How to Make Sure That Your Idea Will Work?

From the Very Birth of the Idea…

You have an awesome idea, your imagination paints pictures of heady success, you are ready to jump into the implementation of your brilliant business plan… But wait a minute! First you need to make sure that your idea will work. How to do that? Well, let’s see!

The success and the quality of the business idea implementation totally depends on the preparatory work that includes data gathering and analyzing for the project. Of course, you might think that many entrepreneurs make their idea successful easily. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the hidden part is the huge amount of work they do at the very birth of the idea — thanks to the vast experience they have in managing the information on what and how may influence the idea implementation.

Why analyze?

Marketers claim that it’s vitally important to analyze everything in your business. Some people say that all you need to be successful is simply do what you need, step-by-step. So is this really necessary and worth the time you have to put into it?

Therefore, here’s why:

• Save your time

Yeah, analysis takes time. However, it also saves time in cases when the idea is badly developed.

• Save your money

Of course, you will spend some money on the analysis. Nevertheless, it will save your investments in case of failures.

• Improve the idea while analyzing it

Analysis gives a great chance to rethink and improve the idea before launch.

• Keep yourself from a disaster

What if the idea is simply bad? Non-realistic? We all want to succeed. However, disaster is much more frightening!

• Move forward fast with a clear plan

If you’ve developed a plan on idea implementation then you move forward fast. Thus, you stay ahead of your competitors. But if you start implementing your idea right after you’ve generated it, without a plan, at some point you’ll start slowing down and after a while you’ll see how your competitors overtake you. A detailed plan makes you a winner!

You can add more reasons to this list, if you find any. Guess, there’s more!

If you don’t mind, I’ll move forward and tell you how to analyze the idea by yourself. In addition, you’ll see how professionals do it.

How to analyze the idea by yourself?

Now you know the main dangers that may lay ahead of you. There are five steps anyone can take to make sure the idea is worth working on.

• Think of an idea payback

Will your idea have its fans? What profit can it bring to you? In other words, first you need to define a ratio of an idea development cost with a possible number of its consumers. Simply multiply the number of possible clients by the product price. You’ll see the idea payback and make your first decisions.

• Google

Someone says that all possible ideas are already there. You just need to find it and analyze how successful it is, its pluses/minuses. Maybe, you can improve it, make it unique somehow. There are many questions you can ask and find the answer to.

• Make sure you are passionate about it

Imagine, you have it all. Try to think through all the details of its implementation — the whole path: from the very first step to the very first dollar earned. If after all those countless hours spent on research you still dream about it. Well, it gets a shot!

• Find out about the risks

Think through the situations when the idea won’t work. What can you lose or receive? Can you handle it all? Ask yourself how much you are willing to risk. If you are not ready to risk your own money, most investors will tell you that you are not a businessman. If you are serious about your business and are confident in the idea, then you are confident in making decisions about investing money. But if you can’t bring yourself to invest in your own idea, how can you expect it from another person — most likely this idea is worthless. Feel free to proceed to the next idea and simply don’t waste time!

• Never ask your friends’ opinion

They won’t tell you the truth! Need someone’s opinion — find an expert in a particular sphere. A real professional may polish your idea, point out certain aspects. In this case even a negative feedback is valuable because you’ll learn what to change — from a simple little nuance to the whole idea.

• Learn from experience

There definitely would be not only successes, but failures too. You have to manage it, learn from it, rethink different situations and improve what you can.

It should be noted, that experience is one of the major factors. That’s because it helps define the successful ideas with bigger accuracy, not to mention the time saving. So use all your experience to the full, analyze any new experience and use the most of the experience of other people.

Evidence suggests that professional touch is way more effective than unwavering faith in the success of your honey dream. So you need to understand that there are people who make a professional review for any idea. Thus, before jumping into the deep end it would be nice to have a chat with them. Why? Here’s why!

A real case has happened not so long ago. A businessman has decided to create a mobile application with 9 features to meet all the customer’s needs. After a while it turned out that only 3 features were in demand. The others just annoyed users. To make it easier and more attractive to customer it was decided to cut the features list. Guess, how much money and time the businessman has spent to develop and later remove these features. Statistics says, the number is close to two thirds! Unpleasant, right? Such situations are pretty common. Draw the right conclusions!

