the investment money on a business that will fail.

5 They are at a stalemate as neither one of them wants to back down. If these two can t reach a consensus there will never be a restaurant. How can Bob convince his cousin to support the idea of a Liechtenstein restaurant? Let s take a look at the 4 Essential Steps and see how Bob uses them to convince his cousin to change his mind. Step 1: Research the Existing Market. The most obvious and easy way to create a product that will sell is to find a product people already buy and then make a better version of it. This has been the path of success for many of the most well-known companies in existence today. Ray Kroc discovered how to make the burger business better. Consider the story of Ray Kroc and the beginning of McDonalds. Ray was a multi-mixer salesman when he met the MacDonald brothers. The MacDonald brothers had a burger restaurant in San Bernardino, California. When Ray visited their restaurant, he noticed that these guys knew something that the other restaurant owners he had met did not. They had

6 young, unskilled high school kids working for them (this was unheard of at the time). And, they were able to serve more people during a day than any other restaurant that Ray had ever visited (and he had visited quite a few in this job). Ray understood that the MacDonald brothers were sitting on an untapped goldmine, so he approached the brothers about opening more restaurants. They weren t interested in opening any more restaurants; they were happy with their one store. So instead, Ray negotiated with the brothers to buy their restaurant from them. And he turned what they had figured out how to train kids to deliver outstanding service at a fast pace into a billion-dollar franchise. Ray Kroc discovered how to make the burger business better. Fast food is now a proven market. There are over 160,000 fast-food restaurants in America. These restaurants serve more than 50 million Americans daily and generate sales of over $100 billion annually. In contrast, Liechtenstein is a small country of only 34,000 people, situated between Switzerland and the Alps. It is unlikely that anyone in Bob s American community has ever heard of Liechtenstein, let alone sampled their amazing cuisine. So, based on this one piece of

7 information, Bob s cousin is likely to win this argument, but we re not finished with Bob yet. We ll come back to him in a minute. First, I want to give you some tools for researching what market might already exist for your product. If you are thinking about creating a digital product or e-book (like the one you Use Clickbank.com to research existing products for sale online. are reading now), there is no better research tool than Clickbank.com. Clickbank is an affiliate marketing clearing house where people who want to sell other people s products can find products to sell. You can use Clickbank to find markets that are currently profitable. Creating an account on Clickbank is free. There are two kinds of accounts one for sellers of products and one for those who promote others products (known as Affiliates). You can have just one account or both, depending on what you want to do on Clickbank. For your research purposes, you ll want to create an Affiliate Account. To create your account, click on the Promote Products tab near the top of the screen (you can also click on Learn More under Affiliates for more information about the Clickbank system).

8 Once you ve created your account, search for a product similar to yours. You ll want to look for products that sell regularly and don t have a lot of chargebacks (customer returns). These products have a proven market. Explore these proven products by visiting their sales pages (there s a link right inside their Clickbank listing) and see what they are really offering. If you see something like what you want to offer, buy it (you can buy products from the home page of Clickbank without an account). Check it out personally and look for ways to improve the product. Then, once you ve created your own version of this proven product, you can offer it for sale on Clickbank as well. For anything beyond digital products, you can find out a lot of information with a simple Internet search. One warning about creating products that are similar to existing products: Don t infringe on any copyrights. All material that is published whether or not it is registered with the Copyright Office is copyrighted. This protection is granted immediately upon publication. Make sure any product you produce is uniquely yours.

9 Simply type INDUSTRY annual sales -- where INDUSTRY is the industry that you want to research -- into any search engine and you can find the annual sales for that industry. For detailed research on any industry, contact your local Small Business Administration. They have resources and help for you at no cost. Their advisors will help guide you in locating a profitable market for your business. Starting out with a market that is already proven is one of the best and easiest ways to create a product that sells. But what if you are Bob and really want to open your Liechtenstein restaurant? Then you need some more help. Step 2: Write Your Marketing Materials Before You Create the Product. Marketing is what sells, not the product. By focusing on writing your marketing first, it frees you up to create the ultimate solution for your market. You aren t tied into what you have already created; you are free to create what you have described. This is a powerful way to connect with the needs of your market and get you out of your own way.

