Home Business Product Marketing, Determining the Features of Your Product.

In home business marketing, determining if there is a need for your product is your first step. Discovering the features of your product is your second step in market research.  If your product is new, or maybe new to you, there may be some market research involved to find the features of your product that your target customers will like best.

When I say market research, you may want to test your product to find features and benefits that would appeal to needs and wants of your target customers.  Family or friends can be test subjects providing that they can give you honest input and not baffle you with nonsense, and are in your target market group.

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Design a survey or questionnaire, a list of questions that you want answered about marketing your potential home business product.

These should be focused on specific product information that you need to know.  Make sure the questions you ask are absolutely necessary for your market research.

Your survey should be any more than a page or two long, especially if your client is filling in the information themselves. Research has shown that surveys longer than one page rarely get fill out completely.

More appropriately, you should ask the questions and write down or record the answers.  In this fashion, you can drill down on answers provided to get additions details as needed.  Using a voice recorder during your survey interviews can be helpful in recording the information without writing it down. If using a recorder, ask permission first.

As you discover what you believe to be features, let some others (potential customers) in your target group try your product.  Depending on the price of your product, you may cut your customer a one time discount for providing you feedback about what they liked best and disliked about it. 

If you were asking me for my opinion, I would want it for free, unless it was a moderate to high priced product.  I would be willing to provide more detailed information and insight as long as I knew in advance that I was testing a product for a survey. 

All of this may or may not be an option for your home business marketing research. Because of budgetary reasons, providing free products may not be a viable marketing option . 

If it can be managed, you will probably get more focused positive and negative feedback.  This is what you are looking for in your market research, determining the features and benefits of your product.

The more potential customers you can do this with, the better your feedback and variety of feedback will be. This is very important to your home business marketing, so take notes carefully.

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The feedback results are invaluable in determining the marketing features that your home business product.

Feedback results you need to look for may vary depending on your product.  In general, without knowing what your product is, here are some features to look for:

• Time savings to the customer. In what ways?

• Saving the customer from manual labor, doing it herself. How?

• Money savings to your customer. How much?  Compared to what?

• Convenience to your customer.

• An emotional satisfaction from using your product.

• Does it make life of your customer easier? In what ways?

• Is there a safety factor to your product?

• Is there a special appearance that your home business product provides.

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Analyze the feedback result you get in your product marketing research, both the positive and the negative.  Both are invaluable to your home business marketing.

Positive feedback from your product test marketing can be turned into features for your home business marketing.

Negative feedback from your testing can give you ideas on how to improve your product.  When possible, change the negative feedback into improvements to your product.

You may be able to use improvements as New or Improved in your home business advertising.

As a note, satisfied and loyal customers that have developed a bond with you and your home business are customers that can provide good feedback that can be used in market research.  This is especially true when adding additional products to your home business.

Gather your home business product feedback results and write

 statements about your product features.

Write statements from both the positive and negative feedback results you obtained.  These will be the feature statements of your product.  Feature statements should reflect how your product will perform when used by potential customers.

Examples of positive product features for personal checks:

• 800 + personalized designs.

• Watermark imprinted for security and authenticity.

• New checkbook leather cover with each box ordered.

• 200 deposit slips per box.

• Free transaction registers included.

• Delivered to your mailbox in 5 business days.

Negative product features for personal checks:

• You may have to pay more for the checks than your bank would charge you for the same quantity of personal checks.

• I have to give you my personal banking information.

• Shipping and Handling is not included in the base price.

Positive feature statements can be used in advertising your product on your advertising medium or brochures.  We will cover this in another section.

Negative product feature statements can be used for future improvements of your products.  Knowing these negative features also gives you an opportunity to consider how to handle objections when selling your product.

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Click here to leave Home Business Product Marketing and return to Home Business Marketing.

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