10 Ways to Identify an Impending Product Launch Disaster

10 Ways to Identify an Impending Product Launch Disaster

Ø  There are no goals for the product launch

Launch goals are the cornerstone of a successful product launch, yet so many companies fail to establish them. All CEOs have an expectation of what success looks like, but often those expectations aren’t translated into goals understood by the people entrusted to plan and execute the launch.

Ø  The launch strategy is based on a set of deliverables from a launch "checklist"

A launch checklist is not a launch strategy. An effective product launch checklist is developed after establishing launch goals and then choosing the best strategy to support them. A launch checklist usually gets created after a botched launch.

Ø  The launch plan contains unrealistic timeframes and expectations

It's wise to evaluate the organization within the context of the product being launched to identify readiness gaps. Once identified, allow enough time to address the gaps before they develop into problems that negatively impact the launch.

Ø  Sales enablement training is based on product features

Sales enablement training is one of the most critical components of a successful launch. Unfortunately most training sessions are packed with information about the product with emphasis on the newest features.

Ø  Significant effort is spent creating collateral  for people who never read it

Ninety percent of sales tools are never used by sales people, yet marketing teams keep producing them. Break the cycle by focusing on a deep understanding of your buyers, then build sales tools to influence them through the buying process.

Ø  No single person is responsible for driving product launch results

A launch owner provides a single point of accountability ensuring product launch planning and execution have the high priority they deserve.

Assign the responsibility of achieving the launch goals to a launch owner, and provide them with the flexibility and resources to make it happen.

Ø  The launch plan is based on hunches, not market evidence

Hunches may be great for the casino but not for successful product launches. Hunches are based on "gut feeling" not market evidence, and are guesses. With an initiative as important as a product launch there is no room for guessing.

Ø  The launch plan mimics your competitor

An intimate knowledge of buyers and the buying process provides the best guidance for the most effective launch tactics.

Ø  Existing customers are not adequately considered in the launch plan

It’s staggering how many organizations fail to recognize the impact a new version of a product can have on existing customers. They get so focused on acquiring new customers they forget about existing customers who, if not properly nurtured through the migration, may feel compelled to evaluate competitive alternatives.

Ø  The launch team isn't a team

Product launch is a team sport involving a range of expertise. No single individual can possibly know all the details, especially in large organizations. This necessitates the creation of a cross-functional launch team, where individuals with unique perspectives and experience can contribute to a successful launch.

PRICE CHANGE

The decision to raise or lower prices is a tough one, with many ramifications for your business. To put it another way, two companies who change prices on the same products by the same amount may get widely different results depending on how they implement the new policy.

Sometimes businesses announce major price hikes, even doubling their previous rates. One theory is that a single large price hike will get the pain over with. Businesses may also announce large price hikes when they've experienced major increases in the price of a key ingredient or cost component. A company that is being overwhelmed by sales volume from an unexpectedly popular product may jack up prices to reduce demand to a manageable level.

However, most price hikes are done in stages on the theory that customers will be accustomed to higher prices over time and be willing to tolerate them as they become more loyal. A series of smaller hikes may not even be noticed by customers who would be seriously put off by a single large one.

If a company has  more than one product, consider raising prices on some items while leaving the others the same, or even lowering them. Some customers are sensitive to the slightest price hikes for a particular item while mostly ignoring other increases. Automobile dealers use this fact to their advantage by cutting prices on cars as low as possible and attempting to make much of their profit on accessories like fancy paint jobs, about which customers are less price-sensitive.

There are legitimate reasons to change prices, of course. A company may want to get rid of its remaining inventory and introduce new versions of its products. Companies like Apple, Sony, Dell, and LG have to do this. And in nondigital businesses, many products are seasonal: It makes sense to mark down sweaters in April and linen suits in October, for example. Other valid reasons for changing prices include rising raw material or labor costs, encouraging customers to try something new, and rewarding loyal customers.

But customer reactions to cavalier pricing actions may make quick fluctuations unproductive at best, and inflict lasting damage to a company’s bottom-line at worst. Prices should be changed only as often as the enterprise’s tactical objectives and overarching goals dictate.

STARBUCKS PRODUCT PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS

A business with a range of products has a portfolio of products. However, owning a product portfolio poses a problem for a business. It must decide how to allocate investment (e.g. in product development, promotion) across the portfolio.

What is the Boston Matrix?

A portfolio of products can be analysed using the Boston Group Consulting Matrix. This categories the products into one of four different areas, based on:

Market share – does the product being sold have a low or high market share?

Market growth – are the numbers of potential customers in the market growing or not

How does the Boston Matrix work?

The four categories can be described as follows:

Stars are high growth products competing in markets where they are strong compared with the competition. Often Stars need heavy investment to sustain growth.

Cash cows are low-growth products with a high market share. These are mature, successful products with relatively little need for investment.

Question marks are products with low market share operating in high growth markets. This suggests that they have potential, but may need substantial investment to grow market share at the expense of larger competitors.

Unsurprisingly, the term “dogs" refers to products that have a low market share in unattractive, low-growth markets. Dogs may generate enough cash to break-even, but they are rarely, if ever, worth investing in. Dogs are usually sold or closed.

