It's true that there’s nothing new under the sun, but you and your creative juices can always create something unique. To find new ideas for products that your customers will love, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – just discover unique ways to make it roll better. Here are five ways that will help you to come up with great new ideas for products for your business.
Digital is Where it’s At
Technology has propelled not only personal growth but business growth into the stratosphere. The earth has gotten that much smaller because of it. Just think – without the Internet, your business wouldn’t have the potential to reach millions who otherwise might not have heard of the great things you have to offer. The clincher however is that even though technology has brought potential customers closer, the key is still using business and marketing savvy to give them what they want.
5 Things you can do to Create New Product Ideas
Is your business a storefront? Are you exclusively online? It doesn’t matter. Digital products can work in any business model.
Write down your ideas – This will always to your first step. Get everything out of your head and in a space where you and others in your business team can analyze, pick apart and reassemble not only your offerings but also theirs in order to come up with a workable list of products to present to your target market. Include any burning interests and avenues that you are passionate about. Someone’s thoughts could spinoff into a secondary business. I call this doing a brain dump. At least once a week, I pull up a Google Doc and just brain dump all my thoughts and ideas. Fro there, I take that list and create either projects that I want to work on actively, or leave it in a folder for future project ideas.
Ask your customers – Take a look at your current subscriber and customer base. How do they like your products? What more would they like to see? Poll the customers online, on your business blog and in the store. Put those email addresses and mobile numbers to good use. Set up an online survey that can be accessed through email. Use discounts as incentive for completion.I like to use a simple Google Form that I create for free, it gives me all the information when I need it. I try and give ultiple choice questions, people don't like writing/typing in their asnwers, make it as easy as possible for them and then leave a space for them to give you any suggestions if they want to.
Turn physical products into digital ones – Find a way to translate one or more of your physical products into a digital offering. For example, look at eBooks. They allow people to take their favorite volumes everywhere without carrying a single book. How can you streamline a product or a service using digital media? On the flip side of this, if you create digital products like journals and planners, you can always create and physical ones on places like Amazon KDP. It's easy to get going and their are tons of free courses and Facebook Groups to learn from.
Turn printable products into digital ones – How many printable journals and planners do you have in your store or on your hard drive that you haven't touched or listed? Turn those into digital planners and printables. Samanatha Stringer has a great Facebook Group where you can learn all about turning printable planners into digital ones inside of Canva
Look to your competition – Find other businesses within your niche market and examine what they are doing to promote a thriving business. Zero in on what their audience likes most about their product and see how their feedback can be applied to your customers. Join their ailing lists, see how they do things, what products they promote and how they do their marketing. You could even find yourself in a position where you end up joining forces with someone to create a unique new product and combine your audiences. You'll never know unless you ask.
Use social media – We’ve discussed surveys but what about a contest. Use your audience as a crowdsourcing tool. An example: Set up a Pinterest board where customers can create pins reflecting what they would like to see as your “next big idea.”
When it comes to creativity, use as many avenues as you can to aid the brainstorming process. This is where those brain dumps come in handy. You can always refer back to those when you are stuck, sometimes an idea needs to marinate for a while before it becomes clearer how it will be best put to use.
