Did you just come up with a great idea that you think will work wonders for your business? Are you diving in and racing to get there before the competition in this age of “can’t happen fast enough”? Here’s a short list of some “back of the napkin” marketing checkpoints to run through before investing time or financial resources.
- Does the idea fit with your company’s mission? What, you don’t have a mission? Then maybe you should take a step back and develop one. This is so critical when considering a new product or service that it simply can’t be over looked. This is what ensures that the new product or service offering is aligned with your goals. What are you in the business of providing? Does what you are thinking about offering fit within the framework of your business niche? If you have to broaden your mission to encompass the idea, you have a problem.
- Will the idea appeal to your current target audience? Or, will it appeal to a different customer profile? If it’s a different customer, is it a desirable target audience? Are the groups synergistic or will servicing or reaching the new potential audience require a different tool box? If the audience for the product or service fits, then great. But what if it doesn’t? It doesn’t mean you have to ditch the idea, but it does mean you will need to consider the implications, from both a financial and branding perspective.
- Is it aligned with your company’s core competencies? Or, will it require a whole new skill set? If it will require a new skill set, are you in a position to secure the needed resources? If not, perhaps the timing isn’t right. Learning a completely new skill set while running a business could lead to resource overload. But, if you have the resources to invest in developing a new core competency, then it still may make sense to pursue the idea.
- Will it increase your bottom line or help to maintain current business? This may seem like an obvious question, but you would be surprised at how often we skip over this key concept. Sometimes people get so excited about a new original idea, that they forget the implications to the bottom line. Will the idea cannibalize another product or service offering; is it just a value add? If so, will it bring in incremental business? If not, is it essential to maintaining your current customers or current business?
Thinking through this series of questions before diving into a new project could make all the difference between wasted time and time well spent.