The Best Ways to Promote an Invention

Inventors are usually great at doing product development but may not be so terrific at actually reaching out to potential buyers. To get the invention from your basement and into the homes of people across the country, you must be able to complete the cycle, and this means finding ways to promote your invention.

Take a look at the following steps for some idea on how the process works.

Protect Your Invention

After you have spent several months or even years designing and building your product it would be a tragedy for someone else to copy your ideas and start making money off of your hard work. To prevent this from happening you need to file a patent application. This protects your invention from being copied for a certain period of time, usually defined by the patent body, and ensures you are at least allowed some time before innovators flood the market with copy-cat versions of your product.

Build a Prototype

Every invention must have a prototype. This can be used to show manufacturers what the end result is supposed to be and gives them something physical to work with which can really speed up the process of production. The prototype can also get you the attention you need. For instance, if you need financial backing, displaying the prototype to financiers or even the manufacturers themselves can help you to land a deal that allows you to get your invention on shelves for a minimal personal capital outlay.

Refine Your Target Market

Before you spent a lot of time and money on your invention you should do some preliminary research on the type of buyer that would be interested in your product. Your initial buyer character sketch may change slightly according to revisions you might have made to your original designs, however, you should have a fair idea of where to start. It is good practice to revisit your target market with a few questions when you have a prototype ready and then start to study your customer in detail. Figuring out what they have in common with each other will help you to understand where you can place your advertisements for them to see. For instance, if your invention is designed to make the life of college students easier, you should focus your attention on campus life and find ways to infiltrate or place your product advertisements.

Use Methods to Reach Your Audience

These methods will vary according to the type of person you are trying to reach, but generally speaking, you need to explore all your angles. Think about your target market in terms of their age group, gender, their job, hobbies or even their health and fitness. Then use various methods such as radio, television, print and digital media to reach them where they are likely to congregate.

Educate and Entice

When you need to promote an invention, you are presumably trying to introduce something that is completely new. This means that people may not realize they need it and they may not understand how to use it. Your promotion methods must try to improve this situation by focusing on educating your audience as a key to creating demand for the invention.

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