5 Essential Steps to Launch A New Product

It’s a competitive world out there – plan carefully to create a win-win situation!

Almost 90% of new products and businesses fail today – which is alarming.  The statistics vary slightly across all sectors, so to ensure the success of your product you should hire professional product design services. If you are on a budget, however,  and if you cannot hire product design services then you can follow these simple steps to ensure your product will avoid the same outcome!

Follow these simple ways to optimize the success of your new product: 

Identify your gaps and find new ideas to fill it 

If no one needs or wants your product then it is bound to fail, simple as that! The starting point for product development is to analyze the wants of your current and potential customers, their consumption habits, level of satisfaction, as well as the possible ways for improving existing products. An in-depth study of customer behavior will ensure a great start to any product development. 

Company managers with thorough experience and understanding of strategic vision, market competition, customer behavior, and suppliers will play a key role in this process. Your creative team, on the other hand, will use its creativity to generate ideas, define proper deadlines and goals, earmark money, manage your human resources, documenting data, and analyze results to have the best performance that you can give. 

Measure the opportunity

Once you are able to collect information regarding market trends, customer behavior, and your strategic objectives, the next step is to examine the parts of your product which are geared towards potential clients and forecast buying behavior of your customers as much as possible. 

To make your process easier you can use different product development tools. For example, the Kano model can assist you to identify the needs and wants of your customers and group them by established criteria. 

Develop the concept

Up till now, your idea for a new product is designed to best serve the requirements of your current and future clients while also standing out among all market competitors. 

Now the question is how can this actually be achieved? Conduct surveys to gauge the genuine feelings of your customer base, while also relying on the expert opinion of your team members. Seek advice from design and production experts regarding technical requirements, marketing professionals to reach out to customers, finance teams for monitoring funds and a management department to ensure all these other functions flow smoothly. 

Three measured goals of this stage are to ensure (1) client satisfaction, (2) stand out from the competition, and (3) realize the greatest potential for a profit. 

Test, test, and test again

Once you are able to ascertain your situation with regard to the three main goals mentioned above, it’s time to create your prototype and test out if it works correctly. You can ask the following questions to figure out if your product is viable to market needs.

Does your product:

• Fulfill the customers’ needs and offer a variety of features to satisfy client requirements?
• Arrive at the market at the right time?
• Execute effectively with regards to manufacturing and development costs?
• Sustain a healthy balance between the launch cost and its ability to turn a profit?

It is essential to realize that reducing development costs will always increase profitability, while on the other hand cutting the price of your product will boost its market share, which in return cuts distribution costs and minimizes competition. 

Position your product launch 

Once you are able to thoroughly study your product’s market and create a viable design, the next step is to work on its strategic positioning. Ask yourself, how do you want your potential customers to perceive your product? During this stage, you need to take into consideration the economic, functional, and emotional factors that will motivate customers to purchase your product, as a proper configuration will boost your sales and scale your profits. 

Historically new products marketed themselves as providing a novel function. But today, however, innovation is so rapid that any new technology is bound to become obsolete faster than any individual market campaign. When the features and prices of your competitor’s products are similar to yours, the only difference, and therefore the deal breaker in marketing, is in the emotional factor. Most customers buy certain brands because of their emotional attachment to it, and this is at the heart of the brand image. An emotional factor is the intangible attribute of your product or service that allows you to have loyal customers who will stay attached to your company. 

For example, Coca-Cola’s “Taste the feeling” and “Open Happiness” campaigns veered away from traditional beverage marketing, focusing instead on an attempt to establish an emotional connection with their customers, and both slogans proved to be a success. 

It’s a competitive world out there. Therefore you need to plan carefully and always consider the human factor in your products, as it will pay dividends when you launch. Hire product design services to ensure the success of your product and service in the long run!