What makes a product successful?

Successful products are the beating heart of every successful business or brand (along with resourceful and talented employees of course).

It’s hard to argue that without great products that excite customers by solving problems or adding value to their lives, it’d be pretty hard for any business to stay afloat.

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That’s why it’s so important to make sure your products perform as well as possible. Today's world is getting more and more competitive and if you’re not aware of what it takes to make your products successful, you’re going to fall behind your more astute competitors.

That’s a death sentence for any business, no matter what industry you’re in.

Unfortunately, with the world advancing at the pace it is, it can be difficult to identify exactly what it is that makes some products successful. 

To help your business on its journey towards making sure you have peak-performing products, take a look at the 5 most important factors to a successful product we’ve listed below.

5 Important Elements to a Successful Product

Successful products are the beating heart of any great business or brand. 

Often, many entrepreneurs wind up figuring out how to make their products successful as they go. While this can sometimes bear fruit, identifying the most important factors of a successful product can help you better target and make use of them specifically.

1. A comprehensive product launch plan

Success without preparation or planning is an incredibly rare thing. The more carefully you put into planning the launch of your product, the better it will do.

A comprehensive and effective product launch can make or break a product, no matter how great the product is. That’s why it’s essential to make sure your product launch plan is as detailed as possible. You can rely on services or platforms that help you decide and plan your product launch like Teammate.

It’s important to remember that a product launch plan should be developed well ahead of your release. A launch plan should never be an afterthought and thinking of it as such can severely hamper your attempt to make your product a success.

Without a manifesto to act as your north star, you may wind up wasting money that could have been more effectively used elsewhere. A great product launch can inform your customers about the product you’ve developed to solve their needs, make sure you beat out your competitors, and achieve your revenue targets.

Later this can be used to create pitch decks that you can use to generate investor excitement if you need to raise capital as well.

Remember, the sooner you begin planning your product launch the better and more comprehensive your launch will be. The more you know about how you want your product to turn out, the more you can make sure it does.

2. Having a quality, of value product

The hallmark of a great product is that the consumers that use it, find it to be of significant value.  You need to make sure that your product fills a void in your customers' lives and adds to it. 

It’s also important to make sure that your product is not a vanity one. Paying attention to user needs, consumer trends and ongoing business developments can help you keep an eye on events that may impact your customer's needs.

Incorporating a clear and effective proposition can help your brand quickly and easily convey just how valuable your product is. This can help drive the benefits of your product home and create clear messaging for your marketing and advertising.

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Whether you’ve got services or apps that increase productivity, add convenience, or fill a unique gap, your product must be of unique value. Additionally, your product should be capable of appealing to a wide enough volume of consumers that can purchase your product to the extent that you can make a profit.

3. Using customer feedback to adapt your product

Your customers are an essential part of what makes your business tick. 

They’re the lifeblood of your business, so it’s important to take their opinions into account, especially if you’re creating products that you think will be of value in their daily lives.

Focussing on listening to feedback from your customers can have a major impact on everything from improving customer engagement, improving your understanding of your customers, and refining and improving your products. Detailed enough feedback from your customers can even help you learn how to increase product adoption. 

That’s something that’s vital when it comes to increasing the sales of your products and ensuring your sales and conversions are as effective as possible

It’s your customers after all, who ultimately determine the success of your products and your business. Engaging with your customers using questionnaires, feedback forums, and reviews can go a long way toward turning your product into a success. 

4. Comprehensive messaging and marketing

The importance of marketing in today's fast-paced and constantly developing world can't be understated.

 If you don't have a brand and product messaging that targets a  specific audience and tries to meet them where they are, your product's chances of being successful are slim to none.

As far as messaging goes, your messaging should resonate with the people who see it and make them feel that you’re offering a simple, easy-to-use solution to a phenomenon that’s affecting them. Your messaging should be engaging, and enticing and make them understand just why they should choose your products. 

If you can’t explain this to your customers succinctly, your products may struggle to take off. Be sure to highlight the best parts of the product you have to offer and emphasize what may matter to that specific target audience, in a tone and language they understand and enjoy.

Incorporating video in your advertising campaigns, for example, can be an incredibly effective way of doing just that.

It’s important to use marketing channels that are effective and used frequently by your target market. In today's world that can range from incorporating pay-per-click advertising, to running social media campaigns or setting up an email marketing campaign to target specific users you feel may benefit from your products.

Remember to specifically take into account mobile internet users. As of May 2022, almost 59% of all web traffic took place through mobile devices. 

If you fail to concentrate on getting your mobile marketing correct, your product sales are definitely going to take a hit.

5. Well-developed and satisfying customer experience

Regardless of what product you’re trying to sell, your customer's experience and satisfaction are vital to growing your sales and building long-term customer loyalty.

Just take a look at this infographic that shows the impact of customer experience in today's world.

When a customer uses or tries your product, their experiences should be frictionless, easy-to-use, and provide them with plenty of moments that allow them to recognize the value your products have.

Simple, clean designs can help keep customers engaged and the smoother the process of viewing and purchasing is, the more likely they are to keep interacting with your business. Provide as many features as possible to help customers with their activities while using your product as well as while using whatever platform you’ve set up to deal with your sales.

Setting up things like various payment options, easy-to-navigate web pages, and in-depth product details can all have an impressive effect on boosting your product sales.

Paying attention to customer feedback either during the Beta testing phase of your product release or even afterward can help you iron out any kinks your product may have. It’s a great way to ensure your customers are as satisfied as possible. 

This leaves them in a position where they are primed for future marketing campaigns or have even begun fostering the ever-important customer loyalty.

How to measure product success?

Measuring product success is crucial for any business to ensure they are on the right track and delivering value to their customers. Here are some key steps and metrics to help you measure product success:

1. Customer Satisfaction: This is arguably the most crucial metric. High customer satisfaction indicates that your product meets users' needs and expectations, leading to loyalty, positive reviews, and word-of-mouth referrals.

2. Adoption and Usage: Monitoring how many users actively adopt and use your product helps gauge its relevance. Metrics like Daily Active Users (DAU) or Monthly Active Users (MAU) reveal how well your product is being adopted.

3. Retention Rate: A high retention rate shows that customers find consistent value in your product, reducing churn. It's a strong indicator of long-term success.

4. Revenue and Profitability: Ultimately, a successful product should positively impact your company's bottom line. Monitor how much revenue your product generates and assess its profitability.

5. Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS measures customer loyalty and satisfaction. A high NPS indicates that users are not only satisfied but also likely to recommend your product to others.

Final Thoughts

Successful products are much more than the products themselves. 

They’re influenced by a variety of factors that occur simultaneously and are all part of a holistic attempt by your brand to add value to your customers' lives. 

By identifying a need a customer experiences, your product acts as what should be a simple solution. Ensuring that they know this and that they feel it’s in their own interest to use it, is what actually makes a product successful.

Today's markets can be cutthroat, quick, and incredibly fast-paced. Successful products are products where the people behind them have taken a holistic approach to how they can get the most out of their products.

If you want to keep up, and not be left behind, you need to match and even outdo your competitors by making sure your products are seen as the brilliant and innovative solutions you’ve designed them to be.