Here is an example of Starbucks' Boston Matrix model

Coffee & Packed food: are products that operate in high growth markets and have high market share. They are products that tend to generate high amounts of cash for Starbucks. Meaning that the company will tend to invest money in developing and promotion their coffee and packed food.

Tea: Tea for Starbucks is a product that operate in a high market growth sector, but have low market share. Since Starbucks is more famous for their coffee, their tea represents inferior product quality or marketing to their competitors such as Twingings. Knowing that the tea market has high growth, Starbucks could analyse reasons for its low market share and to then develop strategies to gain higher share of the growing tea market.

Mugs: are products with high market share operating in a low growth market. This is more of a matured market and the products are very well established, therefore generating great net cash flow. Mugs for Starbucks provide them with a great amount of profits according to seasonal trends and have good profit quality.

Packaged Coffee beans: is a product with low marketing share as well as operating in a low growth market. Starbucks' packaged coffee beans do not generate much cash for the company as customers tend to go to Starbucks for quick and good service for coffee and food.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Challenge #1: Drafting the social media plan. How do you plot the roadmap to your goals?
Your Solution: Create a solid social media marketing strategy by putting these together:

Challenge #2: Establishing real connection with your viewers. Are you connecting with your audiences on an individual and personal level?
Your Solution: Use monitoring tools. There are free or low-cost brand tools you can use to respond to every comment.

Challenge #3: Growing your organic reach.
Your Solution: Consider paid social media advertising.

Challenge #4: How to encourage sharing.
Your Solution: Bring value and entertainment. Tell stories, use emotional appeal, make your viewers look smart, create contagious content.

Challenge #5: Making quality visuals and graphics.
Your Solution: Create your own images using fun and easy to use tools .Authentic connection with the audience.

·         Monitor all additional social media channels and respond to each comment in an authentic way. You can do this by asking questions, linking to other blog posts, providing insights, or offering help with a problem.

·         Creating a solid social media marketing strategy doesn’t have to take weeks to put together. For me, it helps to have three key things written down on paper:

·         Why we’re on social: Simply being active of social media channels for the sake of being there is one of the quickest ways to burn valuable time and resources. First, answer the question of ‘why’ your business is on social and what you would like to accomplish.

·         Use a combination of Facebook Audience Insights and Twitter Audience Insights to learn about your audience and create personas. Once you have an idea of who they are, use those insights to create highly targeted ads that will resonate with users.

·         For some brands, the way to cut through all of the noise on social media is to simply post more. While this tactic may work for some, for many it has the tendency to irritate followers.

People will naturally follow your brand over time from posting great content, not posting more content.

·         Now that you have all of this great content for your blog and social media channels, people will surely follow, right?

As marketers know, this isn’t always the case. Promoting content, partnering with brands and influencers, and capturing audiences’ attention is a whole new social media challenge in itself.

·         The most important part is having one growth process and sticking to it no matter what.

·         Know your channels, your audience, and your market inside and out and make strategic experiment decisions based on what you know. Doing so will help to focus on the things that matter most.

WHY DO PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FAIL AT TIMES?

Here are 7 key reasons major brands’ products fail on the market:

Reason #1: Failure to Understand Consumer Needs and Wants

Blinded by their own vision company ignores negative user feedback right from trials, and developed a product that failed to meet customers needs and wants.

Reason #2: Fixing a Non-Existent Problem

In 1990 Maxwell House launched Ready to Drink Coffee.

So why did it flop?

You see, turns out that you can’t microwave coffee in its original packaging. Instead customers had to pour the product from the packaging into a mug before putting it into the microwave… An activity no different than pouring yourself a cup of fresh coffee from the coffeemaker which is exactly what customers kept doing, forcing the company to abandon the product.

Reason #3: Targeting the Wrong Market

Microsoft admits that they were just chasing Apple and created a product that offered no reasons for customers to switch.

What’s the lesson from this mistake?

It’s hard to know how the market will react to a product and marketing messaging. Hence why it’s crucial to test these things beforehand. Ask potential users for feedback and test their response to the marketing message.And then, listen to that feedback.

Reason #4: Incorrect Pricing

A high price might suggest too sophisticated product to customer needs. And so, it could force potential buyers to look for alternatives they’d perceive more relevant to them.

Reason #5: Weak Team and Internal Capabilities

Lack of skills can limit any potential solutions your team can create. Similarly, lack of resources and internal support can hinder your efforts to produce a product that satisfies customer needs.

Reason #6: Prolonged Development or Delayed Market Entry

Taking too long to launch may also cause a product to fail. By the time it hits the market, customer needs could change, the economy could have taken a downturn, or the market segments may have evolved.

That’s the fate of Google Lively, the search giant’s answer to Second Life. After prolonged development, Lively finally launched in 2008, just as the recession started to take its toil.

Reason #7: Poor Execution

Bad design, poor user experience, sloppy implementation, feature creep, and lack of quality control all contribute to product failure.

