Everything starts with an Idea
Superheroes of our world bring solutions to different problems of people. They bring together the teams and strive to change the world around them. Your like on some photo on Facebook, discussed by your ex and her friend, is a feature that was developed for months with the R&D team and finally made it to the final release.
Everyone admires superheroes. They are cool, strong, and change the world every day just by being here for people. There is only one problem with superheroes – they don’t exist in real life. At least not in the form of guys in red panties and with a cool haircut and superpower.
When people have an idea and know that it will change the world – they start to act. But here is the problem – mainly people with game-changing ideas can’t handle everything. Just think about the bubble wrap, which is the best helper in shipping different things. Initially, it was invented as stretching wallpapers – and never succeeded as wallpapers. Though, the fate of 99.9% of products which were developed to change the world isn’t as marvelous – mainly they ended up being dead applications with 100 users on peak or useless devices.
Even the best R&D team and product idea can fail. And we’re here to tell you why good products never make it to the end-user in their initial form or concept.
Reason 1 – Everything has been already invented
Everyone knows the wonderful feeling of being over motivated and flamed with an idea. You foresee endless work that needs to be done and a great opportunity to deliver something really helpful. This feeling lasts till the person tells someone about the idea, and finds out that there is a startup that has already created a working product, which popped up in mind.
Do not worry too much and do not get depressed. There is still much space for movements if the idea is really that cool. Even if your idea has a bunch of competitors – it doesn’t mean that it’s worthless. It only means that you need to get better and define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Be as precise as you can be – tell the world why your idea is better than the competitor’s one and how it will win the competition. There are coffee shops everywhere on the streets, and it doesn’t make this niche non-profitable.
After all, only 20 years ago the main search engine was Yahoo, and Google was only a graduate’s project of Stanford students.
The key takeout here is that you don’t need to be the first – you just need to be the best in order to change the world. Try hard with premium digital marketing solutions and deliver your Unique Sales Proposal to the correct audience – and you will definitely rock.
Reason 2 – No-one Cares
Though what is unique about Google and bubble wrap is that you’ve heard about them. The reason is that these ideas succeeded and became recognized globally. At the same time, there is a downside. 99% of other companies have failed to find their clients and users. Now they are silently dead – you won’t probably google even 20% of them.
How people would know that there is a company whose products will change their lives?
Having a Unique Sales Proposal, clear Marketing Vision/Strategy, and willing to change the world are definitely not enough.
Most probably, not all people would be interested in your idea – just because the problem you’re solving isn’t painful for them. On the other side, how would you know who among all the variety of people around the world would need your product?
You can try and hire a Product Marketing Manager, who will do the work for you. Though, the bad thing that this person can’t be proficient in all marketing operation processes – one can’t be a designer, product marketer, Paid Traffic Manager, and Marketing Analyst at the same time. Though, there is a handful of other options for addressing your marketing needs. You can try to outsource marketing to some agency. Sounds pretty legit, but not all the agencies will help you. Some of them are the best Paid Traffic experts, while others can configure SEO on the highest level.
What a startup really needs is a product marketing focused agency with clear vision and values – they will definitely know how they will bring your product to market and where they will look for leads. RGray’s goal is to deliver wise and well-planned launch and traction for your product. We assist in the creation of your Unique Sales Proposal and deliver it to a defined target audience and target only interested users. Our business analysts help the product to define markets for initial entry, according to our GTM resource pack. After all, our mission is to present remarkable products to society.
Reason 3 – You’ll run out of money without a well-thought marketing plan
Even if your idea will help fight cancer – it still needs funding. R&D office for your product requires a significant amount of funds, not mentioning the Market entry strategy, marketing expenses, Burn Rate, Legal expenses and many others. After all, a new product isn’t a thing which is delivered in a month or even 3, so, as a founder, you’ll need to fund the whole thing during this time.
Also, it’s very likely that your product won’t get to the breakpoint on the first month after release. It’s a long path of an idea, which is then converted to MVP, and finally gets to become a working and profitable product. Generally, it takes around 4 years or even more to get to the breakeven point.
So you need to support the operations of your R&D unit and other team members. That is the point when you come to the fundraising issue.
In fact, the main question is “to fundraise or not to fundraise?”. Even if the answer is yes, where should you look for investors?
At this point, your company would need a fundraising partner, who will help to “pack” your business into an Invest Pitch deck. In the process of your Fundraising Documentation creation, you will also need to go through Marketing Research and Marketing Strategy definition. They will help us understand the prospects of the industry and the potential market share for a new product launched there. Our fundraising strategy is to gather and research any relevant information about markets, industry, prospects – this information is crucial for the Implications of the Financial Model. It is based on implications and insights from the researched information from the market and reflects the possible balances, cash flows, and valuation of the company.
How to succeed by having no GTM resource pack?
Starting the product from scratch, having only an R&D team and an idea is a tough challenge. On the path of your product, you will need to raise funds for operations, and look for traction and users. Also, try searching for an SME marketing agency first, before looking at enterprise online marketing solutions.
Having an in-house marketing or fundraising talents can be costly for Startups. During the first years, operations of a startup are more focused on product delivery and don’t have time to manage other departments. Marketing strategy consulting firms can cover the full scope of the marketing needs of a Startup. Starting from the market research and strategic planning. RGray’s approach is to take the project, set up marketing operations, and grow together with it, up to the creation of an in-house marketing team. Afterward, the role of the top marketing consulting firms is advising and managed services marketing plan of the future activities of the growing business.