What products do you need

How to Figure Out What (Products) People Want & Need

Updated: August 12, 2021

Published: May 07, 2021

When you work in product development, you often talk about satisfying the customer’s needs and wants. While that sounds great on paper, determining what your customers really want from your product is a lot easier said than done. Your customers aren’t always sure what they want, making it your product team’s responsibility to recognize those objectives for them. If successful, your new product or feature will have a much better chance of flying off the shelves when it’s released.

If you’re having trouble discovering what customers desire from your company, this post will cover the different ways that you can determine customer wants and needs before and during product development.

Before we get into product development specifically, let’s talk about wants and needs on a more general level.

What do people need?

In theory, if you can build a product that enough people need and cannot satisfy, you won’t have a demand problem. But what exactly constitutes a need?

Fundamentally, a need is something that would solve a deficiency in a person’s life, one that would have an adverse outcome if it wasn’t addressed. With that in mind, a need is likely to spur a person to action — in other words, provide motivating behavior.

If the above sounds really broad to you, you’re not alone. In order to fully understand the concept, psychologist Abraham Maslow set out to more concretely classify the most common human needs. His model, known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, was proposed in 1943 and remains relevant to this day.

The idea behind the model is that people have basic needs that must be prioritized first (hence the hierarchy) before they seek out to satisfy their other needs. For example, one is more inclined to ensure that they have basic physiological needs (such as food or shelter) met before feeling the need to improve their status in the community by buying an expensive house or car to keep up with the Joneses.

In theory, once someone has the first level met, they move on to the next level (and so on). While reality can be more complicated than that, this framework is a helpful tool to understand human need and motivation.

Here is a basic rundown of the types of needs in Maslow’s Hierarchy model:

Physiological Needs

The needs that a human being’s body requires to function (e.g. food, water, air).

Safety Needs

The needs that a human being requires to feel safe (e.g. shelter, employment, nutrition).

Love and Belonging

The needs that a human being requires to feel loved (e.g. family, friendship).

Esteem

The needs that a human being requires to feel accomplished (e.g. respect, confidence, status).

Self-Actualization

The needs that a human being requires to feel their full potential, being the best they can be.

What do people want?

Wanting is a little different. Unlike a need, a want is not as likely to cause an adverse outcome, instead being simply a desire or aspiration.

Wants might include:

Ease of Use

No matter if you’re creating a SaaS product or a physical one, customers love when they can easily learn how to use it. This is particularly important for products that are new to their industry as these companies may need to educate consumers as to why they’re superior in their marketplace. If customers find your product too confusing or too hard to use, they’ll likely lose interest and seek a simpler alternative.

Convenience

Making a product too difficult to buy, continue buying, or continue using goes against people’s need for convenience. As a result, too many objections, friction, or blockers can turn someone away, even if they needed and liked your product.

Cost-Efficiency

Everybody likes more bang for their buck. So, if you can sell a product at a competitive price without sacrificing its quality, you’ll have an offer that’ll be tough to refuse.

With this mind, it’s important to remember your target audience. In some cases, your customers may be put off by a low price tag. For example, if your customers are looking to buy a high-quality car, they’ll probably pass on the used model that’s discounted. That’s because they have different motivators and may rightfully have concerns as to why this one car is marked lower than the others.

Knowing your target audience can help you avoid this friction and find the right price point that fits your customer base.

Value or Flexibility

In the 1920s, George Washington Carver discovered over 300 unique uses for peanuts. It’s hard to imagine that a little nut could produce so many beneficial products for its users, but that’s exactly the type of flexibility that can make your product great.

Customers love when they purchase a product and find out that they can use it to solve more than one problem. And, it’s even better when they find new uses for your product as they continue to travel through the customer’s journey. This outsized value makes customers feel like they got a great deal by engaging with your business.

Style

When it comes to things that customers want in a product, one of the most common answers is style. People want to buy a product that’s cool and interesting to look at. This gives the customer confidence because they know that other customers want to replicate their style. While it’s more important that your product works, making it stylish is a great way to have it stand out in its marketplace.

Before you investigate what your customers expect from your business, it’s important to make a distinction between customer needs and wants. Understanding the difference can help you create better products, features, and messaging or positioning. Below, we’ll talk about the distinction of wants vs. needs in business and then how to apply the theoretical concepts above to product development.

Customer Wants vs. Customer Needs

Customer needs are the features and characteristics that are required for a customer to meet their goals. Needs are non-negotiable, and if they’re not fulfilled, they often result in unsatisfied or angry customers. Wants, on the other hand, are the features on top of the product’s core functionality that could help a customer make a decision.

Customer Needs

Needs are going to be your reason for creating a product. You’re attempting to address a pain or problem that consumers are motivated to solve.

The good news is since they’re imperative to customer success, needs tend to be easier to identify than wants. Frustrated customers will make it clear that their needs weren’t met by either leaving a bad review or asking for a refund.

Customer Wants

Customer wants are like the cherry (or hot fudge for some) on top of a sundae. These are things that customers desire from your product but aren’t necessarily deal-breakers. They may be features or key differentiators that distinguish you from the competition and help win over those customers who are on the fence.

Since they’re not crucial to the customer’s goals, customer wants are typically harder to recognize. However, if properly identified, fulfilling these expectations can be a great way to delight your customers and disrupt your competition.

The ideal product should provide a balance that fulfills both customer needs and customer wants. Prioritize needs at the forefront of your decision-making because they’re vital to achieving customer success. Then go above and beyond for your customers by also providing the elements that they want to see in your product.

If you’re still stuck differentiating between needs and wants, these next sections will list out some examples of how needs and wants might manifest in product development.

What Are Examples of Wants and Needs?

Examples of Needs

If you haven’t yet decided what kind of product to create, you might start with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. These are broad motivations that might help you unearth a key pain or problem to solve for your target customers.

Product development will rarely address physiological needs, though, so we’ll start a little higher up on the hierarchy:

Consumers are often concerned with safety, whether that’s safety for their person, security in their homes and jobs, or financial in their present or future. If your customers have safety as a motivator, your goal might be to create a product that protects them. Then, you’ll want to create messaging that gives them reassurance that they’ll be taken care of.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a home alarm system. It might be tempting to discuss all the bells and whistles of the product as if it were the neatest piece of tech on the market. However, a better approach would be connecting those features to the prospective customer’s safety needs, explaining how each one provides another level of safety for their home, their valuables, and most importantly their loved ones.

Love and Belonging

Speaking of loved ones, as humans, we’re inclined to do all that we can for ours. And we’re also inclined to seek connection. For this reason, our social needs can be powerful motivators.

Just think about how De Beers, the diamond retail company, changed how we look at engagement rings with their ads in 1947. In a time where a diamond ring might be seen as a frivolous expense, they were able to create the illusion that diamonds are rare and sought-after as well as create a sentimental attachment to them with their popular slogan, «A diamond is forever.» This really positioned diamond jewelry as a token of love and affection. As a result, the diamond industry was never the same.

