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Showing posts from February, 2014

5 Strategies for Generating Consumer Demand

Generating demand for your product requires much more than simply releasing it onto the market. You need to conduct research, determine what consumers' needs are, establish yourself as a leader in your industry and repeatedly prove your products' worth. Industry professionals recognize that before, during and after you introduce a new product, there is a lot of legwork to be done to pique consumers' curiosity and get them interested. Here are five things you should be doing: Pay attention to market research.  Your company should aim to figure out what customers need and want through surveys, test groups and feedback on social media and reviews left on your website. If you notice certain issues that keep popping up, there might be a need for a new product to solve the problem. Produce content.  If you're just starting out, your business should promote its new product and prove that it's solving a problem currently plaguing consumers through informative and educationa...

Working Solo? Skip Sales by Tapping, and Respecting, the Channel.

No matter what line of entrepreneurial work you are in, selling can be one of the hardest nuts to crack. This can be especially true for new entrepreneurs. The ace interactive designer from the ad agency who’s making a go of it on their own might not have ever participated in the sales process. The innovative architect who’s done great work for the firm might not be all that great at selling a vision to a homeowner who’s about to put five figures into remodeling their kitchen. But new entrepreneurs such as you need that first stream of paying customers or else you will not be an entrepreneur for very long. So what’s a new solopreneur to do? You could pound the pavement looking for leads. You could respond to RFPs if you can find some. You could go to awkward networking events. Or you could focus on finding a channel. What is the channel?  The channel is a partnership between you and another business. It’s a deal that a solopreneur can put together with bigger companies in their uni...