It’s no surprise that 4 months after the launch, Microsoft allowed Dell to sell computers with an older version of Windows pre installed.

About 30 to 45% of new products fail to deliver any meaningful financial return. This typically happens due to a number of reasons, from poor product / market fit, failure to understand customer needs (or fixing a non-existing problem), to a lack of internal capabilities.

STEPS IN BRAND BUILDING

Branding is a process that allows an individual or a group of individuals the ability to provide a brand image and lettering to an idea. Upon doing so, one has a better chance of selling such items to a broader audience whether that be on a local or global level.

Step 1 : Determine your brand’s target audience.

The foundation for building your brand, is to determine the targeted audience that you’ll be focusing on.

You can’t be everything to everyone, right?

Step 2 : Define a branding mission statement.

Before you can build a brand that your target audience trusts, you need to know what value your business provides.

The mission statement basically defines a purpose for existing. It will inform every other aspect of your brand building.

Everything from your logo to your tagline, voice, message and personality should reflect that mission.

We all know the Nike tagline: Just Do It. But do you know their mission statement?

Step 3 : Research brands within your industry niche.

You should never imitate exactly what the big brands are doing in your industry. But, you should be aware of what they do well (or where they fail).

The goal is to differentiate from the competition. Convince a customer to purchase from you over them!

Step 4 : Outline the key qualities & benefits your brand offers.

There will always be brands with bigger budgets and more resources to command their industry.

Your products, services, and benefits belong solely to you.You have to delve down deep and figure out what you offer, that no one else is offering.

Step 5 : Create a great brand logo & tagline.

The most basic (and arguably the most important piece) of brand building, is the creation of your company logo and tagline.

Hire a professional designer or creative agency with branding and identity design experience, to help you build your brand.

Step 6 : Form your brand’s business voice.

Your voice is dependent on your company mission, audience, and industry.

It’s how you communicate with your customers, and how they respond to you.

Step 7 : Build a brand message and elevator pitch.

When brand building, tell customers succinctly who you are.

Use the business voice you have chosen.

Your message should be intricately associated with your brand, and conveyed in 1-2 sentences.

It goes beyond your logo and tagline to define the key aspects of who you are, what you offer, and why people should care.

Step 8 : Let your brand personality shine.

Customers aren’t looking for another cookie-cutter company who offers the same thing as everyone else.

They are looking for an experience tailored to their needs, backed by genuine personal interaction.

Step 9 : Integrate your brand into every aspect of your business.

Brand building never stops.

Your brand should be visible and reflected in everything that your customer sees (and doesn’t see).

Step 10 : Stay true to your brand.

Unless you decide to change your brand into something that is more effective based on measured consumer response, consistency is key.

Step 11 : Be your brand’s biggest advocate.

Once you have built a brand that works for your small business, you (and your employees) are the best advocates to market your brand.

Give your loyal customers a voice. Encourage them to post reviews, or share your content.

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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MARKET ORIENTED AND MARKETING ORIENTED

In general, the phrase marketing orientation is a marketing term, whereas market-oriented is typically an economics term. Marketing orientation means a company operates with a market- or customer-first approach. Market oriented is used in marketing, but it more typically describes a free enterprise economy where businesses and consumers are able to buy and sell freely.

When a company has a marketing orientation, it makes meeting the needs or wants of its target customers its primary business motivation. This includes responding to stated consumer needs by developing new products, improving on exist products or improving services. Companies with especially strong marketing orientation may even detect consumer needs before the general market is aware of them. These companies are usually cutting-edge innovators that try to give customers what they want faster than competitors.

Market orientation is more than simply ‘getting close to the customer.’ An organisation can be market oriented only if it completely understands its market. Customer information must go beyond research and promotional functions to penetrate every organisational function.

·        Customers

Markets consist of consumers, competitors and regulatory organizations. If your business has a market orientation, you focus your activities on potential customers and competitors while complying with regulations. If your business is marketing-oriented, you have the same focus for your market-related activities, but you add other concerns.

·        Selling

Selling means persuading consumers to buy your product. Market-oriented companies may study their market to find out what sales strategy works best and use it to persuade potential customers. Marketing-oriented companies study the market to find out what consumers want, what price they will pay, where they want to make their purchases and how the company can reach them. If yours is a marketing-oriented company, you inform potential customers that the product they are looking for is available at a price they can afford in a convenient location. For your promotion, you use media channels that your potential customers favour.

·        Products

Market-oriented companies know what the customers want, but they may or may not focus on products and manufacturing. If you are executing a marketing strategy, product design, price and quality are key aspects of your planning and execution. Knowing your market is a first step in the marketing process. While a market orientation may lead toward the same goals, a marketing orientation forces you to follow the marketing process and develop products that meet the needs of your target market customers.

·        Customer Service

Whether you are in a market-oriented company or a marketing-oriented one, your primary goal in customer service is to ensure that customers are satisfied. Beyond that immediate objective, the marketing process regards customer service as an opportunity to interact with customers and obtain feedback on how effectively the company is implementing its marketing strategy. Based on feedback from customer service and other sources, a marketing-oriented company will improve the product and adjust its marketing strategy.