10 Let me explain by returning to our Liechtenstein restaurant example for a minute. When this idea came to Bob, he was likely thinking about his own experiences as a child growing up, thinking about returning to that delicious food he loved then. His thoughts were all inward, on what he was going to get out of creating this restaurant. But when you sit down to write marketing materials, you have to think about your customers: What do they want? What will motivate them to try a new restaurant? How to describe this amazing cuisine they have never tried or even heard of? Sometimes the reason we start a business is to fulfill our own needs. This forces you to connect with your market, with your audience. You have to know them better than they know themselves in order to write compelling copy: you have to get inside their heads. There are lots of great reasons for opening a business or creating a product. Sometimes it s about seeing a need out there in the world and then creating something to meet that need. And sometimes the reason we start a business is to fulfill our own needs. This is where we can get in our own way.

11 Our passion for our idea can overshadow the reason we had the idea in the first place. This passion can steer us wrong but only if we let it. In Bob s case, if the only reason he wants to open this restaurant and serve this cuisine is because it will help him miss his home country less, that isn t enough to guarantee the restaurant will be a success. But if he starts with this passion, then backs it up with hard data and proof that his idea will sell, not only will he convince his cousin to choose Liechtenstein cuisine for their restaurant, but he will have laid the ground work for a successful business even before he s served his first meal! So, spend some time crafting marketing materials for your business idea. Create mockups of menus and sales flyers, if you are opening a restaurant like Bob. Or, if you are selling items online, write your sales page. Do this before you ve created the product or even started your business. When you sit down to do this exercise and write your marketing materials, you may find that you don t know enough about your market to be able to speak to them. In that case, you need to do some market research.

12 Step 3: Market Research. Market research is the systematic, objective collection and analysis of data about a specific target market, competition, or environment, whose purpose is to obtain an increased understanding of the subject, one free of our own pre-conceived ideas and feelings. I d like to point out two specific words in this definition: systematic and objective. Data has no agenda and cannot lie. The definition of systematic: having, showing, or involving a system, method, or plan. In other words, market research isn t something that you do willy-nilly or by the seat of your pants. Market research, like all research, follows from a predefined plan and goal. The definition of objective: not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased. So, by gathering data in a planned way, we can reduce or eliminate the influence that our own assumptions have on our decisions. In Bob s case, he can use the power of market research to prove to his cousin that Liechtenstein cuisine is a viable business venture. This is because the data which has no agenda will not lie.

13 But what exactly can you learn with market research? In Step 2, we talked about researching the market for your product. Answering questions like How many restaurants are there like this in America? Or, Market research can help you to see inside your customer s mind. How much do Americans spend on fast food each year? are part of market research. Questions like these help to determine the competition (who else is competing for the same dollar) and environment (how receptive the public is) of a particular business idea. But market research can help you with so much more than that. With market research, you find out exactly what your customers want, which makes it so much easier to give it to them! And with market research, you can also discover how your customers feel about the issues that drive them to purchase your product or service and to what extent they feel it! In other words, market research can help you see inside your customer s mind to be able to accurately and predictably describe how they think and feel.

14 It is this knowledge that will ultimately make you successful or not in your business venture. Money spent on market research is money well spent. It s really an investment in the long-term success of your business. You have to understand your market in order to sell to it and there is no better way to understand your market than to do some market research. Basic market research involves going out and talking to people who are likely to be purchasers of your product or service. This is your target market. This kind of research is called qualitative research. Qualitative research usually involves asking people a series of open-ended questions which you then examine the responses for similarities. For Bob, some questions to ask would be: Money spent on market research is an investment in the long-term success of your business. What motivates you to try a new restaurant? If I told you about a restaurant that served cuisine from Liechtenstein, what kind of food do you think that would be? This type of research is a great place to start. When you interview people like this, you can get some pretty interesting answers.

