Whenever a business launches a new product, it’s hoping for success! A new product can grow your brand and bring in lots of new customers, as well as letting existing customers spend more with you – the day you release that product could be the most significant day in your business’ history.
It’s not enough to hope for success, however – leaving it up to chance means risking launching a product no one wants, at the wrong price, or at a time when no one wants to buy it!
You need to plan for success to give yourself the best chance of your product finding it’s audience, repaying the investment you’ve made in bringing it to market and beginning to show a profit.
Early Stages
The first stages of your plan for success need to begin before you’ve committed your thoughts about a new product to paper. You need to identify a gap in the market that your new product can serve.
If you’re not consciously targeting an undeserved area of the market or bringing something new and attractive to a highly subscribed area, then you’re robbing yourself of a significant chance of success.
A market research company can deliver the insights you need to find out what your customers really want and where they are undeserved, exposing the opportunities you have to launch an unopposed product.
Design and Development
Having identified that gap in the market, you can bring a similar market research and data-driven approach to your product development process.
Even having identified a gap in the market you’re planning to fill, it’s possible for your designs to fail to serve customers needs or appeal to them.
Rigorous concept testing ensures that you are designing a product your customers actually understand want to use: it doesn’t matter how good your new product is on paper if your customers don’t see the value in it.
You can also iterate on your prototype several times, allowing consumers to test it so you can optimise it for the market, leaning into the aspects of it they value most and smoothing the rough edges that make it harder for them to chose it.
Launch Day
Picking the right day to launch your product is also key to its success, and something else the right market research agency can help with.
You want to launch at a time when people are disposed to spend money in your industry – when you are relevant – but if possible when you have minimal competition from other brands.
Finding the right launch window requires both consumer insights and competitor research, and an external market research firm can help you optimise your plans for the best chance of success.
Featured Image | Austin Chan on Unsplash
