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In business, “timing is everything” is more than just an adage; it’s some of the best advice you’ll ever receive. You may have already spent months figuring out when to launch your company to achieve optimal results.
But even if you have been incredibly successful, you’ll still need to engage in that same process every time you want to launch a new product rather than leave it to experimentation. It’s critical to nail down the proper timeline, which will take some art and science to determine.
Related: 7 Telltale Signs of a Weak Leader
1. Engage in market research first
Just as timing is everything within your company, timing in the market is also key when launching a new product. Before considering launching a new good or service, one of the first steps you should take is to ensure there is a true opportunity to achieve product-market fit and that the market needs and wants it.
So many companies think there’s strength in numbers regarding their product line, and the goal is to keep selling. But there’s no point in releasing new products just to release new products. Spend some time in market research to ensure there’s a space for your new launch.
One big tip is always to evaluate if your product solves a problem. If you are helping people problem-solve with your good or service, you’ll have a much better chance of success.
Related: 4 Launch Strategies for Startup Success and Longevity
2. Be mindful of your core products
If you think of your product line as a family, it’s a great way to be mindful of spreading the love. In the same way, you would want to give equal attention to all your children, and do so with all your offerings that all need your focus. Legacy products shouldn’t be neglected when the new baby arrives. They are still the backbone of your business and should be treated as such.
Companies sometimes introduce new products to try to save their old products, but that is not the answer. If your legacy products are in such bad shape that you need to introduce a new product to save the company, you will fail.
You need your core to be strong first and foremost. The way you can tell is you’ve switched from selling to buying. You’re not selling the product anymore; people are buying the product. You want a flywheel that is turning fast, has momentum, and has people really interested in your product. You want growth and gains to be appearing regularly.
If you’re not in a good financial position, the company is not in a good financial position, or if your core business is weak, it is not a good time to introduce a new product.
3. Ensure you have all the right resources
You get one shot when introducing a new product, so it’s imperative to have all the support you need to ensure it goes off without a hitch. Resources are key — you need to have everything lined up to build the product properly, promote the product, market the product, and service the product.
So, whether it’s the appropriate amount of staffing to handle customer inquiries and ship goods or a solid team of traditional and social media content makers, have these individuals in place before launching, not after. You may also want to consider a publicity team as part of your resource bank to help get the word out in the press.
4. Don’t rush it
There are so many examples of giant Fortune 500 companies that are seen as innovators, but they weren’t actually the first in their field. Amazon wasn’t the first online retailer, but it was the one that offered a new concept of one-stop shopping online and lightning-fast delivery. Taxis and hotels existed before Uber and Airbnb, but their new technology widened the space and brought regular people into a ‘shared’ model. Facebook riffed off MySpace but did social networking better.
There are many examples of where a company succeeded by taking their time and figuring out their product market fit before launching. You don’t always need to be ahead of the curve; you need to know where to strategically enter the curve and speed ahead of the rest.
5. Focus on products that make sense
While you don’t want to just offer duplicates of old products with new ones, it is important to focus on tangentially related options. You still want to be a subject matter expert in the space. With my company, BriteCo, we began with jewelry insurance, and a new product that we recently launched focused on something related that solved a like-minded problem: wedding insurance.
In this case, it’s the same customer we were able to cross-pollinate. If people were buying engagement rings to insure, we knew they were likely in the wedding planning process and might also be interested in wedding insurance. For any new product, you want to make sure it makes sense with your core competencies and your brand, so you can continue building trust in the market.
