Go-To-Market Strategy For Minimum Viable Products(MVP)
Successfully launching a new product in the market can be difficult and is dependent on several variables, such as product — market fit, competition, etc.. This difficulty gets only compounded when you are a start-up, relatively new in the market, yet to make your mark.
In order for you product to be optimally successful, you need an acute understanding of your target consumers’ requirements. Many good products fail in the market because there is a mismatch in the customers’ needs and the products’ functions. One way to ensure that your product lines up with what the customer wants is to first launch a minimum viable product (MVP) and test the waters with a select group of target customers.
What is an MVP?
An MVP is a barebones version of your overall product idea that you should be able to release to a part of your user base in a short time. This doesn’t mean that an MVP is an incomplete product but rather a basic version of the product you want to finally realize. Each new iteration of the MVP is improved by using the customer feedback gained from the previous product until the final product is materialized.
(For details on how to develop an effective MVP for your solution, please head here.)
Launching your MVP
Because of the constant output of new versions of your product, it is important to have a viable strategy to use the market to its full potential. Below are some of the steps you should take to ensure that your MVP will be successful
Defining your unique selling point
Like any product, it is important to have a unique selling point or USP for your product. Your USP will shape up to be one of the main reasons that your target customer will choose your product over that of a competitor. Defining your USP form an early stage will help your early customers gain a better idea of your product and won’t let your vision of your product get lost in its own development. Your USP gives your product its identity and what your consumers see when they look at your product.
Identifying a group of users for initial stages
One of the most useful advantages of using the MVP process is the customer feedback you gain from it. It will help you go to market process if you identify a set of preliminary users or testers for feedback for your project. It will be useful to keep your user pool small because it will allow you to only listen to a few opinions. The first few testers will also be much more forgiving towards errors or faults in your product and probably won’t stop using your product because of them. As you go through different versions of your product the size of the people you take feedback from should increase. As your pool of people increase you will start to get people who are more critical of your product allowing you to further improve your features
Using users to tune features
It is imperative that while taking your product to the market you listen to the feedback that your customers give to create and tune features for your product. Whether it’s the core of your product or some secondary features that you introduce listening to your users’ input is extremely important. Not listening to their input will defeat the purpose of the MVP model.
Defining the improvements that need to be made for each version of MVP
Defining the improvements you want to make for each new version of your MVP should come as a no-brainer. However, failing to do so might lead to being unsure whether some features should be included in the new MVP or not and this confusion can lead to a subpar product. Defined and precise improvements also make the product look better in the eyes of the people testing it.
In short
If you do decide to use the MVP strategy to release your product, listening to your customers is one of the most important tasks while going to the market. Their feedback should be treated as a valuable resource and you should implement strategies to maximize the amount of useful feedback you get. From continuously improving your MVP’s features to making sure that these features are as good as they can be, almost everything you do with your product will help your customers, and in turn, your business.
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Written and edited by Radhika Madhavan at High Peak Software.