How do professionals analyze the idea?

It is very important to implement the advice above. Of course, it will take a lot of sweat and blood. And still it won’t be as effective and fast as professionals can do.

As the main purpose of marketing experts is to make the idea successful, they provide the analysis meticulously using the best tools and methods. Here’s a brief description!

#1. Setting a financial goal

First you need to give a voice to your financial goals — how much do you want to get. If you do not have a clear understanding then professionals will help you to set your goal by giving you an information about the market and your potential competitors.

#2. Problem solving

Each successful idea solves some problem. That’s how Facebook started. Mark Zuckerberg is introverted and he needed a way to find more cute girls at Harvard. But sometimes you need a fresh approach to see different way of problem solving. Professional look will define the problems that your idea can solve fast and easily.

#3. Matching the success criteria

You have a certain vision of the results you want to get. A real expert will learn your objectives and success criteria first. Thus, you won’t be misled. You’ll receive only those recommendations that can lead you towards what you really want out of this idea.

#4. Target market

The core principle is to find the audience passionate enough about your idea to expand these feelings among friends, relatives, etc. The analysis has to identify certain criteria to recognize your client: age, gender, income level, professional activity, etc. The portrait of your potential client will spare you from the encounter with people who won’t buy your product. This might make it worth your while.

#5. Research market analysis

No one should have any illusion that you already know the market. You need clear facts! The idea implementation should be based on the market realities taking into account the dynamics of its growth. The market research will distinguish the potential customers, real competitors, and what is in between. A detailed SWOT analysis of your potential competitors will help you define what’s your product niche and its competitive advantages. You’ll have a clear understanding of what your competitors do and what they don’t do. Just make the right conclusions!

#6. Identifying customer’s pain

Along with the market research you need to understand the customer’s contentment with the products and services available on the market. It’s time to analyze the needs of customers. What do people really feel, talk about and what pains do they have? It can be a long list of their pains, problems, unmet needs, concerns and wishes. Here you may experience major insights.

#7. Features for problem solving

Now we know the pains and problems of the market. For every pain we find a solution. The list of solutions is a list of features that your product has. Each feature solves people’s problems and meets their goals. Don’t forget to include creative insights.

#8. Checking the idea

It’s important to make a detailed SWOT analysis of the created features for the idea. It will identify your strengths and weaknesses, open new opportunities and eliminate threats. And it’s just a part of the work on defining the idea success in business. All that, combined with the market data and the customer feedback, is done in a specification that clearly describes your idea, the product, the problem it solves and how it should be implemented. Then technical documentation and a development plan are drawn up for this.

#9. Monetization

There are many ways to monetize a business. Explore all your options here. At this stage you need to understand the real figures of the your cost basis, the competitors monetizing strategies, how much your customers are willing to pay and certainly your primary means of monetization. You can have more than one path toward monetization, but your primary means is the most important. It’s the route you expect the majority of your customers to pay, and the one that will generate the most value for your business.

#10. Development plan

After the whole set of analysis, tests and first received results it’s time to make up a detailed development plan for the idea. It should be well structured and optimal specifically for the idea. As the main goal is to establish a prosperous reliable business.

#11. Idea project

That’s the so-called finish line when you get a pack of documents from the marketing experts. It will show you the whole path of your idea implementation — from first notes to real results. It will answer all your questions: how, why, what’s the time frame and is the idea worth working on it. The next step is yours!

Business development depends primarily on the continuity of the idea improvement process, disclosing its internal potential, finding new forms of its implementation. As you already know, it all begins from the economic analysis. You should remember that the more information you collect before the actions begin, the easier it will be to monitor and correct the process of creating a prosperous business.

Conclusion

You see, there are different ways to turn your idea into success: you can either go all the way by yourself or find experienced partners to do it specifically for you. The second one is obviously faster and more effective. It’s up to you to decide. If any help needed, turn to us to develop your idea together!

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Originally written for S-PRO blog.