Making A Product Successful requires handling the basics with care.

In 1993, Apple launched a personal digital assistant (PDA) called Newton with a $699 starting price. While Apple wanted Newton to quickly earn more than the $100 million development cost, that didn’t pan out as they expected.

Yet in 2007, when Apple launched the iPhone, you know what happened. iPhone has not only propelled the company to new heights but also ushered humankind to a new era.

Those contrasting results beg a question. Why do some products succeed while others fail?

The question is relevant not only for giant businesses but for all startups & freelancers. Why can’t your product get off to quick success? How to get more customers for your freelance business? What makes people like someone else’s tweet over yours?

Luckily, even in a massively changed world, the basic principles you should begin with remain the same. Let’s have a look —

Tip #1 — Quantify the White Space For Making A Product Successful

Apple’s Newton vs. Apple’s iPhone — What’s one of the biggest differences?

Of course, the iPhone is a much superior product. But there’s something else. At $699 in 1993, Apple was targeting a smaller target market than it did in 2007 with $499 iPhones. Due to the high price, Newton would be accessible to only a handful of the population. That price point was limiting Apple’s success before they even began to market.

To ensure you don’t make the same mistake, find the white space and quantify it.

Steps you need to take

“Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch.” — Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch

The first step sounds simple yet makes the biggest difference. Most companies try to launch products they are comfortable making. Instead of trying to find what consumers want, they play on their expertise and often end up with a product that no one wants. The first step for you is to find what problem your product solves.

Once you do that, you’ll have an idea about who your customers are, how big is that group and how many competitors are there. White space is an opportunity where you have a sizable market with little or no competition.

Back of the envelope calculation for finding white space

A simple market sizing exercise will help you in finding the white space. And white space is the first step towards making a product successful.

For example, Uber can roughly calculate how many rides it can potentially offer in a new city. Let’s imagine the city has 1.5 million people, they commute 2 times a day, and they don’t want to spend for a full taxi ride.

While the city population could potentially have 3 million rides/day (1.5 m population multiplied by 2 rides a day), a realistic assumption would be that people will prefer using UberPool to split the cost. Assuming 3 people will share a ride, Uber will have a market with potentially 1 million rides per day.

By targeting 5% of that in the first year, they’d get 50,000 rides per day. If that’s a sizable number for them, they can enter the market.

Tip #2 — Set Low Expectations and Deliver More

“Always deliver more than expected.” — Larry Page, co-founder of Google

It’s always tempting to exaggerate in advertisements as that accentuates the product benefit. The power of exaggeration in advertisement is very commonly exercised. With a bit of humor, exaggeration can work strongly to excite the target audience about a product.

The advertisement above is a way of using exaggeration in advertising. The key idea was to not overstate any real feature but to use humor to drive the message.

However, for your product to truly succeed, it’s better to not raise consumers’ expectations too much. The key to building a strong brand is raising optimum excitement to generate enough demand and then delivering a better product experience than that.

Exceeding expectation accelerates positive word of mouth generation

The chart above shows 5 scenarios. In each of the scenarios, consumer expectation was different and the product delivery remained the same. Let’s use this to understand how the concept works.

In the first two scenarios, the product owner has created more expectations than the product can deliver. Consumers will consume it due to expectations and then get disappointed with the experience. Are they going to repeat or recommend after that? Unlikely.

Scenario 3 is the spot where consumer expectation and product delivery matches completely. But the main magic lies in scenarios 4 & 5.

In both those scenarios, consumers get more than they’d expected. As a result, they’d likely be delighted with the product, become a regular consumer, and a likely word of mouth generator.

An example would be the movie “The Dark Knight” by Christopher Nolan. It broke all conventional expectations from a superhero movie with the product (movie). The makers kept the audience excited with a well-made trailer that didn’t reveal too much and left all the real surprises for the movie. It was a great case of moderate expectation & high product delivery.

Tip #3 — Good Marketing Kills a Bad Product Faster

In the example above, you can argue that the marketing of the product always needs to be top-notch for any product to succeed. No matter what happens, you should give your 100% in promoting a product and create high expectations.

Not true.

Marketing is about shining a spotlight on something. When you’d bring attention to an imperfect product, you’d make its flaws conspicuous. The bigger & more powerful the spotlight, the more likely the products’ imperfection to become prominent.

