Cost accounting is a business analysis process where you gather all the information and add up the cost of goods sold so you can determine the retail price and gross margin. Start by creating a spreadsheet with each additional expense as a separate line item, including all raw material costs, factory costs, manufacturing costs, and shipping costs. Also consider shipping, import fees, and tariffs to get the final product into the hands of the customer, as these costs can have a large impact on costs.
If you are able to get multiple quotes from different materials or manufacturers during the supply chain building phase, you can add different data for each line item to compare costs. Once you have calculated the total COGS, you can develop a product pricing strategy and subtract the COGS from that price to get the potential gross margin or profit per unit sold.
Then it’s time to bring the product to market. At this point, the product development team hands over the reins to the marketing department to release the product. After the product is launched, a production and marketing plan for the product needs to be developed. As more features are added and a holistic sales and marketing approach is adopted, the relevant team needs to be established and pricing and related work needs to be developed. Marketing promotion requires huge amounts of money to quickly detonate the market, but most sellers don’t have much advertising budget. At this time, you can run a marketing strategy by using the following strategies.
Send brand stories and product launch information to the subscriber list via email;
Work with influencers such as KOLs to conduct affiliate network marketing activities;
Let the product appear in the gift guide;
Enable Instagram shopping;
Run chat marketing activities;
Get reviews from early customers.
The process of product planning does not stop with the launch of the product to the market, it should also include sorting out and managing the product at various stages of the product life cycle. In the initial sales growth stage, product competition is usually not too fierce, and sales are strong. However, as time goes by, competitors will also launch products. Therefore, competitors will consider how to remain competitive and what customer support systems they have. Setting a reasonable life cycle in product planning will be conducive to the stable development of the product.
So be sure to understand the user and plan the product that the design, management and sales team love. However, if the end user is not satisfied, product promotion will become extremely difficult and the product life cycle will be shortened. This is why it is necessary to clarify user needs from the beginning. If you don’t have the opportunity to talk to users directly, make sure to work closely with key opinion leaders who can influence market user transactions. This will help analyze product plans from the audience’s perspective and then conduct product planning.