How to Market Your Invention

Tap to Read ➤ Rahul Thadani

Marketing inventions need to be handled with a strong business sense and with a clear purpose in mind. There are several channels to achieve this, and picking the right one makes all the difference between a successful invention, and a failed one.

It may seem like the world has run out of innovative inventions in the last few years, but the fact of the matter is that the most dedicated minds will always find ways to create something novel.

The kind of technology and tools that are available to the common man today has made it possible to push new boundaries and explore new avenues, and people who are curious about how things work will always find a way to build something that has never been seen before.

Assuming that you have already accomplished this stage, you will now surely be looking to market your invention effectively. Finding the right audience for an invention is essential to its success, and this is another area where the massive technological setup in place comes in handy.

There are a number of new channels and avenues in place today for people who are looking to sell things and these need to be managed in an effective manner.

Steps to Marketing an Invention

The most important thing to remember is to not get carried away by someone who is over enthusiastic to help you out. You must be wary of scams out there, because there are plenty of them present in the world right now.

Duplicating ideas and inventions is one of the easiest things to do today, so you must be very careful about who you deal with. If you are satisfied that the person(s) you are dealing with are working in your best interests, then you can go ahead and follow these instructions on marketing your inventions.

Step #1: Recognize Your Target Market

You cannot figure out the ways to market without knowing who to sell them to. Since you have created the invention, you will be the best judge of who it is meant for, and who are the people who will use it the most.

Keep these targets in mind and then think of ways to reach out to them. Every business venture and marketing operation starts off with this planning process and the recognition of the targeted audience before anything else.

Step #2: Create a Marketing Plan

Once the target audience has been pinpointed, you must start working on a plan to reach out to them.

Utilize the various media outlets like the local press, the national press, the international press, the Internet, television, radio, trade publications, magazines and other outlets. Make your presence felt and create an awareness campaign that brings your invention to the attention of the world.

Make use of some advertising techniques like OTL advertising (Over The Line), BTL (Below The Line) and OOH advertising (Out Of Home). Allocate a budget to all of these avenues and choose the best course possible and enlist the help of a professional if the need arises.

Also remember to file for a patent for your invention or someone else will undoubtedly steal your idea, no matter how small scale it may be. You will need to enlist the help of a patent lawyer for this purpose.

Step #3: Settle on a Pricing Strategy

For this purpose you will need to decide the price at which it is sold, and also the distribution strategy that you intend to follow. Pick a price that covers your operational costs and gives you some profit, but do not name an overly ambitious price.

Tie up with retailers and distributors so that the product will be supplied to the market on a timely basis. Admittedly, this is a process that will heavily depend on the nature of the product itself.

Some people also choose to get their product licensed and bought by an existing seller in the market and sell it under their brand name. Deciding on how to carry out all these procedures will certainly require the help of a seasoned professional in this business.

There are many more nuances and subtleties to marketing a product, but they are all further subsets of these aforementioned steps. Entrepreneurship is not an easy path to go down, but it can ultimately be a very fruitful one.

You should know that a majority of new ventures that come up, perish and fail within no time. So one needs to have good business acumen to make things like this work, but most importantly, one needs to have a good product to sell.