Getting a new product ready and launching it in the market is a daunting task, but if you follow the right steps you can ensure your product launch goes off without a hitch and is certainly off to a good start.
Are you getting ready for a new product launch and feeling apprehensive overwhelmed/fearful to fail? Well, you have good reason to be concerned as getting a new product or service launched can be a daunting task.
According to Harvard Business School research, 95% of new products fail in their first year. With that in mind, we put together this guide to help ensure that your product is part of the 5% that succeeds.
“…most start-ups fail not because they don’t manage to develop and deliver a product to the market; they fail because they develop and deliver a product that no customers want or need.”-Steve Blank
- Define Your Market and Target User – Identify your targeted market
The first crucial step is ‘defining your market’ clearly. It is necessary that before you identify who you want to sell your product to, you need to understand their wants and demands. Conduct thorough market research to gain valuable insights into who your target customers are, and what they want.
This will help you to create a buyer’s persona which can include information on factors such as age, gender, income, and interests, depending upon your requirement. This in turn will help you in identifying and understanding the needs of the customers. And, once you are aware of it then you will have a clear understanding of how they behave, where you can target them, and what kind of interests they have. Besides, the insights from this research will form the basis of all other steps in your product launch plan, including your marketing strategy.
After performing some market research, you will be on your way to validating the concept of your product. Ensure that your product is able to answer these questions:
Who is it for?
What need or pain point of the customer does it solve?
Why would someone choose your product over an existing competitor product?
- Make Your Product Stand Out – Craft an Effective Product Positioning Strategy
Your product messaging and positioning will play huge roles in how you present your new product to your target customers. Now that you have a thorough understanding of your audience, you need to craft a message that will highlight the most valuable features of your product. Ideally, your product messaging should include a catchy tagline, and a value proposition. It should highlight the product’s best features, and the problems they solve.
This step should help you in answering the following questions:-
- Which aspects will your target customers value the most?
- And how can you frame your message in a way that will resonate with them?
- Plan Your Go-To-Market Strategy – Create hype for your product
Now you have valuable audience insights, and have developed your product messaging, now is the time to plan how to promote your launch as the right promotion and marketing strategies are critical for a product’s success. The more effectively you promote it, the better your chance of success. For this you need to initiate your go-to-market strategy before your actual product launch. This is how you build hype. The goal of your product launch promotion strategy should be to educate your target consumers, and to build hype for the launch. You can try certain pre-launch initiatives such as incentivizing customers through discounted pre-orders, free trials, rewards, and other perks. Invite influencers to sample your product and create a review.
- Plan Your Post-Launch Strategy – Follow up with your customers
For your product launch strategy to be truly comprehensive, you also need to have a plan for after your launch. You cannot just launch a product and expect it to take off. You need to have a strategy for maintaining the momentum from your launch. And, this can be done by following up with your targeted customers with regards to your product and customer support satisfaction level they are getting from it. Also, keep them engaged through regular communication/interactions and promotional strategies such as influencer or content marketing. Lastly, ensure that you have an efficient customer support team to cater and solve customers’ problems/issues and complaints that may or may not arise.
The Bottom Line on Launching a Product
There is no such thing as a perfect product launch as there are odds are against every new product. But if you put in the time and effort to create something that addresses a problem that people want solved, you can ensure that your product launch goes off without a hitch. This guide should help you develop products that your current customers want and that will attract new ones, too.
These are the key elements that you along with your product team can focus on when bringing a new product or service to market for our customers.
What other considerations do you think should be included?
Let us know in the comments!