Hello, this is Dr. Jim Watson from growth strategies International. Welcome to section three of how to develop a new product and take it to market. What we're going to cover in section three is customer acquisition in specifically the product market fit, very important. So, in Section three, we covered the product market fit, and then the value proposition. Both important sections of customer acquisition. Define the product market fit is the role of marketing, whether you are the marketing person within your company, or you've hired someone to do the marketing for you.

The marketer has to determine what the customer needs are. That's the role of business development, forecasting product demand, controlling and managing that demand, putting together marketing plans, programs promotional campaigns. Get your product out there. So people know about they're aware of it. They see it satisfies a need, and they want to buy it. Offering sales discounts incentives.

It's all part of the of the promotion that marketing needs to do to get the word out to the right customers at the right time. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. So product market fit is answering questions like, well, who are my customers? What problems do they have? What solution Am I proposing? How is my solution better than the competition?

What is my value proposition? The value proposition is a solution that's better than the competition? And why is it better than the competition? What is the market size anyway, we don't want to develop, spend a lot of money developing a product for small market whoever, we're not going to recoup our costs. So we have to understand the questions to all these all these the answers all these questions, rather And we do that with market research. The first thing we want to do is called secondary research, which means we find out what data is already out there, from libraries, from government agencies, from trade associations, look on the internet, these wealth of information on the internet, then you can find out a lot about about your market about your customer about your competition, to help you differentiate why your product is different from your competition, to form your value proposition.

And then once you have a good idea, then it's time to do some primary research, which means doing interviews or focus groups or surveys, any combination of those, those three, to actually talk to prospective customers, to show them your minimal viable product, your prototype, and to get their feedback. So when you conduct interviews, focus groups or surveys you want to put together Other what we call a research instrument, which is a structured set of questions. It's a systematic design, collection and analysis of data, your secondary research from libraries, government agencies, trade associations, what's on the internet should help you determine, well, what do I know? And what do I not know that I need to find out directly from prospective customers? You want to determine who are your target customers, what really are their needs, what is really important, that'll help you determine what your what features should be in your minimal viable product.

As you do rapid prototyping, come up with different iterations of your product and take them off to the marketplace. Remember, you're doing experimentation. Now you're pre commercialization. So you want to develop a report of what the relevant findings are, and use this market research to develop a marketing plan and you want to be specific in addressing a specific market condition with your Proposed product. So, what market research will do will will help you develop your market strategy plan? You know help you identify your customers their needs segmenting your customers into different dimensions.

Different customers have different needs, what needs are you satisfying within the customer community? How does that fit with your company mission objectives and resources, who are the competitors now and who could be the competitors in the future as you come out with it with a new product, maybe you're first to market. So, targeting and and segmenting your your market is important and positioning yourself and differentiating your product is important. And the way we do that is by conducting a SWOT analysis. So strengths, strengths your company has to develop the product and take it to market who is weaknesses, what weaknesses Desert company have to overcome. Always opportunities.

We talked about opportunities, what opportunities are out there, we could capitalize on take advantage, tease threats, SW ot SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, what threats Do we have to overcome? Is it regulatory? Is it competitive? Is it just technological challenges? So by conducting data analysis, we're able to narrow down and focus strategy with qualitative and quantitative screening criteria. We've looked at the environment and we come up with what is called a marketing mix, or the four P's.

We define our product, our place, our price and our promotion. What do we mean by that? Let's take a look at each one of them. So product, product features we have to define what features a broad has how we're going to design the product. What quality do we expect from the product, how many varieties Are we going to have this product? How are we going to package it?

How we go into branded branding is very important for marketing. Because the brand sets an image for your product and your company. How many sizes? Is there going to be? How are we going to services? Are we going to have warranties?

How we going to handle returns for defective products? You've got to answer all these questions. That's the product price. Well, how are we going to price it? We certainly have to price it so we can cover cover our cost. And but we want to be be competitive so that we can capture the most amount of the market, how much margin do we expect?

So there's a list price, and then there's a discount price. And so we have to figure that out, figure out what allowances we're going to make. Are we going to allow some payment periods credit terms, maybe our item is more than a commodity. It's it's an expensive item where I mentioned Our GPS golf course system, we had to lease it because it was unaffordable for the budget that the resort courses had. The next is promotion. Very important to get out our sales promotion, our advertising, have the sales force out there contacting the customers.

So putting together sales force developing public relations, you want to get free advertising in newspapers and magazines for them to write a story about you and your company and how great it is. So you don't have to pay for advertising. Public Relations is very important. Direct Marketing. Are you going to be direct marketing to the to the customer? Are you a business to business company or are you a business to consumer company?

Are you going to be promoting your product on the internet? I hope so. I hope you're gonna have a website you're gonna be on on Facebook and Twitter. Whatever social media platform is more appropriate for your product. depends on where your customer is you want to you want to promote your product to where your customer is going to Looking to solve that problem? And finally place what is place?

It's Are you going to have storefront locations? Where location is going to be? Are you just going to be selling over the internet? Are you going to be having distribution channels, where you have wholesalers, you have retailers, you've got to figure out what your price structure is. So by the time you get through a wholesaler and retailer, you're still covering your costs with a good profit margin. How much inventory Do you have to have, where's your inventory going to be?

How much of a regional or geographical area are you going to cover and how you going to distribute your products and transport them through your sales coverage. So that's the that's the four P's it all centered around your product market. your target market is your product, place price and promotion. Now those four P's have to match up with a customer's four C's. So it's easy to remember here. The four C's and the four Piece matching up the product has to meet the customer solution, the first seek customer product has to meet the customer solution.

The second p price has to meet the customer cost. So, we already talked about meeting a solution, but it has to be a cost when the customer sees that there's value in spending money to solve this solution that is that is affordable. It's affordable for the price that you're asking for. promotion. promotion is lines up with a third C which is communication, how are you going to communicate to the customer, that you have a part that's that's solving their need better than any other solution out there. And then place is is convenience, you have to be able to provide the product to the customer in a convenient way.

So I'm going to summarize now with this very brief explanation of the four P's and the four C's I was marketing 101. The key point here is exceptional products deliver customer satisfaction at an acceptable price. Conveniently, the next part of the lesson plan on customer acquisition, we will dive into developing a value proposition that unique value proposition solve customers problems better than any other alternative. And we'll talk about product, promotional, and pricing strategies because they will vary depending on the stage of the adoption and the stage of the product lifecycle. So we'll talk about product life cycles and how you change your product promotional and pricing strategies to accommodate that. I look forward to seeing you in the next part of section three.

Thank you.