What is a Marketable Product and How to Develop One

Updated on 27 January 2025

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What is a marketable product and how to develop your own

Going to the market with your product requires a lot of planning and preparation. Before you can put your offering out there, you need to develop a product that will sell. This means creating something people are looking for and willing to spend money on. This product is what is called a marketable product, and you need to learn how to develop your own.

A marketable product can be sold on the market because there is a demand for it. A company can develop and market products for now or for the future.
In the age of technology, developing your product can uniquely position your business as an industry leader and open up many investment opportunities.
In this article, we take you through the concept of a marketable product and give you tips on how to develop your own.

What is Product Development?

Before we can get into your product and its ability to sell on the market, we need to look at developing one first. This part of the process is called product development. Product development, also known as new product management, is a series of steps which includes conceptualisation, design, development and marketing of newly created or rebranded goods and services. It’s basically the entire lifecycle of the product, from initial idea to market release.

The point of new product development is for a business to meet consumer demands to cultivate, maintain and increase the company’s market share. For consumers, this is done to ensure a product’s value as a quality good or service.

The people or teams involved in the product development process include the following:

  • Product manager: Keeps track of the progress of each team involved in product development.
  • Engineer(s): Engineers are the technical side of the team. They are usually the ones who have the skills needed to develop the product.
  • Designer(s): The designers are usually responsible for handling the prototype of the product and identifying user experience issues.
  • Sales and Marketing: These teams are tasked with conducting market research and analysis to see what customer interest in the product is.
  • Stakeholders: These are the people who have to approve the product before it’s launched to the public.

Similar to the various roles in the product development process, there are also various stages to the new product development.

Stages of New Product Development

The new product development process includes the following stages:

Stage 1: Generate Your Idea

The first step involves brainstorming new product ideas or ways to improve an existing product. During this stage you will research market trends, conduct product research and get analytics reports on what your users want or need. This will help you identify a problem and come up with innovative solutions.

To properly understand your consumers and the market, consider the following user experience (UX) methods:

  • Research what your competitors are doing.
  • Use surveys, focus groups or product analytics to gain customer feedback insights.
  • Use journey mapping to step into the shoes of your users.
  • Share your new product ideas early on with your users as a way to test the concept.

Stage 2: Screen All Your Ideas

In this stage, you will outline all your ideas and start picking the ones with the best chance of success. Picking the right idea depends on many factors such as expected benefits to your customers, most needed product improvements, technical feasibility and marketing potential.

It’s best to carry out this stage internally. You can leverage the expertise of your team within their different departments.

Stage 3: Develop and Test Your Concept

All the ideas that made it past stage 2 are developed into concepts. The product concept is a detailed description or blueprint of your idea. The concept should indicate your target market, the features and benefits of your solution and the proposed price for the product.

Additionally, your concept should indicate the cost of designing, developing and launching the product.

Stage 4: Marketing Strategy and Business Analysis

Now that you have selected your winning concept, it’s time to put together an initial marketing strategy to introduce your product to the market and analyse your solution and its value from a business perspective.

Your marketing strategy is your guide to the positioning, pricing and promotion of your new product. Once you have a comprehensive marketing strategy, you can evaluate the business attractiveness of the product idea.

Additionally, your business analysis will consist of a review of the sales forecasts, expected costs and profit projections. If these metrics meet the company’s objectives, your product will move to the next stage, product development.

Stage 5: Develop Your Product

This stage is very vital to your product development process. During this stage, your chosen product concept will be developed into a finished, marketable product. The actual product development stages will depend on your company’s preference for development.

There are different types of product development:

Agile product development/management: Agile project development is an iterative (repetitive) approach to delivering a project throughout its entire lifecycle.

Waterfall: The Waterfall method refers to a sequential model for planning, building and delivering new products. This method is typically seen in software companies.

There are other viable alternatives, you just need to research and find the one that works for your product development process. If nothing fits your business, you can always create your own product development process.

Stage 6: Test Marketing

This stage involves releasing your finished product to a small sample market. This will help you evaluate its performance within the predetermined marketing strategy. You can alpha test your product which is to test the software and identify any bugs. Or you can beta-test it by giving users a chance to use the product and provide their feedback.

Stage 7: Time to Launch the Product

At this stage, you should know how your preferred market feels about the product and be ready to launch it into the market. This means your product is marketable and will most likely do well in terms of sales.

You will need strong product, marketing, sales and customer support teams to guarantee the product launch is successful and to monitor its performance.

Using these steps you can develop and launch a successful product. To do this successfully, leverage new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a product that will sell and bring in profits.

To speak to an expert about product development, visit SME Advice and book an appointment today!

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