Depending on your consumers’ reaction to the product, you should decide how much attention you’d want your product to have.

Understand repeat potential before you go all-in with marketing

• You can conduct studies before launch to understand how likely consumers are to use your product repeatedly.
• A smaller scale (pilot) launch can also help you check if your product has repeat purchases or word-of-mouth potential.

How & when you should go for full strength launch

Firstly, understand repeat potential from a consumer study or a pilot launch. A small-scale launch with an MVP can be a good dipstick to gauge a product’s performance.

And then, compare the product with existing competition. If it does better than the competition, go for a full-scale launch. In case you don’t have any competition, your pilot launch’s performance would be key in understanding if it’s doing well.

Airbnb didn’t do well in the early phase of its launch. The owners updated the product & expansion before moving onto geographical expansion.

Tip #4 — It’s a Journey, Not a Destination

“Nothing works better than just improving your product.” — Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Overflow

Product improvement is a continuous journey. Coca-Cola, despite having a formula that works perfectly, has come up with a plethora of innovations in the last decade. Coke Zero is one prominent example of such innovations.

While marketing and promotions can make consumers interested in your product, ultimately they will only purchase it if it meets their needs.

I was very curious about the Vue Smart Glasses since Vue ran their kickstarter crowdfunding. But I am yet to purchase one as the product doesn’t address all my needs yet.

For a company like Vue, PlayStation, or anything else, the first few launches are very important. Yes, these companies do get multiple opportunities to make the product right. But consumer trust wanes with each failed attempt.

So, you shouldn’t launch a product that doesn’t meet at least one of the unmet needs of the consumer.

The needs you must address for making a product successful

The better you know your consumer, the higher your chances of succeeding would be.

Try to figure out the pain points & unmet needs of a consumer. Add features in your products that address those needs and your product will sell like hot cake.

All successful startups succeed because they provide solutions to a problem that the existing products can’t. Established companies miss those spaces because either they don’t find the opportunity lucrative or they are not listening to the consumer enough.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step — Lao Tzu

You must determine what that first step would be. It should address a major pain point or unmet need. In that case, you’d find a sizable market even with your MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

Beyond that point, you’d need to keep listening to consumers, determine if their need provides a big enough opportunity for you, and then work on addressing that need.

In reality, you’d have different levels of consumer expectation from different segments of the market. Let’s assume there are sizable 3 consumer segments (labeled Consumer 1, 2 & 3).

Your MVP should at least exceed the expectations of the first group. This group has relatively low expectations and is low-hanging fruit for you. They can become your loyal consumers. Delight them with your constant innovations.

The second and third groups have higher expectations. Based on your capability, target one of their need gaps and address that. Your second (major) update should do that.

You may want to excite all groups of the market. It’s not always possible so don’t feel bad if it doesn’t happen. However, note that your existing consumers’ expectation keeps on rising. They’d have diminishing utility from your product by getting used to it and accepting your innovations as their new normal. Keep improving your products to always exceed expectations for them.

“Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.” — Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Overflow

Tip #5 — Don’t Stand in Your Consumers’ Way

While your marketing can bring potential consumers, they might still not be able to experience your product if the purchasing process isn’t user-friendly.

A buggy website, inconsistent product distribution, poorly managed delivery system, unrealistic price, and complicated customer service processes are some of the factors that’d discourage consumers from buying your products.

“Why trust product from a company with such a buggy website?” “I can never find the product in stores — why should I put in so much effort?” “I shouldn’t order anymore as the delivery was late.”

Make it easy for your consumers to get to the product

Try the processes yourself and fix them along the way. Once again, user experience improvement is a continuous process as well. But it’s worth it as a single change can significantly improve your results.

I once worked on a website that required consumers to go through 3 pages before they could get to payment page. The drop off on the second page (detailed registration) was the highest. We combined all three pages in one by removing 50% of the information (and adding them as a separate link). That and the lighter registration process increased website conversion by 27% in just the first month. 

Don’t leave money on the table by confusing interested consumers.

Final Thoughts on Making A Product Successful

Marketing Myopia is a term to describe those who create products based on their strengths & by ignoring what consumers want. Listen to your consumers, find if the product has a sizable need, and then ramp up the marketing.

But like your personal growth, your product should be on a continuous improvement journey. Set it up for yourself and you’ll find success.

Read more on Marketing Strategies Here

This article was first published on Data-Driven Investor