You’ve fallen in love with this amazing product idea and now it’s time to get others on board. The next step to bringing your product to the market is using a well-presented business plan and pitch deck to get potential clients and investors to fall in love with it too. 

So you’ve fallen in love with this amazing product idea, but you’re still struggling to figure out how you can bring this product to life. We understand, so we’ve compiled a list of 8 steps to help you take your product from mind to market. In the first 5 steps, we discussed Knowing your “Why”, Establishing Marketability, Avoiding Patent Infringement, Performing Market Validation and Confirming Manufacturability. In this article, we’re going to discuss how you can make investors and potential clients fall in love with your idea…a well-presented and compiled business plan and pitch deck!

Let’s start by tackling the obvious question: What is a business plan, what is a pitch deck and what’s the difference between the two? A business plan is a detailed document about your business/product. It should include answers to all the common questions investors and clients would have about your product: what it is, what gap it fills in the market, goals and future plans and projected profit and loss. Your business plan is something that banks, or other investors, will want to see to ensure your business is viable. On the other hand, a pitch deck is more of a visual presentation (either in PowerPoint, Keynote or Prezi) that summarizes your company/product. Your pitch deck is what you’ll use to try and bring investors on-board and so it should be brief (no more than 19 slides), include all pertinent information and be engaging (lots of graphics, not as much text). So business plans and pitch decks vary mostly in their format but they essentially provide the same types of information. A business plan is much more detailed (anywhere from 10 – 100 pages) and is usually created as a Word Document/PDF.

So now that you’ve created your baseline with a business plan and pitch deck, it’s time to focus on how you’ll get your product out to the people you want to buy them. You’ll need a marketing plan to outline your marketing and advertising goals for a set period (month/quarter/year). Your marketing plan needs to be realistic, and it needs to include a comprehensive outline of how you plan to market and advertise your product. Considering how much social media has become a part of everyday life, your marketing plan should include both digital marketing and traditional marketing endeavors. Your marketing plan can be a standalone document or it could be a part of your overall business plan… it’s up to you!

The next essential document you’ll need is a sales strategy. As the name suggests, your sales strategy is a breakdown of how you’ll go about selling your product and making a profit. Your sales strategy needs to identify your target audience, how you plan to reach them, how you’ll get them to buy from you (as opposed to a competitor) and your revenue projection. 
Let’s be honest, creating a business plan and the relevant documents stated above isn’t going to be easy or cheap, but it’s all a part of the process. It also signifies that very real first step towards moving your product from just an idea/dream to an actual physical product that will be on the shelves. The good news is, you don’t have to do it alone. We’re here to help bring to life just about anything you can envision. Our team has decades of experience in new product launch strategies and we invite you to take our product viability test to see how we can bring your product idea from mind to market! Look out for the final 2 steps in our product to market guide in future newsletters.