Some products represent who customers are as people and act as a symbol that represents their social status or personal identity. For example, BMW deems itself, «The Ultimate Driving Machine.» This means that people who purchase its products care deeply about cars and how they perform. They want their peers to think that they’re driving the best car available. Therefore, BMW creates and markets high-performance vehicles that are intended for luxury buyers.

The motivation for buying a BMW is much different than buying a Ford or Chevy. If BMW were to come out with a cost-effective, economic vehicle, it wouldn’t be as successful as its current products. BMW’s existing customers would have no interest in this type of car because it doesn’t reflect who they are as people. When developing the next product for your business, be sure that it aligns with the social status or identity that your customers desire.

Self-actualization is difficult to define since everyone is different, but it ultimately comes down to the need to better oneself (and simply for the sake of it, not for another motivation such as career/finances).

The need for self-actualization is difficult to target since it looks different for everyone and because your product will not be enough to achieve it for your customers. However, self-actualization is still a powerful motivator, which means that, done right, messaging that appeals to this need can be persuasive. Consider language-learning app Duolingo’s message to «make every day count» by dedicating a sliver of it to learning a language.

Additional Needs That Product Teams Should Consider

While your product or positioning will be so much stronger when you target one of the above needs from Maslow’s Hierarchy, there are a few additional things you should keep in mind as you develop and market your products.

At the end of the day, your product has to solve the problem that you advertise. That’s why customers bought it in the first place, and you can’t fault them for being upset or turning to your competitors if you don’t solve the problem that they’re having. This is easily the most important function that your product should perform.

Once you know that your product will solve your customers’ problems, that’s great!

Now, you need to make sure it can continue to solve their problems moving forward. If it breaks easily, customers will be frustrated with having to return products or constantly working with your customer service team. For this reason, it’s important to invest in your product’s quality so that you can ensure long-term customer satisfaction.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling shoes or subscription magazines, your product should make your customers comfortable. It shouldn’t be exhausting or stressful to work with, but instead, customers should feel relaxed and rewarded whenever they continue to engage with your product or service. This will keep them interested in your business and more likely to return for an additional purchase.

Have you ever purchased a product only to feel regret once you took it out of the packaging? This is called buyer’s remorse and it occurs when our expectations aren’t met by a product we just purchased.

To prevent your customers from experiencing this phenomenon, it’s important to reassure them with a strong customer service offer. Having a dedicated support team ready to solve issues is key to making customers feel confident in the purchase they just made. And, that confidence can be the deciding factor between staying with your business and switching to a competitor.

Entertainment or Stimulation

Unless the customer is required to purchase your product, most won’t be jumping at the chance to buy it if they don’t find it interesting. The best products are entertaining to use and keep the customer stimulated throughout the user experience.

Think about mobile-based games for this example. Some, like Snake, are very simple games that aren’t complicated to master. But, they’re incredibly popular because they keep users engaged in every moment of the game experience. Creating that same level of interest for your business is a great way to get customers hooked on your products.

Examples of Wants

Since needs are the purpose of your product, its core offering, wants are the things that will help you develop the features and perks that make your solution unique and more competitive. Here are examples of what customers want when they buy from you:

Whatever the primary function of a product, customers want the experience of using the product to be simple and easy. With that in mind, it’s important to identify and eliminate friction or cumbersome roadblocks where possible. In software production specifically, that might mean reducing the number of steps to get a certain result. For example, you might implement a «duplicate» feature for repetitive tasks, making the customer’s life easier when executing their routine.

Convenience is a similar want to keep in mind. Prospects want the process of buying, subscribing, receiving, implementing, and returning the product to be simple and easy. With this in mind, it’s important to identify and eliminate friction in your operational models, particularly when it comes to purchasing or obtaining customer service. For example, you might implement a one-click purchase feature to reduce cumbersome steps in the buying process.

Because time and money are finite resources and are part of a person’s livelihood (i.e. safety and security needs), price is understandably a factor in most purchasing decisions. If two similar products are completely equal, the more affordable option will often win out. However, the other factor here is value. If you can find a way to provide more value than competitors, you’ll be able to gain an edge as prospective customers are evaluating. For this reason, you should always iterate how to deliver. and how to deliver in a way that’s cost-efficient. For example, additional perks that your competitors don’t have (more deliverables, a better experience, better customer service options, more durability, extra features, etc.) at the same price or a comparable one.

Value or Flexibility

In the spirit of ease of use, you should continually be iterating how your customers can get more bang for their buck out of your product. As alluded to in the previous example, customers want value in exchange for their investment, and value can often come in the form of flexibility. For example, this might manifest in the software world as integrations with other common software products your customers use so they can build a system that works for their needs (without siloing). It might also manifest in your service department as 24/7 support or being available on channels your customers prefer to communicate on.

It makes sense that people want their products to address their needs in a way that’s simple, easy, and convenient. However, it also makes sense that, if two products have the same features at the same price, the customer will factor in style and aesthetics. For example, if an individual is choosing between two evenly matched software systems, it’s not hard to imagine that the one with the sleeker UX will win out.

While the above are all great examples, keep in mind that the motivations, needs, and wants will vary depending on the audience and what you’re providing. It’s up to you to innovate solutions that will drive your target buyers wild.

How to Find out What People Want and Need in a Product

To identify your customers’ wants and needs, you’ll have to do research on who your buyers are. This can be done throughout the product development process.

But, if you’re not sure where to start, the following are a range of metrics you can use to get insight into what matters to your customers.

First Party Data

As outlined by HubSpot’s Sophia Bernazzani, first-party data is «data that your company has collected directly from your audience.» It’s specific to your business and can highlight interesting patterns and trends occurring with your existing customers. You can use this data to identify customer needs and wants that are specific to the people who are already interacting with your business. Some first-party data reports that we recommend are:

Customer Behavior Analysis

A customer behavior analysis is a report that describes the buying habits for different target audience segments. It uses the customer journey map to highlight how certain personas will react to different roadblocks. Using this report, you can look for consistencies between different customer segments, and then outline individual needs at different moments in the customer’s journey

Product Usage Reports

Product usage reports contain interesting information about how customers are currently using your product or service. They have detailed analytics that highlight the most used aspects of your offering, as well as point out areas that are being underutilized or abandoned. The tools being used the most are features that customers need from your product. Look closer at those products and identify what the customer’s goal is when they’re using it.

RFM Analysis

An RFM Analysis identifies the most valuable customers engaging with your business by assessing their buying history. It measures the recency, frequency, and monetary value that a customer provides to a specific company. This information helps product personnel predict a customer’s next purchase and allows them to plan their release dates in a timely manner.

Qualitative Data

When trying to determine needs and wants, qualitative data captures the voice of the customer. This data describes the customer’s perspective as well as things that influence people, but can’t be measured numerically. Some qualitative reports that you can analyze are:

Customer Feedback

When customers aren’t happy, it’s an opportunity for your business to learn. Priceless information about users surface in customer support every day, but sometimes it can be hard to sort through all of it. As a guideline, customers who are clearly angry or frustrated are communicating their needs to your business. Customers who are making suggestions typically are expressing their wants. While customer reviews may get repetitive, it’s important to constantly sort through them to stay updated on the user’s perspective.

