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What is Market Requirements Document? All You Need to Know is Here
Market requirements document is very essential to a successful business. But it is not easy to write an effective one. Before you jump to write, you should read this complete guide.
No one will choose a product or service that does not solve their problems. If you want to get more sales from your customers, the first thing you should do is to understand what they want, and what problems they have, and consider how you can help them. And this is what the market requirements document can do.
For creating an effective market requirements document, you should figure out what it is, why it is important, what contents it should contain and how to create it.
We will explain them here to you one by one. Go on with us.
Part 1. What is a Marketing Requirements Document?
A marketing requirements document is a file that describes what are your target customers, what problems they meet, what solutions already have in the market, what problems of these existing solutions are, what opportunities you find, how big is the market size, and more.
In general, it is created by product managers and marketing members to seek new opportunities, convince your team that your concept can benefit customers and companies, and know what is required to succeed.
Part 2. Why is a Marketing Requirements Document Important?
You may feel very confused about why a marketing requirements document is so vital in business. If you dig deeper, you can find all the below benefits with a market requirements document.
Reduce Waste
The market requirements documents can help you reduce the waste of time, money, and resources. You can imagine that if you have an idea and start producing the product without knowing its market size, whether it is what customers need, and if there is any competitor, you may create one product that cannot get any customers. But you already invested time and money into it. That will be a disaster for a company.
Identify Opportunity
When you try to write a marketing requirements document, you will do market research to get the necessary information. You need to understand what pain points your customers have and what your competitor’s service is. It is a great way for you to find the problems that cannot be solved by any competitors and that is your opportunity to help.
Effective Marketing Strategy
Your marketing requirements document offers you details on market size and competitors. You and your team members can create an effective marketing strategy with this information.
Make a Quick Decision
It can help you make a quick decision on which one should be solved and arranged at first as you know what are the urgent requirements of the customers and what is the case of the market.
Motivate the Team
The team has a clear understanding of why the product will be liked by customers and how we can get a profit from it. Only with this can all members have confidence in what they are doing.
Part 3. What is the Structure of the Marketing Requirements Document?
The structure of the marketing requirements document will vary for different writers. You know how to start and design your own marketing requirements document style if you have already written this kind of document many times. But what if you are new to writing one and do not have any direction?
At this moment, you should follow the general structure of the marketing requirements document. And here is the structure for you to follow.
Summary
The summary should have an overview of the whole contents it will include in this marketing requirements document. You can have the market size, objectives, opportunities, customers’ problems, and solutions here.
Vision
The vision is what is your long-term expectation for the product or service you offer. What product do you want it to look like and what makes it stand out in the market?
Target Market
In this section, you need to answer the below questions:
What is your target market?
How big is your market size?
What is the market share? (If you already have a product)
Who are your competitors?
What is your competitors’ marketing share?
What is the possibility to enter the market?
What are your target customers?
What problems do they meet?
How to reach your customers?
You can have a clear understanding of your market and opportunity.
Customer’s Characteristics
Understanding the customers is very crucial to help you provide services that meet their needs. You can list one representative of your target customer and describe in detail with name, experience, job, education, goals, challenges, likes, dislikes, and more.
Competitor Analysis
Analyze several main competitors here and understand why they can succeed, what you can learn from them, and what they cannot do.
You can explain your competitors’ name, products, and their maiden features, revenue, strengths, weakness, and highlights in this section.
Solutions for Customers
Now, you can describe what customers need, what problems they meet, why the existing solutions cannot help, and what fixes customers expect here.
These can clarify why your solutions are effective.
Strategy and Goal
When all cases are clear, you need to set a strategy and goal. It includes the revenue it may bring to your company, competitive pricing, and key metrics of your products.
To have a better understanding of the structure, you can also check this market requirements document example. Although this marketing requirements document example is not completely the same as the structure described above, the core direction is the same.
Part 4. How to Create a Market Requirements Document?
If you still do not have an idea about how to create one market requirements document after following its structure, you can have a look at these detailed steps.
Step 1. Understand Customers’ Pain Point
The first step you need to do is to gather all the pain points customers have. You can start an interview with customers, learn from documents or case studies, observe customers’ behaviors, etc. All methods can help you know what problems customers meet.
Step 2. Understand Existing Solutions
It may have or not have existing solutions for customers’ problems. You should be aware of them clearly. If there are solutions, you can analyze their solutions and find out the problems or weaknesses. It is a good way for you to find a potential opportunity.
Step 3. Define Your Products
After going through problems and solutions, you may have a concept about your products. You can gather your team members and start brainstorming to collect all ideas.
Then, you can classify all these thoughts, and prioritize the idea that customers need urgently and can bring profit to your company.
Step 4. Market Research
Market research is very important for you to verify whether your concept or product is what customers need and how big the market size is. And you also need to analyze the competitors and see whether your product has standout features that can make it different.
Step 5. Set Goal and Strategy
When the product is defined and confirmed that it is what the market and customers need, It is necessary to set the goal, marketing strategy, and product metrics now.
Step 6. Review and Update
It is very important for you to get some feedback from your managers or team members after you finish the document. And get the final version after updating according to the suggestions.
Conclusion
Following this guide to create one desired market requirements document is the first step for a successful business. It is not as easy but also not as tough as you think to generate one. When you are familiar with this type of document writing, you can create your own market requirements document template for convenient future use.
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