One night in the shower, where the best ideas and thoughts are birthed, you have an epiphany — an idea for a new product! You quickly jump out, almost slipping and falling, catch your footing and jot down the idea before you forget it.
Before you start production, you might want to ask yourself a few questions before you put this new product on your virtual shelves.
Is there demand?
You may think this new product is God's gift to mankind, but do people really want it? Creating a new product is costly and investing capital in a project that may or may not be profitable is always dicey. Before you start design and production, test test test!
One of our clients, Thompson Tee, knew there was demand for different versions of their product, a sweat proof undershirt. People wanted it in different cuts and colors to better match their wardrobe. We used Typeform to send out a survey to existing customers asking for feedback. The email had a simple subject line, "What's your perfect Thompson Tee?". Not surprisingly, it had a 20% open rate and about a 10% response rate which is above industry standard. After going through all of the answers, we knew for certain which new product was going to succeed. Thanks to the survey results, we were able to launched a new SKU with a high-conversion email launch campaign.
This illustrates your customers want to be heard! So you can ask them what they want or test the waters by asking them questions about your new product idea, and if there are no bites you shouldn't move forward.
Who is it for?
If you just launch a new product without thinking about who it's for, then no one is going to buy. Period. Think about your personas, your target audience, the people who are your customers. If you don't see your current customer base finding any value in the new product, why would you add it? You could argue that you could add a new persona to target, but you wouldn't be leveraging all of the marketing work you've done previously and would be essentially starting from scratch.
Does it fit my brand?
If you sell penguin beak washers, do you think it's a good idea to launch a horse hoof cleaner under the same brand? Sure, they both clean very particular parts on animals, but keeping both products under one brand won't work. Having a strong brand image is very important and putting products together that just don't jive doesn't make sense. If you aren't sure if a new product will fit with your brand, think about the people who come to your site. Will they get any value from the new product? If your primary target is penguin owners, you want to be seen as an expert in that field, adding in horses will dilute that brand power. If on the other hand you want to sell penguin fin wipers, then this would make a lot more sense. Plus your logo already has a penguin on it, it would be weird to add a horse too.
Before you pull the trigger on a new proudct, it's important to survey the field and dig deep to figure out if a the proudct will be successful. There is a lot of work that goes ito a new product and you don't want to waste time and money on creating something that no one is going to buy. If you have any questions about launching a new product or service contact us today. We've launched new products and services and know the ins and outs to a successful launch.
