Inventor’s success depends on more than how great your product is. Another factor, and maybe the most important one, is how easy it will be to sell your invention. This applies to inventors who are both planning on selling the product themselves, and inventors who are trying t license their product.
There are three points that determine whether or not a product will have easy sale:
- The product is important to potential customers;
- Customers are easy to acquire and retain;
- The product doesn’t need expensive promotion.
Product is Important
Many people might rate your product as much better than your competitors, but unless your product is a priority to consumers, your sales will be low. For instance, you might have the best blender, maybe even a hundred times better than your competitors, but most people don’t place a high priority of owning or having the best blender. Most people only have a few priorities and spend their money accordingly.
One of my patent clients recently received patent for a device that places a mirror on a stand that fits over the sink drain. Now maybe that doesn’t sound important at first. But the product is meant to keep the sink area clean for water pic users. I happen to use the water pic and my sink areas is always a mess, because the water from the waters scatters everywhere. This invention has the user lean over the sink and the water doesn’t splash everywhere. That happens to be important to me and I was immediately drawn to the idea.
Customers are Easy to Acquire and Retain
The first consideration is how many entry points you have available for customers. Entry points are different ways for customers to start buying your products. So either they could buy them online, in a retail store, in catalogs, rent them or even lease them. These are all different entry points. The more entry points your product has, the easier sales will be because customers will have an easier time finding you.
The best way to create more and more entry points is to enter your customer’s world. Where do they shop or eat or what do they do in their free time? Look at web sites customers visit, Facebook pages and any YouTube videos. For example, there are about 10 Facebook pages targeting inventors. I watch posts on those sites to comment on, and I add several posts to those pages per week. Find ways to do promotions with sites your customers frequent. Also offer free materials. The ideal market is one where there are a limited number of potential customers, but still a large enough number to make money on. Motorcyclists and golfers are good target customers, there motorcycles or golf game are important to them, there are a good number of online sites they visit, but there are plenty of target customers to build a business.
The Product Doesn’t Need Much Expensive Promotion
Everything you do online, or to set up reciprocal deals with other sites or companies is promotion. But it doesn’t cost you a lot of money. Promotional activities are geared at just telling the potential customers that your product exists. You will need few expensive promotional activities if your customers are easy to locate, either geographically or by interests. You will need many more promotional activities if you have a completely new product or are going up against established competition.
These promotional activities can eat up a lot of time and money, so if you need to do them, make sure to do the most cost-effective promotion possible. Two strategies help you create a memorable brand. First is a great visual image for your product. This needs to go beyond just the product. It needs to be a logo or a picture of the effect of your product. We live in a visual age and you need to find an impacting visual image that shows either your product in use of the results of using your product.
You also need to create a memorable slogan or saying to go along with your image. Nearly every successful company has some type of slogan. These are easy to remember phrases. Without memorable visuals and slogans your promotional activities will not be as effective.