Buyer Personas

For many marketing departments, developing buyer personas is the first step to understanding their target audience. This is because personas look at the influences on customer behaviors that extend beyond just their buying decisions. Product personnel can benefit from these personas as well because they segment the target audience by their wants and needs. Developers can then use this categorization to create features that are desirable to specific personas.

Customer Interviews

Holding focus groups or customer interviews is one way to directly question users about your company. You can ask them about individual aspects of your product and get immediate feedback from their responses. This allows you to isolate a specific situation observed then obtain an explanation for why it occurred. Information like this helps product managers guide their work when overseeing a new project.

Product Testing

Product testing should be carried out throughout the entire development process. These tests ensure that your new product or feature is going to be successful with your target audience. Here are some of the testing methods we recommend using during product development.

First-Click Testing

When you’re working on your product or website’s design, analyzing first-click tests is a great way to determine customer wants. First click tests give a participant a specific task on a website or software, then measures if and how long it takes for them to complete it. These tests indicate what customers want to do in a given situation, then highlights any obstacles in your design that prevents them from doing so. By running first-click tests throughout development, engineers can build a user-friendly interface that satisfies both customer needs and wants.

Usability Testing

In a post on HubSpot’s Marketing Blog, my colleague, Clifford Chi, describes usability testing as «a method of evaluating a product or website’s user experience.» Engineers and developers use these tests to determine whether customers can intuitively operate their product. One way to do this is to set up a system usability scale that surveys customers about their user experience using a scale of one to 10. Product management then takes this information and can tweak their developing product to fit the needs and wants of their users.

Sequential Monadic Testing

If your product team gets stuck deciding between different features or designs, you can use sequential monadic testing to choose the customer’s preferred option. This test shows participants one concept, then asks them to compare its value to your alternatives. You can then repeat this process for as many features that you need to assess. This way you can see what your customers think about your ideas, particularly minor details, prior to creating them.

Marketplace Data

While it’s a bit generic, marketplace data is another source to investigate when trying to understand your customer’s expectations. These second and third-party data streams can portray macro-trends affecting an entire industry. Even though the data is not specific to your business, your product teams use this information to identify emerging customer needs and wants.

Competitor Products

Begin with observing your competitors and compare your product to other successful ones in your industry. If customers are buying your competitors’ products over yours, then there must be a place where your team is falling short. Comparing your current products to the best ones in your market is a great way for developers to identify opportunities for product improvement.

Trends and Legislature

Product personnel should also stay up to date on rising social and political trends occurring in their industry. Changes in your customer’s environment are going to affect their buying needs, so it’s important for product management to stay on top of these developments. A new social trend or legislative measure can present a valuable opportunity for products owners to create timely solutions.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

16 Types of Customer Needs (and How to Solve for Them)

Use these free customer profile templates to better understand your customer needs.

Updated: February 28, 2022

Published: January 12, 2022

Companies want to stay relevant and innovative and often look at other successful companies, hot industry trends, or new shiny products for inspiration.

However, a vital component to growth is at every business’s fingertips — their customers.

Yes, customers are the ones with the ability to determine the longevity and progress of your business. Happy customers result in higher retention rates, lifetime value, and brand reach as they spread the word in their social circles.

The first step toward creating the types of customer experiences that result in happy customers is by understanding and meeting customer needs.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What are customer needs?

A customer need is a motive that prompts a customer to buy a product or service. Ultimately, the need is the driver of the customer’s purchase decision. Companies often look at the customer need as an opportunity to resolve or contribute surplus value back to the original motive.

An example of customer need takes place every day around 12:00 p.m. This is when people begin to experience hunger (need) and decide to purchase lunch. The type of food, the location of the restaurant, and the amount of time the service will take are all factors to how individuals decide to satisfy the need.

Customer-centric companies know that solving for customer needs and exceeding expectations along the way is how to drive healthy business growth and foster good relationships with the people your company serves.

Although customer centricity is not a new concept, the right steps to achieve a customer service focus are still hazy.

Customer Code: Creating a Company Customers Love from HubSpot

Creating a customer-centric company that truly listens to customer needs can be daunting, and there’s a steep learning curve if you haven’t paid close attention to customers before.

So to steer you in the right direction, here’s a beginner’s guide that defines the types of customer needs to look for, unpacks common barriers that prevent companies from fulfilling their customers’ needs, and discloses solutions to start improving customer service.

Below are the most common types of customer needs — most of which work in tandem with one another to drive a purchasing decision.

Customer Profile Templates

Fill out the form to better understand your customer needs.

16 Most Common Types of Customer Needs

Product Needs

1. Functionality

Customers need your product or service to function the way they need in order to solve their problem or desire.

2. Price

Customers have unique budgets with which they can purchase a product or service.

3. Convenience

Your product or service needs to be a convenient solution to the function your customers are trying to meet.

4. Experience

The experience using your product or service needs to be easy — or at least clear — so as not to create more work for your customers.

5. Design

Along the lines of experience, the product or service needs a slick design to make it relatively easy and intuitive to use.

6. Reliability

The product or service needs to reliably function as advertised every time the customer wants to use it.

7. Performance

The product or service needs to perform correctly so the customer can achieve their goals.

8. Efficiency

The product or service needs to be efficient for the customer by streamlining an otherwise time-consuming process.

9. Compatibility

The product or service needs to be compatible with other products your customer is already using.

Service Needs

10. Empathy

When your customers get in touch with customer service, they want empathy and understanding from the people assisting them.

11. Fairness

From pricing to terms of service to contract length, customers expect fairness from a company.

12. Transparency

Customers expect transparency from a company they’re doing business with. Service outages, pricing changes, and things breaking happen, and customers deserve openness from the businesses they give money to.

13. Control

Customers need to feel like they’re in control of the business interaction from start to finish and beyond, and customer empowerment shouldn’t end with the sale. Make it easy for them to return products, change subscriptions, adjust terms, etc.

14. Options

Customers need options when they’re getting ready to make a purchase from a company. Offer a variety of product, subscription, and payment options to provide that freedom of choice.

15. Information

Customers need information, from the moment they start interacting with your brand to days and months after making a purchase. Businesses should invest in educational blog content, instructional knowledge base content, and regular communication so customers have the information they need to successfully use a product or service.

16. Accessibility

Customers need to be able to access your service and support teams. This means providing multiple channels for customer service. We’ll talk a little more about these options later.

If companies can begin to make changes before their customers’ needs aren’t fulfilled, this can ultimately lead to growth, innovation, and retention. However, with many types of customer needs, how do you understand which ones apply to your customers specifically?

How to Identify Customer Needs

«You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology,» Steve Jobs notably stated. «You cannot start with the technology and try to figure out where you are going to sell it.»

Whether you sell technology or some other product or service, the underlying message he’s saying here rings true.

This means understanding where they’re coming from when they’ve chosen to make a purchase, what expectations they’re bringing to the table, and what bumps they’ll encounter along the way. You can gain more knowledge about what your customers want using a few different strategies.

