The essence of the Customer Development methodology
In order to make this aspect of the creative work of inventing new “means of satisfying not yet formed needs” (as many professional marketers call new products) as easy as possible, a tool called “customer development” (abbreviated CustDev) was created.
This is a relatively simple, quickly implemented, and therefore very effective algorithm (sometimes called a technology) that will allow you to discard nine out of ten promising ideas, concentrating only on the guaranteed successful one, for example, when creating your own unique selling proposition .
Perhaps some of the readers self employed database have heard of such software products as Google Wave (a universal communication platform) and Everpix (an application that sorts photos on smartphones). Surprisingly, the names of this social network and gallery are completely unknown, although the former was ready in 2010, and the photo holder - in 2011. Both projects failed in the market, and after a couple of years no one remembered these software developments.
And all because of marketing miscalculations. Now a universal communication platform is a highly sought-after product (even if it is another social network), which will always have tens of thousands of users. The same can be said about smart storage for photos, because the overwhelming majority of smartphone users have so many photos that they would consider it a blessing if someone (or better yet, an intelligent computer program) helped them put them in order.
What is CusDev
But that's now, and we're talking about the end of the first decade of the 21st century. And back then, the public wasn't so demanding in terms of software. Simply put, the needs that were satisfied by the applications in question hadn't yet been fully formed.
As a result, potential buyers did not understand why another universal communicator was needed, or what advantages a classifier of several dozen photos in their smartphones provided. Sales did not just fall, they were reduced to zero. Does this mean that the team of programmers created something stupid and unnecessary? Of course not! It’s just that the risk that an IT development will fail in sales is higher, the less attention is paid to marketing analysis and product promotion. The developers neglected this and suffered a fiasco.
CustDev (full: Customer Development) is an effective algorithm for identifying the relevance of an idea at a stage when large investments in its production implementation have not yet been made. The point here is to obtain feedback from potential consumers .
The development (not yet materialized) is thus literally tested on users through… communication with the audience of future prospective buyers. In the process of such communication, the key features of the idea, its main functional traits are determined. For example, there are a number of proven effective ways to get contacts from a client .
It should be noted that CustDev is not one of those banal surveys that are carried out by masses of young promoters on the streets of large cities. This is, first of all, a qualitative analysis. Yes, communication with potential buyers implies that there are many of these people, but the volume of statistical regression is not the main thing here. In this case, the respondent is required to describe the product itself, which can satisfy it, and to express a hypothesis when formulating a specific need. Of course, there must be many such ideas, that is, you will have to communicate with more than a dozen people. However, thousands of versions are not needed here.