Concept to Market Within 4 Months
(4 of 4)
We are almost there!
Week 1
When our product is ready and the quality inspection has been to our satisfaction, it is time to talk to the freight forwarder and the customs broker. Depending on origin and destination, shipments can take anything from a few days to six weeks. The cheapest and slowest by far is sea, and the most expensive, albeit the fastest, is air. Ground shipping can be a bit more expensive than you think.
Week 2
With the estimated date of arrival available and product photos ready, it is time to start the marketing campaign. If you have really big plans, you are probably relying on marketing professionals for this. But doing it yourself does not mean the campaign will not have an impact. There are tons of tools available for anyone who wishes to promote their products both off and online:
- Social media: Think carefully about the social media you will be using and make sure that your audience actually uses that platform. Managing a lot of social media accounts gets cumbersome and messy for small businesses with no dedicated department for it, so think twice before opening accounts on every platform you come across. Most if not all of them have free options to create business profiles, but if you want your product to be promoted it is going to cost you.
- Advertising on search sites: Google is the biggest search engine, but it is not the only one. Specialized search engines or business platforms have the advantage of having a more sophisticated and “curated” following.
- Advertising on marketplaces: Depending on the traffic you get, you might discover that promoting your product within the walls of certain marketplaces meets your demand expectations. Another plus of advertising within the marketplace is that the business intelligence (ACoS, etc.) that you get will be much easier to figure out and analyze.
- Graphic design: For very little — if any — money, you can create visually powerful slides for different sites using web apps such as Canva.com or PicMonkey.com
Week 3
Product should be arriving anytime now! Before it does, be absolutely sure to have enough storage space for it. A simple way to find out if you do is to check the freight forwarder paperwork for the shipment’s size in cubic feet (CFT/CUFT) or cubic meters (CBM), measure the space where you are planning to store all the boxes, and give it 10% extra. If you have the appropriate vehicle, gear, and time to go through the delivery process, asking your freight forwarder to make the arrangements for you to collect your goods at the arrival CFS can save you a few good hundreds of dollars. But do not tell me I did not warn you about how slow it can be.
If this is your first shipment from certain supplier, you definitely want to inspect the whole lot or at least a sizable random sampling. A few reasons are:
- Constant humidity in sea shipping can damage and even rust products
- Ground shipping is bumpy
- Freight forwarders treat cargo like soccer balls
- There is the possibility that the inspector and manufacturer turned a blind eye towards this or that
If you are selling your product with a fulfillment service such as Amazon FBA, it is time to send some or all of your product to their warehouses. It will take around a week to be fully processed and available.
Week 4
Product ready!
Website live!
Socials live!
Campaigns live!
Time to start selling!
Let everyone know about your products, and do not be shy about their qualities. You will be their biggest and most loyal ambassador. Now it is the time to constantly monitor sales, reviews, feedback, etc.
While all this sounds exhausting, after the first product is ready (and once it starts selling!), you can go through this process concurrently with several products at different development stages at any given time.
I sincerely hope you found this useful, and that you have as much fun as I do with all the many stages of product creation. Thank you!