1. Use Existing Data

Most likely you have some customer data already, especially if you’re using a CRM. This is the best place to start your search. Are there pain points or issues you can glean from just looking at this customer data? Are there any patterns you can identify? Taking note of who your current customers are and their past interactions with your brand to get a better idea of where customers are coming from and if you’re meeting their needs.

2. Solicit Customer Feedback

When trying to identify consumer needs, go straight to the source. This can be done using surveys that live on your site, or sent via email. Additionally you could conduct focus groups to gain more in depth insight to customer needs and their overall experience with your product or service.

3. Customer Journey Mapping

To better understand and assist customers, you’ll need to first know what phase of the customer journey they are in and what they’re looking for. This is where customer journey mapping can help, giving a visual representation of how customers interact with your brand. This exercise will help you create a more proactive customer service approach and improve retention.

Featured Resource: Customer Journey Map Templates

4. Input from Service Team

In addition to getting customer feedback, it’s important to consult those who work with them most — your service team. They’ll often have insights you may not be privy to and can help you anticipate the needs of your customers as well as solve existing issues. They’ll also be able to explain how customers are currently using your product or service and can identify any hiccups in the process.

5. Study Competitors

It’s common to study competitors when conducting market research, but you should also consider them when identifying customer needs. There might be overlap in your target audience, meaning your brand could benefit from reviewing any issues competitors are experiencing and gain insight on how they went about fixing it. You might find that some of their strategies would be worth implementing at your company, or discover gaps in service that your company can fill.

6. Use Social Media

Chances are, your customers use a variety of social media platforms in their day to day. Take advantage of that by using it as a way to listen in on what customers are saying about your products and your competitors. Are people asking questions under your posts? What sorts of comments are they making? Are they giving praise, asking for assistance, or do they want new features? Using a social media monitoring tool like Hootsuite will help you identify trends, mentions, and hashtags relevant to your brand to better inform your strategy.

7. Keyword Research

People turn to the internet for most things, so Google is an excellent resource for figuring out customer needs. How are customers finding your brand online and what are they typing into the search box to find it? Doing keyword research can give you a broad overview of what your customers need based on search data. Keyword research will also help you optimize your site for search engines by aligning the content of your site with what customers are searching for.

If you design your process with these things in mind, you’ll be able to uncover consumer needs at any stage of their lifecycle. You can take a deeper dive into their needs by conducting a customer needs analysis.

What is a customer needs analysis?

A customer needs analysis is used in product development and branding to provide an in-depth analysis of the customer to ensure that the product or message offers the benefits, attributes, and features needed to provide the customer with value.

To conduct a customer needs analysis successfully, you need to do the following:

1. Customer Needs Analysis Survey

The customer needs analysis is typically conducted by running surveys that help companies figure out their position in their respective competitive markets and how they stack up in terms of meeting their target customers’ needs.

The survey should primarily ask questions about your brand and competitors, as well as customers’ product awareness and brand attitudes in general.

Questions can include:

You can learn more about which questions to ask in this survey in our guide and this guide from dummies.

2. Means-End Analysis

Once you’ve conducted the customer needs analysis survey, you can use the answers to get a fuller picture of the reasons why your customers purchase from you, and what makes your product or service stand apart from your competitors’.

A means-end analysis analyzes those answers to determine the primary reasons why a customer would buy your product. Those buyer reasons can be divided into three main groups:

1. Features: A customer buys a product or service because of the features included in the purchase. If the customer were buying a computer, for example, they might buy it because it’s smaller and more lightweight than other options.

2. Benefits: A customer buys a product or service because of a benefit, real or perceived, they believe it will offer them. The customer might also buy the computer because it syncs easily with their other devices wirelessly.

3. Values: A customer buys a product or service for unique, individual values, real or perceived, they believe it will help them fulfill. The customer might think the computer will help them to be more creative or artistic and unlock other personal or professional artistic opportunities.

As you might imagine, these reasons for purchasing something can vary from customer to customer, so it’s important to conduct these customer surveys, collect the answers, and group them into these three categories. From there, you can identify which of those motivating factors you’re solving for, and which you can improve on to make your product or service even more competitive in the market.

3. Customer Feedback

If you want to know what your customers think about the experience of working with your company, ask them. Interviewing your customers and members of your service team can contribute to a customer needs analysis and improvements to your customer lifecycle.

As you gather data from your customer needs analysis, it’s important to identify the points of friction that your customers experience and the moments in their journey that provide unexpected delight.

Asking these questions can lead you to valuable insights as you work to solve for your customers.

How to Solve for Customer Needs

The first step to solving for your customers is to put yourself in their shoes: If you were the customer when we purchase your goods, use your technology, or sign up for your services, what would prevent you from achieving ultimate value?

Your customer needs analysis is a good starting point for getting in the mind of your customer, especially when it comes to identifying common pain points. From there, you can build a proactive plan to implement your customer-first values throughout the customer lifecycle. Here are some tips for doing so:

1. Offer consistent company-wide messaging.

Too often customers get caught up in the «he said, she said» game of being told a product can do one thing from sales and another from support and product. Ultimately, customers become confused and are left with the perception that the company is disorganized.

Consistent internal communications across all departments is one of the best steps towards a customer-focused mindset. If the entire company understands its goals, values, product, and service capabilities, then the messages will easily translate to meet the customers’ needs.

To get everyone on the same page, organize sales and customer service meetings, send out new product emails, provide robust new employee onboarding, and require quarterly training and seminars or staff hosted webinars to share important projects.

2. Provide instructions for easy adoption.

Customers purchase a product because they believe it will meet their needs and solve their problem. However, adoption setup stages are not always clear. If best practices aren’t specified at the start and they don’t see value right away, it’s an uphill battle to gain back their trust and undo bad habits.

A well-thought-out post-purchase strategy will enable your products or services to be usable and useful.

One way companies gain their customers’ attention is providing in-product and email walkthroughs and instructions as soon as the customer receives a payment confirmation. This limits the confusion, technical questions, and distractions from the immediate post-purchase euphoria.

A customer education guide or knowledge base is essential to deliver proper customer adoption and avoid the ‘floundering effect’ when customers are stuck. Other companies provide new customer onboarding services, host live demos and webinars and include events and promotions in their email signatures.

3. Build feedback loops into every stage of the process.

Lean into customer complaints and suggestions, and it will change the way you operate your business. Criticism often has negative connotations. However, if you flip problems to opportunities you can easily improve your business to fit the customer’s needs.

Just as you solicited customer feedback in your needs analysis, you can keep a pulse on how your customers feel at scale with customer satisfaction scores, customer surveys, exploration customer interviews, social media polls, or personal customer feedback emails.

If you’re able to incorporate this into a repeatable process, you’ll never be in the dark about the state of the customer experience in your organization, and you’ll be enabled to continue improving it.

Take customer suggestions seriously and act on those recommendations to improve design, product, and system glitches. Most customer support success metrics are paramount to the customer experience and this mentality should trickle down to every aspect of the organization.

4. Nurture customer relationships.

When a customer buys a product or service, they want to use it right away and fulfill their immediate need. Whether they are delighted within the first hour, week, or a month, it’s important to constantly think about their future needs.