15 But a couple of interviews aren t really going to tell you what you need to know to make an informed decision. Your results will not be reliable unless you ask a true representative sample of your target market. Use a Quantitative Survey to easily interpret market research results. The answers from one or two people aren t representative of anything other than those individuals personal opinions. You must look at many responses from within the same group of people in order to have results you can rely on. But tabulating the results from hundreds or thousands of interviews is hard work. But it doesn t have to be. Instead of using the interview model, use a survey. In general, surveys fall into the quantitative type of research (if you simply use the survey format to conduct your interview and use all open-ended questions you have missed out on the most powerful use of surveys). When you use a survey, you ask everyone the same series of questions and give them the same answer choices (remember the multiple-choice tests in school?).

16 And in this way, it becomes very easy to interpret the results because numbers are your results! So Bob can use market research to find out (within a reasonable doubt) 1 how many people in his community would be willing to try Liechtenstein cuisine without ever making a single dish! There are a lot of ways to obtain awesome market research for your business. The easiest way is to hire a market research firm to do the research for you, but this option is expensive. The other way is to do the market research yourself (or at least in-house with your own employees). The most obvious benefit is cost savings; doing your own market research will not cost nearly as much as hiring a big firm. There is another benefit to doing your own research. When you do your own research, the research process will introduce you to your market in a deeper way than if you just hire someone else to do it. I use the term introduce intentionally. Have you ever been at a party where the hostess introduced you to another guest by not just telling you the other person s name, but by also sharing 1 Reasonable doubt is a statistical term and is used to convey the reliability of data. No data is perfect; in other words, you can never know an answer for sure. However, when the data falls within a reasonable amount of doubt you can safely trust the results to be accurate.

17 something that the two of you have in common? This kind of introduction sets up guests to create a stronger bond in a shorter period of time. And this is what doing your own market research can do for your business. By being actively involved in the research, your business may learn things about your market that may not ever appear in a polished report from a market research firm. These insights might be the most important thing you learn from your research. When your market research process engages your subjects in a deep and meaningful way, you actually create a relationship that goes beyond a simple transaction. Remember Ray Kroc? If he had hired someone else to check out the MacDonald brothers restaurant, that person might not have seen what Ray saw and Ray might have missed out on his golden opportunity. Can you remember the last time someone asked you for your opinion? And then listened intently to your answer? Right, it doesn t happen that often. When your market research process engages your subjects in a deep and meaningful way in other words, demonstrates to them that you know and care about them you actually create a relationship with them that goes beyond a simple transaction. Your market research subjects will actually want to hear from you again. They will want to hear from you and they will be highly interested in what you offer.

18 So do some market research for your business or idea. It will be money well spent. Well, what about Bob? Let s see where he is in the process of convincing his cousin that Liechtenstein food is the way to go. Step #1 had Bob look for a proven market. His cousin won that one since fast food is a proven market and Liechtenstein food is not. Step #2 had Bob write his marketing first. Bob struggled to get past his own passion for his idea and connect with his market. So Bob turned to Step #3 for help. Step #3 had Bob conduct some market research. Bob interviewed several members of his community. Then took those answers and created a survey, which he distributed to the entire community. The answers from his survey indicated people were curious about Liechtenstein food but were unsure if they would try a restaurant serving the cuisine. (Bob also used the answers from his research to go back and create the marketing materials from Step 2). Bob s cousin is still not convinced. Bob needs to prove to his cousin that this idea will work. So Bob has one more step to take.

