Product Placement
Know your audience.
Research your competition.
Deliver on your promises.
Dial-in your quality control.
These are four main points that can help keep you organized and focused when working in product development for your company.
It begins with STUDY. You have to research, discover the gaps that need filling, what people want and need, who your competition is, and ways you can provide your service/good in ways that they cannot. What makes your brand special? What makes your version cleaner, more cost-effective, better for the environment, more conducive to the current lifestyle climate, more practical, or personal, or customizable? Are you about swank, or bling, or simplicity? Who is your goal customer, and how often do you want them to reinvest in your product? How do you market to their senses, emotions, needs, desires? How do you gain their trust?
And once you have your customers... how do you plan to deliver on your promises to them? Dial-in your quality control to retain them? Become the word-of-mouth gotta-have-it, by voluntary Yelps and Reviews that sing your praises in personal word-of-mouth ways that no media campaign with a paid budget can possibly deliver?
The goal is to show up with a service or good that is needed. To supply an extraordinary experience that people will go out of their way to partake of (because from our home right now, everything is “out of the way,”). To be the thing that your neighbors and other business owners in the area want to align with.
In keeping with that, attending to your reviews is a massive quality control must. Acknowledge your good reviews, appreciate your customers, thank them for taking the time to provide feedback. No one likes negative reviews, but try to take honest feedback to help better serve customers in the future. In instances of dissatisfaction, offer to replace, repair, or make reparations.
Don’t engage in arguments online; make private contact to follow-up any major issues. The public forum isn’t a place to debate, only to confirm that you are making contact to fulfill your commitment to your customer.
Treat your company brainchild with the respect of your time, talents, and best resources. Allow it to thrive by providing it with its best-case scenario to achieve greatness. Correct its failings, re-right its course and help it to grow in the uniqueness that makes your company the essential must-have... in whatever field it contributes to.