Proactive relationship-building is essential to prevent customers from losing their post-purchase excitement and ultimately churning. If customers stop hearing from you and you don’t hear from them this can be a bad sign that they are about to churn.

Companies solve for customer relationships with a combination of customer service structure and communication strategies. Solve for the long-term customer need and create a customer service team dedicated to check-ins and customer retention, show appreciation with rewards and gifts to loyal customers, host local events, highlight employees that go above and beyond and communicate product updates and new features.

5. Solve for the right customer needs.

Excluding customers from your cohort of business can seem counterintuitive to solve for your customers’ needs. However, understanding whose needs you can fulfill and whose you cannot is a major step toward solving the right problems. All customers’ needs can’t be treated equally and a company must recognize which problems they can solve and ones that aren’t aligned with their vision.

To find the right customer priorities, create buyer personas and uncover consumer trends, look at customer’s long-term retention patterns, establish a clear company vision, provide premier customer service to valuable customers and communicate with your ideal customer in their preferred social media space to capture questions, comments and suggestions.

Successful startups, brick and mortar shops, and Fortune 500 companies alike all solve and prioritize customer needs to stay ahead and establish industry trends.

6. Provide great customer service.

If a problem arises, your customers want to get it resolved and feel heard in the process. This starts with being able to meet their needs with empathy, but along the way, the process for obtaining support should be easy and on a channel that’s convenient for them.

Some customer needs are time-sensitive and require immediate interaction via phone or chat. Others are less critical and can be resolved at a more casual pace. Let’s break down the types of customer service and how each optimizes your team’s ability to fulfill customer needs.

Types of Customer Service

1. Email

Email is one of the most fundamental forms of customer service. It allows customers to fully describe their problems, and it automatically records the conversation into a resourceful thread. Customers only have to explain their issue once, while reps can reference important case details without having to request additional information.

Email is best used with customer needs that don’t need to be resolved right away. Customers can ask their question, go back to work, and return to the case once the service rep has found a solution. Unlike phones or chat, they don’t have to wait idly while a rep finds them an answer.

One limitation of email is the potential lack of clarity. Some customers have trouble describing their problem, and some service reps struggle to explain solutions. This creates time-consuming roadblocks when the issue is overly complex. To be safe, use email for simple problems that require a brief explanation or solution.

2. Phone

When customers have problems that need to be answered immediately, phones are the best medium to use. Phones connect customers directly to reps and create a human interaction between the customer and the business. Both parties hear each other’s tone and can gauge the severity of the situation. This human element is a major factor in creating delightful customer experiences.

Phones come in handy most when there’s a frustrated or angry customer. These customers are most likely to churn and require your team to provide a personalized solution. Your team can use soft communication skills to appease the customer and prevent costly escalations. These responses appear more genuine on the phone because reps have less time to formulate an answer.

The most common flaw with phone support is the wait time. Customers hate being put on hold, and it’s a determining factor for customer churn.

3. Chat

Chat is one of the most flexible customer service channels. It can solve a high volume of simple problems or provide detailed support for complex ones. Businesses continue to adopt chat because of its versatility as well as the improvement in efficiency it provides for customer service reps.

When it comes to solving customer needs, chat can be used to solve almost any problem. Simple and common questions can be answered with chatbots that automate the customer service process. For more advanced roadblocks, reps can integrate customer service tools into their chat software to help them diagnose and resolve issues.

The limitations of chat are similar to those of email. However, since the interaction is live, any lack of clarity between the two parties can drastically impact troubleshooting. As a former chat rep, there were plenty of times where I struggled to get on the same page as my customer. Even though we resolved the issue, that miscommunication negatively impacted the customer’s experience.

4. Social Media

Social media is a relatively new customer service channel. While it’s been around for over a decade, businesses are now beginning to adopt it as a viable service option. That’s because social media lets customers immediately report an issue. And since that report is public, customer service teams are more motivated to resolve the customer’s problem.

Social media is an excellent channel for mass communication, which is particularly useful during a business crisis. When a crisis occurs, your customers’ product and service needs become the primary concern of your organization. Social media is an effective tool for communicating with your customers in bulk. With a social media crisis management plan, your team can continue to fulfill customer needs during critical situations.

Social media is different from other types of customer service because it empowers the customer the most. Customers tend to have more urgent needs and expect instant responses from your accounts. While this type of service presents an enormous opportunity, it also places tremendous pressure on your reps to fulfill customer demand. Be sure your team is equipped with proper social media management tools before you offer routine support.

5. In Person

As the oldest form of customer service, you’re probably familiar with working in person with customers. Brands who have brick-and-mortar stores must offer this service for customers living near their locations. This fulfills a convenience need as customers can purchase and return a product without having to ship it back to the company through an online service.

In-person customer service is great for businesses with strong service personnel. Without dedicated employees, your customer service team won’t be able to fulfill your customers’ product or service needs. Successful teams have reps who are determined to provide above-and-beyond customer service.

5. Call Back Service

Sometimes it’s not about how quickly your business can provide a solution, but rather how efficient you can make the service experience. For example, say a customer has a simple question about pricing that should only take a few minutes to answer, but their expected wait time for phone service is over 15 minutes. Rather than making this customer spend more time on hold than actually speaking with a representative, you can offer a call back service where your team reaches out to the customer as soon as the next rep is available.

Another situation where this type of service comes in handy is with text-based mediums like email and live chat. In some cases, these channels aren’t ideal for troubleshooting and can lead to friction if the case isn’t transferred to another platform. Having a call back service available allows customers to schedule time to speak directly with reps, particularly when they feel like they aren’t gaining progress on their case. Instead of having to create a completely new support ticket, call backs seamlessly transition the conversation to a more effective channel.

6. Customer Self-Service

Self-service teaches your customers how to solve problems independently from your support team. Rather than calling or emailing your business whenever they need assistance, customers can navigate to your knowledge base and access resources that help them troubleshoot issues on their own. Not only does this get customers faster solutions, but it also saves them from having to open a ticket with your team. This makes the experience feel much less like a formal support case and more like a quick roadblock that your customers can handle on their own.

Self-service is advantageous for your team’s productivity as well. If more customers use your knowledge base, less will call or email your team for help. This will free your reps up more to focus on complex service cases that require a longer time commitment.

7. Interactive Virtual Assistant

Chatbots are no longer novelties that customer service teams use to show off their technological prowess. Now, they’re integral pieces of support strategies as they act more like interactive virtual assistants than simple, question-and-answer bots. Today’s chatbots are powered by innovative AI technology that interprets customer needs and can walk people through step-by-step solutions.

The image above shows a perfect example of how useful today’s virtual assistants can be. In this situation, the customer is learning how to use their new car — a product that typically offers a lot of unique features and an extensive operator’s manual. To help new users navigate the car’s basic features, this brand offers an augmented reality tour hosted by a virtual assistant. The user simply has to scroll their camera over different parts of the car and the chatbot will tell them everything they need to know.

Interactive features like this show that you’re investing in more than just product development. You’re thinking about how you’ll support customers and what services you can adopt that will make their lives easier. Customers pay attention to this type of customer service and it can often be a reason why many will return to your business.