19 Step 4: Test the Viability of Your Offer. If your market research shows you that your product or business is viable, you can go ahead with it. Many businesses do. Some succeed. But many fail. If you want to guarantee that your business idea will be a success, then you need to test the viability of your offer. Dip your toes into the market first. see how warm the water is. What does that mean? Well, it means that before you go to all of the trouble to create a full-blown product (or launch a business) you dip your toes into the market to For online businesses, you can dip your toes in by: Creating a short teleseminar series on the same subject as your product. Your time commitment is limited to providing the teleseminars. Recording an interview with someone interesting to your intended target market and offering it for sale. If no one buys it, you only committed an hour of your time to do the interview.

20 Write a quick e-book. E-books don t have to be long or complicated, and distributing them is as close to free as you can get. Any of these options will let you try out your idea without a major time or money commitment, even if only one or two people buy your offering. If no one buys your idea when you try it, you just saved yourself a lot of work creating something that no one wants. Limit your time and effort commitment so that even if only one or two people buy, it isn t a waste of your time. The process is a bit different when your business idea is opening a restaurant like Bob. Let s see what he does to try out his idea. Bob is convinced his business idea is the best, but he needs to dip the toes of his cousin into the water and prove to him that the idea is sound. So Bob decides to host a neighborhood open house to prove to his cousin that Liechtenstein cuisine is the way to go. He takes the marketing materials he created in Step #2 a postcard and sample menu and has copies made. Then, he distributes the copies to people in his neighborhood and invites them to an open house at his home.

21 Bob s diligent market research convinces his cousin. At the open house, Bob serves them samples of every item on his menu. Then, Bob asks each participant to complete a survey. On the survey, he asks for feedback on each and every menu item: Rate its flavor and texture. Would you be interested in eating this item again? When his participants turn in their completed surveys, he asks them for their name and so he can notify them of the grand opening of his new restaurant. During the open house, Bob s cousin is amazed at how many people are wowed by the simple cuisine of his youth. The this is amazing! and I ve never eaten anything so delicious comments startle the cousin. At the end of the evening, the long list of neighbors and friends who signed up to be notified when the restaurant opens convinces the cousin that people will eat Liechtenstein food. Bob s Open House will allow him to test-drive his entire menu.

22 And Bob s other diligent market research proves to the cousin that they can create a successful Liechtenstein restaurant. So, he agrees to Bob s plans and they can finally move forward and open their new restaurant. Make Your Decisions Based On Facts Yes, a restaurant offering Liechtenstein food has never been tried in Bob s community (or maybe any other for that matter), but that doesn t mean that it won t be a success. What it does mean is that Bob has to make sure his decision to move forward with his business idea is based on sound facts and not his own personal motivations. And Bob has to know he can market his idea. Remember marketing is what sells, not the product. There are many thousands of amazing business ideas created every year that never make a dime. This isn t because the ideas were bad, but because the people behind the idea made decisions based on assumptions and speculation, not proven facts. Consider these two options for our friend Bob. Instead of assumptions and speculation, base your decisions on proven facts.

23 Option 1: Bob goes forward with his planned restaurant menu against the advice of his cousin, and without doing any research at all. He invests hundreds of thousands of dollars opening a restaurant and no one ever comes in. He goes broke and is thrown out of his family. Option 2: Bob does his research first. Before opening the doors to his dream restaurant, Bob knows his restaurant will be a success: he has researched his market, he knows exactly who his target market is and how to reach them, and he knows the dishes he will serve will be well received. Bob is an amazing success and becomes the pride of his family. So, when you are thinking about your next business idea, make sure you get started on the right foot. Spend a little bit of time doing your research. Make sure your idea is interesting to your market. Dip your toes in the water before you jump in. Follow the 4 Essential Steps and you will guarantee your own business success before you ever create your product.

24 About the Author Lesa Townsend is a Website Marketing and Strategy Consultant. Lesa uses traditional business-building strategies combined with the latest technological innovations to support her clients in expanding their businesses online. She specializes in helping service professionals learn to write compelling content for their websites. If you d like helpful tips on how to market your business without selling, check out Lesa website,