Going to market with a new product
Article Date: Sep 28 2007The saying goes that first impressions count and it’s never truer than when launching a product or service. For a new venture to be successful, you need sound market research combined with some good old-fashioned gut instinct.
‘It’s easy to launch a product for which you would be a likely customer, but more often than not you’re trying to sell something for which you don’t fit into the target market. This means getting to grips with your customers,’ says Anthony Karibian, co-founder of XLN Telecom.
Mistakes are often made when seeking to generate revenue streams that may be a little outside your field of expertise and comfort zone. It’s here that instinct can be especially misleading and you need to ensure that the research is done.
Karibian continues: ‘Often, people try to wing it, but it doesn’t work. You’ve got to get your hands dirty. Make sure you get on the phone. Have an open conversation with your clients about your ideas. Ask the question: “Would you be interested in this?” Consider how they would prefer to buy it. This can sound rudimentary, but people often neglect to implement these straightforward measures.’
Deciding how to present the product or service that you come up with is another hurdle. Does it complement the rest of your portfolio or should it be launched as something totally new?
Will Wynne, co-founder and managing director of ArenaFlowers.com, says consistency is essential: ‘You have to sit back and ask yourself what you want your new venture to represent. Part of this involves making sure that it marries well with your brand and the values that you’ve spent time building up. It’s much easier if you stick to the existing sales models in your business, even for new products.
For example, on our website we’ve built a platform for selling a certain product, so that the system is in place to allow us to branch out without a lot of expensive redesign.’
Eventually, the moment will come to go live. In years gone by, before a channel was active, there would be a proposal, market research and a pilot run. Only after these stages were complete would the launch go ahead. Ivan Croxford, head of market development at BT, observes: ‘That finite way of thinking about launching new products is being superseded.
‘With that sort of model, you can often find that by the time you get to your official launch date the market has changed, especially if you’re talking about the online marketplace.’
The popular alternative today is to release functioning prototypes and then tweak them to fit in with customer feedback. ‘It seems like the whole world has gone beta,’ says Croxford.
With online forums and discussion groups that can spring up with or without your intervention, a beta launch can be a cheap and effective way of conducting research for the development of new ventures. But patience will be required.