8. Integrated Customer Service

Integrated service can be described as all of the little things your brand does to remove pain points from the customer experience. Some of this is proactive, like sending customers an automated newsletter that informs them about major updates or announcements, and some of it is reactive, like pinging a customer success manager whenever someone submits negative feedback to your team.

Even though these pain points may seem small, they add up over time if left unchecked. The best way to remove most of these points of friction is to adopt automation as you grow your customer base. Automated customer service tools like ticketing systems, help desks, and workflows help your team keep pace with increasing customer demand. This technology lets you maintain that same level of personalized customer service even as more people reach out to your business for support.

There’s no «best» type of customer service. When used together, each medium compliments the other and optimizes your overall performance. This creates an omni-channel experience for your customers which will keep them coming back for more.

What do customers want from a typical customer service situation?

It’s important to note that customer service is reactive. That said, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you’re providing excellent customer service.

What Customers Want

Each customer has their own unique needs, but there are a few that are universal.

1. Simple Solutions

While your product or service may run using a complex set of algorithms and procedures, customers don’t need to know that. They simply want a solution that resolves their issue with as little fuss as possible. Keep your messaging simple and focus on how your brand will solve the customer’s problem.

2. Personalization

Treat your customers like people and not numbers on a spreadsheet. Use their name in communications and tailor your messaging to the buyer persona they most closely align with. Adding a personal touch when it comes to marketing lets customers know that their needs are at the forefront of your brand’s mission.

3. Value

Does your product or service outperform the competition or provide a more cost effective solution for consumers? If so, drive that point home in your messaging. Explain how and why they should choose your product or service over others on the market. How will customers benefit when they choose your brand?

4. Transparency

One of the easiest ways to build trust with consumers is to be transparent. No one wants to feel duped by disingenuous, bait-and-switch advertising. Be honest about your product or service’s capabilities and pricing whenever possible.

5. Accessibility

While it is always encouraged to empower customers to help themselves with features like a knowledge base, getting extra assistance when they need it shouldn’t be difficult. Whether it’s phone, email, or chat support, it’s important to be responsive to consumer needs. At the beginning of this article we identified accessibility as one of the most common types of customer needs. If your team is unresponsive to their needs, customers will trade your brand in for a competitor that fills the gap.

Understanding Customer Needs and Expectations

One of the best things you can do is continue learning based on the types of issues that come up so that you can proactively address consumer needs and continue improving on the experience.

While the process requires quite a bit of legwork, the results will be instrumental in the success of your brand. Once you understand customer needs and expectations, you can work towards delighting them with your product.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How product managers can identify what customers really need

Working as a product manager at a young company without a support team, I spend a lot of time answering questions and collecting feedback from customers on Intercom. Doing so has given me far greater familiarity with the needs, and the mindsets, of our prospects and customers alike. (And of course, since we’re building a system of record for product management, all of these customers are also product managers!)

Someone once told me you should practice explaining your job as though you were talking to your grandma

Discussing customer questions, pain-points, and feature requests every day has made me more effective in my role at productboard. It’s also made me a better product manager. In large part that’s because Intercom lets me have actual conversations — substantive real-time exchanges that help me identify what customers really need. (This was far more difficult in the past when most exchanges took place by email.) It’s also because I’ve learned to ask the right questions in response to customer requests — a marked departure from thanking a customer for their input and moving along to the next request.

Take this question that I’ve received several times in the past week:

A fair ask! I’m even happy to +1 this feature idea on the customer’s behalf.

And let’s say I do. As the weeks and months progress, our team watches the number of requests for this feature tick upwards. Here’s how that would look in productboard:

The User impact score weights the number of requestors by how important a feature is to them

Now let’s say this feature is requested far more times than any other feature idea:

Feature voting has the highest User impact score

I might proceed to prioritize Feature voting and push it to engineering to begin working on its delivery. But if I did, there’s a good chance I’d hear from a colleague in UX, who’d ask:

What do you mean?! It’s feature voting! It’s a portal where customers can propose feature ideas and vote on the ideas of others! You know… feature voting!

Suddenly it dawns on me… Is that really what all of these customers need?

If I’m lucky enough to have recorded which customers had requested this feature, I could reach out to them and see. (Here, it really helps to have productboard.)

Who has asked for feature voting? What did they say? How important is it to them?

By doing so I might realize that different customers had different needs all along, fitting into one of three categories:

All of these constitute voting in some way or another, yet when customers make feature requests, they tend to write in shorthand. When customers ask us for feature voting, they envision the ideal solution for their own needs. Perhaps because we humans tend to assume our own needs represent objective, universal problems, we overestimate the ability of others to understand them. Why else would so many customers be willing to take the time to compose a message, but leave out key details surrounding why they need the solution they’re requesting? (And if product managers make such shorthand feature requests, you can be sure that other types of customers will as well.)

Someday I will learn how to draw noses

The point is, uncovering these distinct needs helps us identify that customers have actually been asking for three different solutions. And if I recalculate how many customers need each solution, I might even decide to go build a different feature altogether!

White-labeled roadmaps now has the highest projected impact (but beware: this could represent multiple needs too!)

Identify customer needs by asking “why?”

The big lesson here? You can’t rely on customers to explain their needs to you. You need to sleuth it out yourself. And as we saw, this can have real implications on what you decide to build.

This was a hard realization for me as a first-time product manager in a past role. I sheepishly admit that the hypothetical above isn’t fictional. I’ve lived it. And while it’s better to realize conflated needs after prioritization than realize it after the feature’s ship date, it’s painful to make your team wait while you go do homework you should have completed in the first place. Fortunately, there are ways to preempt this situation entirely.

To identify customer needs, always ask why, then ask why again, and sometimes ask it a third time, and on occasion once or twice more after that. The trick with the “five whys” is asking why in the right way.

Don’t do this

Each follow-up question you ask should serve to dig one level deeper toward uncovering the core user need at play.

Ask clarifying questions to avoid making assumptions

Uncovering customer needs is a multi-step process. It can be mentally taxing and time-intensive as well. But I never question whether it’s worth it because I know all the information I surface will actually be put to use when its pushed to productboard. Once there, it will be invaluable for helping the team research customer needs and capture feature ideas, prioritize what to build, and design optimal solutions. For example, when designers and developers begin working on a feature down the road, they’ll be able to reference every piece of research and feedback that relates to the feature at hand. In other words, each Intercom conversation I have now will become a primary source for research carried out by my team down the road. Each clarifying question I ask now could inspire the eureka that influences our roadmap or impacts what we go on to build.

As much as Intercom fostered my five whys technique, it’s also helped me develop a core product management mindset — relentless curiosity. Nothing helps product managers uncover new customer needs quite like a genuine fascination with the problems they’re solving for. And that’s something that gets built up one question at a time, over months or years of becoming an expert in a given space. With Intercom, I can mull over conversations as they’re taking place because there’s none of the pressure that exists in the typical meeting or group conference call. In those environments, customers are often in little mood to pause and reflect or be put on the spot while rattling off their requests. But Intercom offers buffer time for coming up with the next probing question, while allowing customers to assemble more thoughtful answers.

