Asiakasymmärrys pitäisi olla kaiken lähtökohta. Melkein 90 % tuotelanseerauksista ei johda menestykseen. Asiakasymmärrys pitäisi olla vahvasti mukana jo tuotekehitysvaiheessa, jotta tuotteella olisi potentiaalia menestykseen. Järkevämpää on siis käyttää rahaa taustatutkimukseen kuin lanseerata tuote, jolle ei löydy kiinnostusta ja joka syö kaikki markkinointieurosi ilman minkäänlaista taetta tulevaisuuden kiinnostuksesta.
You should understand your target group needs – and how your new product will fulfill those needs – before launching a new product.
It is said that almost 90% of new product launches will be unsuccessful. It is not the easiest task to launch new products to the market so that they will be there after two years time.
Know your target groups and their needs
You can easily do some desk research. You can gather new ideas inside your company with other colleagues, using google, asking friends or evaluating your competitor’s product portfolio. But nothing is more interesting than getting new insights and ideas straight from your target group or segments. Then the need behind the insights is real and relevant. You can collect consumer insights using many different kind of methods with professional market researchers. You should always include consumer insights when starting a product development project.
Test the ideas and concepts
Best part of the development project is that you can test your ideas and concepts with very low costs. You can for example test 100 ideas or 10 concepts and pick the best ones for further development. After the testing, you will have a couple of good ones to proceed with, but you will also have ranked all these in order and you can use the lists again later on. That way you will always have something readily available in your development pipe.
Use your small money in able to save big money
If the product is not good enough and does not raise interest in your target group, it is very money consuming to try to advertise it with a huge amount of euros and what is the worst: give discount already in the beginning of the launch, in order to get some consumers to buy your product. And at this stage you will already have consumed a lot of money to the product line, product components, distribution, package etc etc. Use your small money before launching to save the bigger money after launching.
Don’t forget to measure actions after launching
Even if you have done your homework properly and your launch seems to go at least somewhat ok, you should measure it after launching. Then you understand who the users are and what they think of your product. Has the aimed target group or segment started to use your product as you planned? And you always get a lot of information, insights that you can take from this process to the next one.
Happy development process together with your target group!
