Analyzing Your Company, Customers, and Competition
Once you’ve completed all of your marketing research, gathered information and statistics from your clients and your competition, it’s time to analyze all of your insights. This is the second step to figuring out if your idea is a business.
Analyze your company, customers and competition and find out if your idea is viable as a business.
First, You Need to Analyze Your Company
It is important for you to put on your impartial glasses and scrutinize your company. You need to examine your core objective and how it will benefit your customers. What type of message are you trying to send with your business? What is the promise that you are making to your clients with the product or service you are providing?
Next, You Need to Analyze Your Customers
Your marketing research should have given you some insights into who your customer is. Who is buying your product? Who is paying for your service, and who will end up using it? Depending on the product, the person paying may not be the person who is buying, and the person who is buying may not be the person who ends up using it. Figure out the chain of consumption, and buying decisions so that you can market your product properly.
Analyze your customer, who will use your product, who will pay for your product, who will influence the popularity of your product?
For example, if you have a product that appeals to teens, analyze the trends in the life of the age group you are selling to, but you may also need to appeal to the parents who are paying for the product. This could be your biggest hurdle. If you're cool and trendy, the kids will naturally gravitate towards you, but as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince reminded us all: Parents just don't understand. You need to make parents understand why it is imperative for their teenager to have your product.
Finally, You Need to Analyze Your Competition
How will you compete? What will your message be to draw customers to your product, rather than the competition? How is your product better?
Once you’ve analyzed your company, customer and competition you’re ready for the next step in turning your idea into a business: Creating a financial model for your startup.