With time, I’ve carried these skills over to the real world as well. I’ve improved at formulating questions on the fly during in-person meetings, and I’ve followed the lead of more seasoned PMs, putting users at ease by posing questions inspired by curiosity (not an impulse to push back on feature requests). By giving your customer time to compose their thoughts, no matter the occasional awkward silence, you can set the stage for more interesting revelations, as you collaboratively uncover needs that until now, neither of you knew existed.

productboard is a product management system that enables teams to get the right products to market faster. Built on top of the Product Excellence framework, productboard serves as the dedicated system of record for product managers and aligns everyone on the right features to build next. Access a 15-day free trial of productboard today.

How to Launch a Product, According to HubSpot’s Product Marketers

Follow along with HubSpot’s Product Launch Planning Template.

Probably not. Whether you’re launching something huge, something small, or you’re updating a current offering, you’ll want to start your preparation well in advance of the launch date.

This includes nailing down your positioning and messaging, sharing that with key teams and stakeholders, listing out all the launch activities, creating assets and content, prepping everyone involved in the launch, and so on.

Because there are so many moving parts in this process, bringing your product to market can be intimidating and tricky.

To help you, we’ve come up with a step-by-step checklist for a successful product launch and gathered the best product launch tips from a HubSpot Product Marketer.

Plus, we’ll review how to know when to delay a product launch.

Product Launch Checklist

Marketing Planning & Strategy Template

Fill out the form to access your template.

1. Learn about your customer.

Whether you call it “market research,” or “customer development” it’s key to learn about what drives your customer. Identifying their goals, motivations, and pain points could lead you to developing and marketing a valuable solution.

You don’t need to perform years of intense research to learn about your customer. In fact, we suggest just talking to 12 to 15 current or prospective customers.

When speaking to them, pay extra attention when they start sentences with “I wish a product did this function…” or “Why can’t products do this?” When they give these statements, respond with questions that go deeper, like “Can you get more specific about that?» If they don’t bring up any pain points, ask them a few specific questions that will encourage them to give deeper answers.

These conversations will give you a solid idea of what their biggest pain points are and how you can market a solution to them. Once you learn these key details about your customers, you can develop a buyer persona that your team can focus on serving.

2. Write a positioning statement.

Write out a statement that can clearly and concisely answer these three questions:

If you’d like to go even deeper, create a statement that answers the following questions:

Still need more guidance on how to write a positioning statement? Check out this template.

3. Pitch your positioning to stakeholders.

Once you’ve established your position statement, present it to stakeholders in your company so they are all on the same page.

If your employees have a hard time buying into the product, your customers might as well. If your team loves it, that might be a great sign that the product launch will go well.

4. Plan your go-to-market strategy.

This is the strategy that you will use to launch and promote your product. While some businesses prefer to build a funnel strategy, others prefer the flywheel approach.

Regardless of which method you choose, this process contains many moving parts. To create an organized strategy for launching your product, it can be helpful to use a template, like this one.

As you create the strategy, also start considering which type of content you’ll use to attract a prospective customer’s attention during the awareness, consideration, and purchase decision stage. You’ll need to produce this content in the next step.

5. Set a goal for the launch.

Before you get started on the implementing your strategy, make sure you write down your goals for the launch.

Alex Girard, a Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says, «Create specific goals for the launch’s success. Keeping these goals in mind will help you focus your efforts on launch tactics that will help you achieve those goals.»

For example, the goals of your product launch could be to effectively establish a new product name, build awareness, or create sales opportunities.

One of the best ways to set goals for your launch team is to write them out like SMART goals. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

6. Create promotional content.

After planning out your go-to-market strategy and writing your SMART goals, start producing content that will support and align with those promotional efforts. This can include blog posts related to your product or industry, demos and tutorials, and landing pages.

Our go-to-market template will also help you determine which content you should create for each phase of your prospective customer’s buyer’s journey.

7. Prepare your team.

Be sure that your company and key stakeholders are ready for you to launch and begin marketing the product. Communicate with the company through internal presentations, Slack, or email to keep your company in-the-know of your launch plan.

8. Launch the product

Once you’ve completed all the above steps, you can launch the product.

9. See how well you did achieving your goals.

After you launch your product, track how the go-to-market strategy is performing. Be prepared to pivot or adjust aspects of your plan if they aren’t going smoothly.

Additionally, don’t forget about the goals you set before the launch. See how well you did achieving those goals. If the launch didn’t meet expectations, you can rethink your go-to-market strategy and adjust from there.

How much money do you need to launch a new product?

The cost of launching a new product varies significantly. For instance, an entrepreneur will see vastly different costs for launching a product on Amazon than an enterprise company might see for launching a product in a million dollar market.

Let’s consider two examples to explore this more closely.

These fees don’t include the cost you need to pay yourself and any employees if this is a full-time job. It also doesn’t include the costs of hiring an engineer to update the app’s features and ensure the app is running smoothly.

How to Launch a Product Online

To launch your product online, you’ll want to ensure you’ve followed the steps above. However, there are a few additional steps you’ll want to follow to gain traction primarily online.

1. Figure out the story you want to tell regarding your product’s bigger purpose.

What story do you want to tell across social platforms, landing pages, and email? This is similar to your positioning statement, but needs to be geared entirely towards your target audience. Ask questions like, Why should they purchase your product? And How will your product or service make their lives better?

Communicating cross-functionally ensures the communication materials you use across various online channels align — which is key when it comes to establishing a new product in the marketplace.

Consider, for instance, how Living Proof announced its new product, Advanced Clean Dry Shampoo, on its Instagram page. The story revolves around a simple nuisance common with most other dry shampoos — How consumers still want that just-washed feeling, even when using a dry shampoo.

By focusing on how the product will benefit consumers through storytelling, and using a new hashtag #NoWastedWashes, Living Proof builds excitement and demand for its new product.

2. Display customer testimonials, case studies, and other social evidence to positively frame your new product.

Consumers want to see that other consumers have already taken the risk and purchased your new product before doing it themselves. This is where social proof comes into play.

In the weeks leading up to a product launch, or shortly after its launched, begin posting customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies to showcase how your new product has already helped other people. Take this a step further and employ influencers to share the word about your product as well, if it’s a good fit for your brand.

Consumers are smart enough to know they shouldn’t trust every advertisement they see — but they can trust fellow consumers. So leverage that trust through social proof methods.

3. Create a social and email campaign.

Create a full, comprehensive social media campaign to increase interest and awareness in your new product.

Use paid advertising to reach new audiences, create full product explainer videos to use across your social channels, and use email to reach existing customers and provide an exclusive, first look at your new product’s features.

Additionally, you might consider hosting a live stream to connect directly with prospects and existing customers, and invite experts from your product development team to explain the new features of your product.

It’s important to note — in this stage, you’ll want to pay attention to how consumers are interacting with the communication materials regarding your new product. Share concerns and feedback with the product development team — it’s important to trust your consumers and use their feedback to strengthen your product.

