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Companies depend on launching new products to stay competitive and relevant in their industry sector. This process is often lengthy and challenging but, at the same time, it allows them to learn more about their target audience, to expand their market reach and to come up with new ideas for future products.
To make sure that all that time and money invested in developing a new product isn’t wasted, it’s vital for any enterprise to conduct extensive market research so they can gain insight on their potential customers and make informed decisions regarding design and advertisement.
State of the Market and Competitors
Doing market research will oftentimes reveal counterintuitive facts about the buyer’s preferences and decision process. One example is the Pratfall effect which means the audience favors companies that admit their shortcoming. You’re admitting a shortcoming, but you’re also highlighting a quality – the willingness to be transparent which makes potential consumers deem you as more trustworthy.
Launching a new product also requires you to do some research on your competitors and what products they’re currently offering or developing. This allows you to find a gap, to find a need in the market which isn’t covered by any other product or to discover a feature which you can add to an existing product to make it stand out.
Target Audience
Next step is figuring out which audience is most likely to buy your products by researching who buys similar products. This way they have demonstrated both the willingness and ability to purchase and it shows there’s a need. This increases the chances that this target audience will buy something comparable but with extra features or better technology.
Finding out the target audience will later help you shape your advertisement campaign so your message will have the greatest emotional impact by touching on the specific values this group shares. If your message is too vague, aimed at pleasing everyone, in the mind of consumers, it’s equated to not standing for something, to being too commercial.
Product Testing and Sampling Methods
Now you need to find out what customers will think of your product once they have it in their hands. Sampling methods for researchers allow them to gain insight into a population, in this case your target audience, by running tests or surveys on a subset of that population. By reducing the number of participants in the study, your company saves time and money while not losing in terms of quality and applicability of the information gathered.
This insight will let you know which features to highlight and what your marketing approach should be. After you finish testing the product and developing your advertisement campaign, it’s recommended you do research on that as well. Considering how much an advertisement campaign costs, you want to be sure your message and approach are understood and well received.
Start Your Campaign
After you get the results from the research on your advertisement ideas and make the necessary modification you can launch your product. It’s best to extend your advertisement to public relations as to maximize your reach. You can employ media relations to get some press coverage on your product and create enough buzz to intrigue your target audience.
If you’re the only one talking about your product, it doesn’t have as much of an impact. In the next few weeks you’ll want to keep an eye on your campaign results, make some adjustments if necessary and make sure your product is always available for purchase.