Do you want to be able to package your knowledge and expertise into successful products, services or concepts? Here are 4 things you absolutely must know.
(Not in random order, but in exact order)
1. Which part of your expertise to package. Best case/worst case, you are an expert in an area that would be niched in several different ways. You can niche yourself with multiple niches… but (in my opinion) not at the same time. For clients who can’t choose anything at all from their expertise, I usually suggest an “idea timeline” where we put in one niche at a time, with enough time in between, so that the first idea has time to become a self-playing piano before it’s time for the next one. Niche, baby! And the right level of complexity!
(Here I could write a novel about what I call the “expert trap”. I will return in another post).
2. Who your ideal customer is and what they struggle with. Pretty much self explanatory. If you don’t know this, then you are creating blindly and the whole process fails because nothing you do is actually about you, but everything you do should be about the recipient (the customer). Unless you create something for your own sake only.
3. The customer journey. And I would say that your customers are on two customer journeys at the same time – one in relation to the “thing” and one in relation to you. Here comes the sometimes uncomfortable truth that you as a concept developer have to “put yourself out there” and make sure that your customers get a chance to get to know you and relate to you.
4. Communication. In plain language: talk so that customers understand (the expert trap) and are curious to buy from you (the customer journey).
I usually use cars as a comparison when explaining things. Imagine that the four factors above are like wheels on a car. In theory, you can go some distance on 3, but no further than the next service station. You won’t get very far if you don’t have all 4 parts in place.