Market Research

How to prepare for a successful product launch

Time spent on researching your market before you launch is always time well spent. Before pouring your heart, soul and cash into a product, it is worth checking out the potential market.

The problem with new product launches is that people often get it wrong by putting the cart before the horse. Even many heavily-promoted new brands launched by major companies flop – so the chances of success with a low budget, small scale launch are already stacked against you.

Most new products come about because a company has spare capacity and wants to produce a new type of widget to keep the machines busy. The other main reason for a new product is because somebody has an idea that they think is good, and assumes that other people will like it too.

In fact, the best way to launch a new product is to find a niche area within a market that has money to spend - an area where your product will be appreciated and needed. As an example, let’s look at two sport-related markets – golf and croquet.

Looking at the golf market, it has a number of advantages. It is a growing market, it is an affluent market and it is a national and international market. Although it is a crowded market, if you were able to somehow produce a golf tee that could shave 5 shots off the average golfer’s game, you could charge a premium, perhaps even double or triple the price of a standard golf tee. If something makes a golfer play better (or think that they play better), they will pay for it. Some golfers will pay thousands of pounds for a single golf club if they believe that it will enhance their game.

However, launching a new product in the croquet market would be less likely to make you a fortune. Fewer people play it and those that do, on the whole, take it far less seriously. They spend a great deal less time playing it and far less money playing it. As a largely social sport, many people approach it in the same way that they might approach a game of cards. You could invent a mallet designed to be 20% more accurate, but relatively few people who play the sport would be interested enough to actually buy it.

Once you have found your niche area that has money to spend, start investigating what problems they have and see if you can create a way of solving the problem.

Of course, it may be that you have done it the other way around. You have already invented a product which solves a very specific problem – but you now want to find several markets that may be interested in it. If this is the case, I suggest that you look at a number of markets, work out which has the potential to be the most lucrative and concentrate your efforts on this one market. You can always attack the other markets later, but the more you position your product as the solution to this prime market (ie. exclusively) the better.

If you have already invented a product for a specific problem within a specific industry, here is how to find out if there is a market for it.

First of all, you need to find out who is most likely to make a buying decision. This could be a job title within a company, or the social demographic within the local population. Decide upon the most likely age, sex, class, etc of the person who is most likely to buy.

Secondly, you need to start talking to these people. What do they buy instead of your product at the moment, where do they buy if from, what do they like about it, what don’t they like about it? What about price – would they pay more for a better product, are they only interested if a new product came on the market for less? At this stage, don’t tell them about your new product, simply ask them about the existing product.

Thirdly, armed with as much information as you can muster, it is time to start marketing your product. Now you have a background from which to greatly improve your chances of success.