4. Have a pre-order option.

If a consumer is excited to purchase your new product, don’t make them wait — provide an option to pre-order the product or service before it’s even available. This helps spread out demand, while enabling consumers to purchase the product whenever they’re feeling most inclined to do so.

Product Launch Best Practices by Industry

1. How to Launch a Digital Product

When launching a digital product, you’ll want to begin building anticipation with a strong content marketing strategy. Use blog posts, email marketing, social media, and other channels of distribution to increase interest and demand for your digital product.

You’ll also want to ensure you’re leveraging lead generation strategies to reach existing customers and prospects.

For instance, let’s say you’re launching an online course on SEO. In the weeks leading up to launch, you might create SEO-related blog content to send to your email subscribers with an option to join the SEO course’s waitlist. This helps you gauge the effectiveness of your marketing materials while reaching an audience that has already demonstrated interest in your brand.

How to Launch a Product on Amazon

Anyone who’s ever shopped on Amazon knows the importance of a good product listing. In the week’s leading up to launch, take the time to create a strong, high-converting product listing — including taking high-resolution photos of your product, writing a description that outlines your product’s differentiating features, and using keywords to help your product rank on Amazon.

Additionally, product reviews are incredibly important on Amazon, so you’ll want to ensure you have reviews ready-to-go before you even launch your product on Amazon. To do this, ensure you’ve either launched your product on your own website first (which gives you time to earn reviews before launching on Amazon), or send your product to a select group of interested buyers ahead of the full launch, and collect reviews from them.

Finally, ensure you’re ready for an Amazon product launch by checking inventory. You never know how quickly your product might gain traction on the ecommerce super-store, so make sure you have enough product to fulfill Amazon orders quickly.

Take a look at HubSpot’s The Ultimate Guide to Selling on Amazon in 2021 for more information related to Amazon.

How to Launch a SaaS Product

To create a successful product launch, you’ll want to conduct market research and focus groups to determine the true benefits and differentiators of your product.

Next, you’ll want to employ a strong content marketing strategy to increase your website’s visibility on search engines, and to ensure your business is appearing in search results for topics related to your product.

Since you aren’t launching a physical product, your marketing efforts need to convince businesses that your product can solve for their needs. For instance, take a look at how HubSpot positioned the new Operations Hub product in this introductory video:

Additionally, you might want to offer free trials or a freemium option for smaller businesses on lower budgets to test out your offerings before committing.

How to Launch a Food Product

To launch a food product, you’ll first need to ensure you’re prepared for the costs required to do so — including how much it costs to package and store the product (including packaging, warehousing, and distribution), and how much it costs to sell the product (including branding and digital marketing).

You’ll also need to make sure the labeling you use on your product’s packaging is accurate, which requires you to send your food product to a lab for analysis, and check with your state commerce to see what it requires when it comes to nutrition labels.

When launching a food product, you’ll likely want to hire a food broker. A food broker can foster relationships with national or local grocery stores, and will create a promotional plan to help increase sales as soon as your food hits the shelves.

Typically, a supermarket will test out your product for a few months before determining if there’s enough consumer interest to keep it stocked — which is why a food broker can be incredibly useful for using business intelligence and industry knowledge to ensure a successful food product launch.

Product Launch Tips

To learn the best practices for a successful product launch, I talked to Alex Girard again.

The HubSpot Product Marketing Manager said he had three main tips for a successful product launch:

However, sometimes, external factors might impact your ability to launch a product. When that happens, you might need to delay your launch.

How to Know When to Delay a Product Launch

To understand when, and why, you might hold off on a product launch, Girard told me there are three key reasons why you might want to delay a product launch, including:

If you’re looking for templates to coordinate your team efforts and align your company around your new product’s messaging, download our free product marketing kit below.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Aug 24, 2021 2:00:00 PM, updated December 10 2021

What Do You Need To Produce Music? – The Basic Music Production Setup for Beginners

This post was created for people who don’t want to waste any money on things they don’t need, or spend loads of time researching and sifting through all the information, suggestions, and product reviews available on the internet to figure out what do you need to produce music.

Chances are, you came to this post because the person we’re talking about is YOU. So in this article, we’ll talk about the bare basics of what you need to produce your own track.

Here’s What You Need To Produce Music

1 – Get A Laptop or A Computer

Any music that is recorded, created, or mixed these days involves the use of a computer. You have a choice of a desktop or a laptop. Most budget computers and laptops available on the market are capable of doing the task of music production, mixing, or DJing.

But needs to not just be any laptop or computer. Your music making machine has to fit certain basic requirements in order to be a suitable workhouse.

Here are a few things to keep in mind while assessing your laptop or computer, or thinking about buying a new one:

Storage

Processor

Ports

Drives

2 – Get A Digital Audio Workstation

As a tool, this is the single most important item you should have. The digital audio workstation is going to be the hub of your music making, recording, audio editing, and mixing.

This is where all your other gear is plugged in. But more importantly, it is the center for where you will be able to make your own musical arrangements. They start out as blank canvases, but eventually become works of musical art for your musical ideas. Some even use them as live computer instruments.

3 – Get An Audio Interface

This might be the most mysterious piece of gear to you. Out of everything on the list, it doesn’t seem to do anything other than, well, interface, between your computer and your gear.

The audio interface is essentially a piece of equipment that allows the music software on your computer (the DAW) to communicate directly with your microphone, instrument, and whatever outputs you’re using.

Normally what happens is that your computer’s native sound device and driver interferes with the audio making process, as audio would have to pass through several layers of processing before it is produced through your speakers. In a real-time music-making environment, this leads to severe latency – you play a note, and you hear a delay between what you play and what the speakers or headphones produce. The USB audio interface skips those layers entirely so that your latency is reduced to below the level of human detectability, allowing you to make music in real-time on your computer.

4 – Get A Pair Of Studio Mixing Headphones

When it comes to making music, you have to admit that you need something by which you can hear what you are doing. And headphones are going to be most valuable for listening to audio playback as a producer or mixing engineer. A good pair of headphones can make the difference between whether or not your leads, drums, or vocals are too loud or quiet. You’re more up-close and personal with your music with headphones, so you’re not missing anything.

5 – Get A Pair Of Studio Monitors

Not just headphones, but also a good pair of studio monitors (speakers) will become essential to your music making and editing. That being said, in terms of priority, you should get headphones before the monitors, however, if you are on a budget. Monitors are really most valuable in a room that is “treated”. That is, a room that has been purposed for music producing and mixing.

You don’t have to go out of your way to make a decently treated room, however. Headphones won’t lie to you when it comes to audio levels and frequencies, whereas the sound coming from a pair of monitors may be affected by the room they’re in.

6 – Get A Studio Microphone

Regardless, at some point, if not immediately, you should get a good studio microphone, as you will find that having a microphone, even if you don’t plan on recording yourself on an instrument or a vocalist, will open up options opportunities for you to what you can do as a producer. And, of course, if you do plan on doing some recordings, invest in at least one good microphone.

Now, Go Make Some Music!

There you have it, a basic music production set up if you’ve ever been wondering what do you need to produce music at your home, in your room, in the bathroom, in the park, wherever!

To recap, you need a:

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