Product vs customer needs

James,

Finding the balance you're talking about becomes much easier as you

• Begin with the audience and their desires rather than the product
• Learn where there is particular demand for a certain solution
• Involve your audience along the way as you build your product to verify that you are meeting their needs
• "Bite off smaller chunks" at a time. Don't make your first project the "end all, be all" 1,000 page encyclopedia of every subtopic. Start small and produce relatively easy and quick products - don't put all your eggs in one basket.
• Make your product a process and compartmentalize specific tasks so that it's easier for the customer to digest, meet a specific goal, and then move to the next step.
• Involve your audience in the product roll-out process so then begin to anticipate and look forward to your next product.
• Reward loyal customers and make it easy for them to buy your products over and over again.

The whole product creation, implementation, and evaluation process can be made simple, easy, and repeatable. There are ways to automate tasks and processes to leverage your time.

Just keep in mind that as a marketer, your job is not just to create something to sell (unless that is how you set up your business). Actually making the sale and generating income through your marketing should be a priority. Lots of marketers have products they've created that don't ever pay off because they never get marketed properly.

Finding the right balance between product creation and product marketing will probably be different for every marketer. But there is ample space in this business for everyone to find his/her own sweet spot.

Steve

You can sell an idea without a prototype--it's done all the time in the software field.

Sell them what they want now...give them what they need a little later.

Jamel, you're turning this into some kind of chicken-and-egg discussion. You're trying to play chess when the game is checkers.

First you find a definable group of people with a desire to change something in their lives, whether that's losing twenty pounds, adding to their retirement savings, getting laid more often, or just adding ten yards to their tee ball or starring at the next church pot luck dinner.

Then you create a Minimum Viable Product to test the market. Maybe it's a short ebook, an email course, or some kind of limited app.

Put it out there and let the market tell you what they think of it. If you get a good reaction, then you can worry about exploiting that market (in a good way).

Or you can spend your time in your own mind, trying to figure out if the chicken came first or the egg came first.

Nonsense.

A customer will buy before they receive an item.

A minimal viable product is a tried and trusted strategy. a customer will always buy a product before they receive it (unlike cleints). That's essentially how drop shipping works.

Whenever a new product is launched, the creators or makers already have to worry about a new question. What is the next feature, add-on or modification for the new product? Managing a new product and thinking about the vision, next step and roadmap of your product isn't that easy and takes a lot of time.

A customer focused approach on the other hand is the one where customers feedback and input is important to the development and maturing process of the product. Customer needs and feature wishes are considered and will be used in the creation of a product roadmap. This feedback and market analysis can come in a variety of ways, direct emails, comments on blogs, or simple surveys.

Customer Focused organization is one where decisions about the product are made based on aligning customer needs

People buy emotional but they buy cause of MARKETING.

You have to become the first supplier in their mind for a specific need, and then they buy, cause it is never a problem of money: most of the people spend more money for their cell phone than for the food.

So it's a problem of brand positioning.

As Seth Godin said in the purple cow book, you need to become unique and to serve a specific need among the others competitors you may have: then they will buy your products again and again

It is seeing the need first, then creating the product. I build my stuff based on problems I observe, to connect more easily with customers and to create products folks want. Sometimes during lean days I created what I wanted to create and what I thought folks wanted, rather than really dialing in to their issues, and hearing their pain points. Lesson learned for sure.

All sales are influenced by several factors:

1. Branding
2. Product quality
3. Promotion
4. Number of quota leads
5. Number of people who have money
6. The target market that is suitable for your product
7. Customer needs
8. Competition
9. Price
10. Negotiation

I believe that nothing teaches you more than taking action. Putting your product out there and evolve based on feedback is much faster than trying to realize everything by yourself.

There's a limit to how much one pair of eyes can see. You need your client's eyes. Figuratively.

Seeing this thread is from back in May... but since this is a challenge MANY people have (judging from my clients)...

1) If you know NOTHING or very little about your niche, then it pays to spend some time researching products already selling, discussions & content that is hot to find out what the pressing challenges are for that market so you can start by targeting the same challenges - albeit with a different product or approach

2) If you already know something/allot about a market...then it STILL pays to test. How do you test? With different headlines, content, free funnels (into a report or video) or even a similarly targeted affiliate product JUST to validate demand for the specific problem/frustration/desire you are contemplating targeting. I've seen it again and again when testing a few different desires with a few different approaches...what often sells best is not the first thing we thought it would be...so testing always pays off (or at least has for me and my clients)

3. Once you've tackled 1&2 - then go ahead and release a basic/1st iteration product to your market and get the marketing down...assuming things go well, you will have set of customers that you can work with to build additional products and back-ends to increase your average order top line and your margins giving you more flexibility to expand your marketing

I've seen many people go wrong with 1&2, get crappy results and then give up...not fun.