Do you have an idea for a product?

Are you like me? I have so many ideas (including a product or two) swirling around in my head that sometimes I even overwhelm myself.

Nicole de Larzac has twenty-plus years of marketing experience, primarily in the product industry.

Today she works with entrepreneurs to help them bring their ideas to reality, create a strategic plan for bringing their products to market and scale their product businesses.

About Nicole

Nicole graduated from business school and started consulting. She quickly realized that she wanted something more creative and less analytical.

She left consulting and joined Kraft foods in marketing and later joined Coke-a-Cola. Nicole and her husband moved to Australia and while pregnant with her first child she started her own business to have more flexibility as a new mom.

Her business was importing foods from South America and selling them to retailers like Coles and Woolworths and to leading brands.

Upon moving back to Canada, she left her business and decided that she wanted to help other female entrepreneurs who needed help creating a business while being a mom.

What are the steps to bringing an idea to fruition?

Ideation

Iterations of the product and what problem can it solve and what makes your product different
Come up with ideas and narrow them down based on the competitive marketplace – 5 Top Ideas

Concepts

Written and visual expressions of the product so that people will understand exactly what the product is and the problem it solves

Testing

Surveys
Appeal – what appeals to your audience
What are they likely to buy
Could the product be improved
Feedback
What they like, and what they don’t like. Feedback is important because you want to understand what the consumer wants and likes.

Refining the Top Concept

Results in the final idea

Development

1^st prototype
Consumer market feedback from a target audience
Does it meet their expectation

Business Plan

Road map with goals – how are you going to achieve the goals and market the
Be rooted in strategy so that you know what that business will produce revenue.

Finished Product

Presale
Before production
Create a waitlist
Know you can sell before producing a large volume
Production
Pricing

Marketing Your Product

Website
Tease out product
Think of where the target audience shops
- Amazon
- Etsy
- Wholesalers
- Large Market Places – i.e. Wayfair
- Multichannel approach
- Retail location

Driving Traffic

Multi-channel approach
SEO
- Keywords and keyphrases
- What are people searching for
- Be strategic
- Blog posts
Social channels
- Engagement
Paid
- Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Display Ads
Earned
- Earn the right for people to see your product
  - PR
  - Influencers
    - Big Influencers
      - Build relationships with them
      - Send the product and include the media kit
    - Micro-influencers
      - A great place to start
      - A smaller number of followers but more likely to work with you and promote your product.
      - More trustworthy. People are skeptical of big influencers because they know they are getting paid for promoting.

Personal Branding

How important is it to have a personal brand when you are a product entrepreneur?
Very important. People want to get to know you and your process. Show up for your audience and get them involved with your process and product.
Develop a community around what you are doing.
Be the face of your brand.

Lifestyle and Product Photography

Show people using your product so that people want to use it too.
Have great photography because people can‘t touch your product, so you want to show as much detail as possible through great images.
Look professional.