Each industry has different nuances that must be incorporated, therefore the approach that I will describe next is flexible. Consider it only as a guideline and always incorporate the specifics from your market or industry when you start this process.
Always follow these 5 steps if you want to launch a new concept or offer.
1st Step - Research, Research and Research some moreEven if you feel that you had a brilliant idea, before yelling "Eureka" as Arquimedes once did, you must run an extensive research on top of it.
You will have to:
- Collect internal and external data.
- Apply qualitative techniques (e.g. focus groups) and quantitative techniques (e.g. representative surveys) to identify and test the hypothesis.
- What are the relevant segments in the market, their profile, size and value potential?
- What are the current offers in the market that are addressing the demand for your future product or service?
- What is each segment current perception of the service they are getting from their current providers, regarding availability, affordability and quality?
- What are the relevant features or advantages that would persuade those customers to shift their demand and adopt other provider?
- How much your potential customers are willing to pay?
- What is the current channel distribution structure in the market, the key players and their influence, commissions and other costs related?
- What are all the expected costs (Cost of Sales, Operational Expenditure and Capital Expenditure) required to launch and maintain your new offer?
- How is your brand currently perceived in the market?
- Is your current brand positioning compatible with your new concept? Or, do you need to create a new specific brand for this new offer, so you don´t jeopardize your other businesses if the targeted segments are incompatible?
- What are the opportunities within your company universe (other services/products) that can be used as an added value on top of your new offer or if those already engaged customers can be leveraged on a cross-sell strategy to your new service/product?
2nd Step – Strategize... before you attack you must always have a solid game planYour strategy must always include the following:
- Clear target segments and their expected value.
- All offer specs, including all required features, packaging, prices and desired brand positioning.
- Distribution plan, that must be coherent with your targeted segments profile by investing more on the relevant distribution channels (e.g. digital vs. physical channels mix).
- Communication plan, which must also be coherent with your targeted segments profile by pushing more ads and promotional activities on the channels that have more reach on the targeted segments.
- Financial assessment, before you finalize your strategy you must challenge it by running a profitability assessment, estimating all the expected costs and revenues in the near future (at least 3 years ahead) and estimate when you expect to achieve your break-even point.
3rd Step – Test it for real… with potential real customers.At this stage, usually a qualitative approach is applied by having a focus group up to 8 people with the same profile of your targeted segments and by collecting their feedback.
Note that since it is a qualitative research technique and with a small sample, the findings won´t be representative of your targeted segment, so be careful and don´t extrapolate your interpretation from this research.
On the other hand, this qualitative technique is extremely valuable because allows you to get a very insightful perspective from some of your potential customers and once you hear an interesting comment from them, you can always follow-up with more questions and extract many valuable tips that can make your product/service better for customers with the same profile.
This real test will probably allow you to make the final adjustments before launch and these tweaks can make a huge difference on your success.
4th Step – Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines... it is time to launchAfter you have everything in place, it is time to execute your game plan.
This is a very sensitive stage, because usually the first experience is the one that lasts therefore make sure that your launch is flawless.
Keep a close eye on execution and monitor the results so you can act immediately in case something or someone is not following the plan.
5th Step – Your success is also your enemy… beware!If you develop and launch a successful concept, be sure… you will trigger a reaction from your competitors.
Following your success, your competitors will react by adjusting their strategy or their offer, or in case you don´t have any competitors yet because you created a new market from a groundbreaking concept, someone will try to follow and copy you soon.
It is extremely important that you keep an eye on your competitor’s reaction and adjust your strategy if required.
The best are always trying to predict the competitor’s next move and they stay 2 steps ahead of them.
The best are always trying to predict the competitor’s next move and they stay 2 steps ahead of them.
