3 Basic Things You Need To Do When Launching A New Product
Let us state that launching a new B2B product, similarly to starting business, is always a challenge. A new business owner (and his forward forces) should have a game plan to success, a plan that covers everything from a top to a very happy ending.
“Failing to plan is planning to fail”.
Alan Lakein
Especially when it comes to startups. In a startup, you can’t just divide roles and responsibilities like “your job is to code” or “your job is to find the customers”, — as a rule, it’s much more flexible in a startup environment.
Yep, so launching a product and trying to bring it to the market can be quite challenging. Especially when you have no subscribers, no beta version (e.g. for people to try it for free), no feedbacks (to understand whether you’re going in the right direction) and no audience. Or, as an equally annoying option, no marketing budget.
Whatever difficulties you have to face with, there are basic rules that are meant to help you bypass some of the rough spots along the way.
New products are inherently hard to launch because both the problem and solution are unknown.
Eric Ries, The Lean Startup Author
Based on our Business VPN experience, I’d like to share with you the 3 things, the absence of which might result into failure (for highly experienced strategists or marketers those may seem a bit basic — but hey, you’ve been warned):
- Plan, plan, plan
Simple as it may seem, it’s the thing not many startup owners & their ambassadors do. “Strategic planning” is the term that some people hate, most totally ignore, and only the remaining tiny part abides.
Business strategic planning makes everyone in the product team understand the goal and do whatever is required to reach that goal. Strategic planning is geared towards identification of long-term way the companies are about to take, in order to get from the current status to the desired outcome.
Strategic management is actually a process of building a plan using short-term and long-term goals and objectives that correspond with company missions and vision statements. The product team (as well as the entire company) should use strategic planning to set where to go, and at this stage — not necessarily HOW to get there.
“Where to” comes first, “How to” second. Goals dominate, methods follow.
Roadmap Planner webinar by KeepSolid Inc
You should have your planning ready for each direction (we don’t take into account other directions like HR, operations, etc — only those directly influencing the outcome of the product launch):
- development/set of goals for the product team (with development phases, milestones, resources that would be required, expenses that would be involved);
- sales (pricing model, clearly defined set of goals, revenues);
- marketing (the channels you’re going to sell your product through, the step by step plan by which you’re planning to reach your sales goals, etc, etc)
2. Define your target audience
Again, it’s nothing close to Columbus discovering America, but it’s the thing that some creators totally ignore.
“My product is for everyone, man!”
© Quora member
What if nobody needs your awesome product? Hey, this might hurt, but you should investigate the interest — if there is one. Who are your potential buyers? Determine social segments, examine their buying behavior, and map out their pain points: you might like to re-visit your product’s positioning in the market.
Customers buy for their reasons, not yours.
Orvel Ray Wilson
According to CB Insights, 42% of startups fail because there is no need for their product. Don’t fall into the list.
3. Stay laser-focused
We all know about it, right? Still, it might become quite tricky, as launching a new product requires a ton of efforts: planning, development, marketing, sales, events to attend… workflow may become obsessive, with multitasking being inevitable outcome.
The only exit would be to stay focused on your ultimate goal.
So to sum up — How do you launch your product?
Basically, you should keep the above 3 rules in mind, — and these nice little tips will help you to follow the third — to keep focused on your product.
- Where you are
Your current position in the market & business domain your product fits into - What you are doing
Identify the value your product brings to its users - How you are going to do it
Marketing strategy for your product - Where you would like to get
Don’t lose the focus, remember? This is your ultimate goal - What you are going to do afterwards…
and going on to another round :)
I don’t say we haven’t faced any issues with Business VPN by KeepSolid when launching, — as a matter of fact, we have, and I’ll try to put it right in my next article.
What would be your tips on launching a new product? The Top 3 Things you think every product team should adhere to? Would love to learn more about your experience — share your thoughts below!
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