Every single year, there are more than 30,000 new products that hit the market. Unfortunately, over 80% of them fail and don’t ever end up making the kind of impact that their creators thought they would.
In some cases, this is simply because there isn’t enough demand for a new product. But in others, it’s because a company doesn’t do a very good job when launching a new product.
If your company is currently in the process of developing a new product and looking to hold a product launch, you should make sure that you go about doing it in the right way. If you don’t learn how to launch a new product, it could doom it from the very start.
We’ve put together a list of eight important steps to take when launching a new product below. They should help you give a new product every chance to succeed when you first launch it.
Step 1: Make Sure You’ve Fully Developed and Perfected Your Product
Before you even think about launching a new product, you need to make sure that it has gone through the entire product development process from start to finish. The last thing that you want to do is put out a defective product that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do once people get it into their hands.
To avoid this, you’ll need to go through these steps while developing a new product:
- Coming up with the original ideas for a product
- Evaluating the ideas for a product and making them better
- Looking at the market to be sure a similar product doesn’t already exist
- Creating prototypes for a product
- Testing out a product to get it to work the way it’s supposed to
- Doing market testing for a product
If you skip any of the steps that we just mentioned, you’re going to find launching a new product to be more difficult than it should be. You need to go through each and every step that we just talked about to put your company in a position to launch a successful product.
Step 2: Look for the Right Time to Launch Your Product
After you’ve turned the ideas for a product into a fully functioning product that works through product development, you’re going to be excited to release the product to the world. But you shouldn’t rush it!
Rather than trying to hold a product launch right away, you should be as strategic as you can be when it comes to choosing the right time to launch the product. You should also be aware of the fact that the “right time” to launch your product is going to depend largely on your product itself.
If you’re launching, say, a new toy that you think kids are going to love, releasing it sometime at the start of the Christmas season would be a good idea. You should try to pick a time that will give your product some much-needed buzz when you put it out.
Step 3: Set All the Details Surrounding Your Product in Stone
Once you have your product all ready to go and you know when you want to release it, the next order of business will be solidifying all the details surrounding it. This is going to include coming up with a price for your product.
If you price your product too high at the start, you’re going to find that people will lose interest in it quickly. If you price it too low, it could result in your company missing out on a lot of potential profits.
For these reasons, you’re going to want to do your homework to come up with the right price for your product. The price tag that you put on your product should be based on:
- What it costs you to create your product from scratch
- How much competitors are selling similar products for
- What you think people will be willing to pay for your product
Whatever the case, one of the first questions people will ask after hearing about your new product is “How much does it cost?” It’s why you’ll want to have a price in mind prior to announcing your new product.
Step 4: Create a Website and a Social Media Campaign for Your Product
When people start hearing about your new product, they’re likely going to Google it to see what they can find out about it. If you don’t have a website set up for your product when they do this, you’ll be missing out on a big opportunity to earn customers.
You should, therefore, create a website for your new product early on in the process so that it’s easy to find. You should also fill this website with all the information that people will want to know about your product.
You might even want to go as far as to put together demo videos to show your product in action. Your goal should be to use your website to provide people with all the information they’ll need to learn about the ins and outs of your product.
In addition to creating a website for your product, you should also take the time to create a social media campaign for it. You should try to figure out the best way to launch your product on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
It might be worth trying to connect with different social media influencers to see if they would be interested in assisting you with your campaign. They might be able to put it over the top and get you the exposure that you’re looking for.
Step 5: Start Advertising and Marketing Your Product to the Masses
Many companies make the mistake of kickstarting the advertising and marketing campaigns for new products right when they launch them for the first time. This almost always backfires on them and puts them at a decided disadvantage from the start.
In a perfect world, you want to spend a month (or maybe even two or three months!) advertising and marketing a new product before actually putting it out. This will give you more than enough time to generate some buzz around your new product and to get people excited about buying it.
There are so many ways in which you can advertise and market a new product in this day and age. You can:
- Run radio, TV, and internet ads
- Use email marketing to your advantage
- Put guerilla marketing techniques to the test
More often than not, putting together plans for an advertising and marketing campaign is going to cost you a nice chunk of change. But even if your company doesn’t have to funds to launch a large campaign, you can still come up with a way to do it on a tight budget.
It’s going to be important to make advertising and marketing your product a top priority. It’ll be the only way that people find out about it.
Step 6: Put Out a Press Release for Your Product to the Media
One of the best ways to drum up interest in a new product is by getting someone in the media to report on it. If your product is featured on a prominent website or showcased on a TV show, it could give your sales numbers a big boost when you release a product!
A strong social media campaign that gets people talking about your product could be enough to get the media interested in it. But you might also have to be a little more direct with the media and let them know about your new product through the use of a press release.
A press release is essentially a write-up on a new product that includes all the relevant information about it. It’s sent out to lots of media organizations at once so that they’re able to learn about a product fast by reading through a press release.
You should read more about what a press release is so that you understand its importance. You should also find a company that can help you create the perfect press release for your product.
You’re probably not going to hear back from every media organization that you send your press release to. But a well-written press release could get your product some great coverage in the media and build up the anticipation for it.
Step 7: Find Ways to Let People Start to Test Out Your Product
There are some new products that don’t require a whole lot of explanation. People will understand how they work just by looking at pictures of them.
But there are also some new products that people are going to want to test out before committing to buying them. If you suspect that your product is going to fall into this category, you should find ways to let people test your product out before it becomes available to them.
How can you do this? Well, one good way to do it is by going to trade shows throughout the country and holding demos for your product there. This will give people a chance to interact with your product and see what it’s all about.
You might also want to use the website that you’ve created for your product and your social media pages to hold virtual demos for your product. This is another simple way to get people more interested in your product.
At the same time, you should invite people to provide you with their email addresses if they want to keep up-to-date on your product launch. It’ll allow you to reach back out to them later on down the line when your product is finally available in stores and/or online.
Step 8: Hold a Special Event to Officially Launch Your Product
As you’ve seen here, you’re going to have to do a lot of legwork to prepare for a product launch. You’re going to get so busy at times that the actual launch of your product will feel like an afterthought.
But of course, you’re going to want to put together some extra special plans for the day when you’ll be launching a new product. You should try to hold a special event to mark the occasion.
Some companies will hold a big press conference on the day that they release a new product. They’ll do it to drill home the importance of their product and to show off the final version of it to everyone.
Other companies will stage dinners, concerts, festivals, and more to announce the launch of a product. They’ll pull out all the stops to get people talking about their product and buying it.
You might want to schedule a sitdown meeting with an event planner who can help you with this step. They can brainstorm some ideas on how to celebrate the launch of your new product.
They can also handle doing things like renting a venue for your celebration, obtaining catering services for it, and inviting the right people to it. It’ll allow you to sit back and enjoy your product’s release day more than you might otherwise.
Always Take the Right Steps When Launching a New Product
Far too often, companies will attempt to launch a new product without taking all the steps that we just mentioned. They’ll cut corners by not creating a website for a product or by not starting any kind of marketing campaign for it.
If you do these types of things, there is a decent chance that your product will fail. Or at the very least, it won’t get all of the attention that it deserves when it hits the market.
You should resist the temptation to cut corners when launching a new product and follow the steps we’ve discussed here. They’ll put your company and your product in a position to succeed on your official launch date.
Find out more about marketing a new product properly by reading through the other articles on our blog.
