I have a confession to make. When I started working on Vuzop, I did not conduct any market research, any customer discovery discussions, any value analysis, describe any use cases, or even simply write down the problem I was trying to solve.

I developed Vuzop based on my own experience with 1) managing large software projects for clients, and 2) trying to understand how my clients’ businesses worked. In my own defense, I will just say that perhaps I got understandably excited when I saw the capabilities that VR could provide.

But this is all a highly risky way to bring a product to market. It postpones the essential question of “why will somebody buy this?”

I am pretty certain that I am not the only person to get irrationally exuberant about AR/VR capabilities, so how do we tell which AR/VR products are commercially viable? This blog exists in part to bring some discipline and attention of my own thought process back to the discipline of the marketplace.

So if I were to go back and think through the marketing aspects of my AR/VR product more proactively what questions would I ask? And, if I were in position as either an investor or a prospect of an AR/VR product vendor, how would I analyze the company and its product?

Some Criteria for Assessing AR/VR Products

• Target market
  • Definition of the market
  • Breakdown of any market segments
• Motivation of Buyers
  • What is the critical business issue being solved with the product?
  • What are the typical reasons for why this issue exists?
  • Why will customers expend money and time to solve the problem?
  • Initial motivational trigger
  • Ultimate purchase motivation
  • Intended use case(s)
  • How much money can the customer add to their bottom line?
  • Where can events be found that will create urgency in the timeline?
• Competition
  • Competitive solutions, i.e., other ways to solve the problem besides AR/VR
  • Positioning/differentiation versus competitors, whether in same technology arena or other
  • Why would a customer purchase the product versus DYI?
• Product features
  • What’s a one sentence description of the essential value?
  • Which product features serve to differentiate from the competition?
  • What platform is the product based on?
  • What infrastructure does the customer need to have in place?
  • Is onsite sales or support required?
• Marketing
  • What is the generally expected ROI in the market?
  • What is familiar about the product and what is surprising?
  • Permanent license or subscription pricing?
  • Customer endorsements and recommendations
  • Are there referrals or word of mouth leads?
  • Are there any distribution partners?
  • Are there existing customers the product can be sold to?
• Qualifying
  • What is the process of discovery with prospects?
  • How are prospects qualified to go through the sales process?
• Vendor
  • What is the vendor’s credibility?
  • What does the vendor’s team look like?
  • What is the vendor’s geographical coverage?
• Proof of Product
  • Are there case studies?
  • What is the number of customers?
  • What is the sales growth?
  • Are there investors?
  • Are there partners?
• Decision
  • What is the role of the targeted buyer in the organization?
  • Which features close the deal?
  • Was pricing critical?
  • What was the calculated ROI for the prospect?
• Deployment
  • What technology needs to be deployed?
  • What training needs to be performed?
• Support
  • What does the vendor’s support look like?
• Post-mortem
  • Is the company still using features that closed the deal?
  • What features are used more than expected?

I could go on and on – there have been books written on this subject – but this gives a good framework to begin with.