Launching a New Product: Is the Time Right?
A new product launch is one of the most important events in your business’ calendar. It can come with a big boost in revenue, and with reviews, word of mouth and column inches it can also cause a big development in your brand!
There are risks, though: product development takes a significant investment in resources, and if they fall flat, you won’t make that investment back. A new product’s failure to find its audience can also harm your brand – it makes you look like you don’t know what your customers want, which can make them doubt your other products, even if they’ve been popular before.
One of the major factors that can affect the success of a new product is timing: when you launch.
Today we’re taking a look at how you can optimise the timing of when you’re launching your product to give it the best chance of success!
Customer Needs
The first thing you need to think about are your customers’ needs. What need does your product fill, and when do they need it?
If your new product is tax accounting software, for example, it fills a need for easier filing of tax returns. To time a launch of this product successfully, you need to know when people are looking for solutions to this particular problem, and it may not be the day of the actual deadline, when it’s actually in news headlines.
Market research can tell you when people are searching for products like yours, when they feel that need so that you an identify a launch window when people are actively looking for products like yours and you have a receptive audience to market to.
The Competition
Unless your product is truly unique – and those are rare – you’ll have competitors to worry about. If you launch at a time when another similar product is launching, you run the risk of losing out – asking your audience to choose between two brands. Even if you’re confident you’ll come off better in such a face off, you still don’t get the benefit of a time when your own product can stand alone and enjoy the uninterrupted attention of the market.
Market researchers can provide you with competitor research, and help you develop a timetable for your product launch that gives it an opportunity to shine, and the best possible chance of picking up the largest number of customers and the most attention.
