Establishing Your Product Lines…
Products are mainly differentiated by quality, price, and targeted demographic. What is the functional use of the product? How is the design? Is your customer receiving the desired quality?
…and Maximizing Your Chance of Success
Launching a new product line can be quite an adventure and investment. It’s important to be as prepared as possible to maximize your chances of success.
Look at Your Customers’ Needs
Do market research for a product and develop a customer profile. Get to know their needs. You need to know as much as you can about your customer in order to efficiently and successfully reach out to them. What do they like about your product? What do they dislike? Where do they live, in Europe, Austria, Germany, Italy or Spain? Or maybe in the UK? There may be differences according to the culture if marketing internationally. Are changes to your product needed? Even simple things as the color may make a large difference to your marketing strategy.
Where do your potential customers learn about products they end up purchasing? Your customers may get information over YouTube ads, radio, Instagram, TV commercials, billboards, recommendations or even still facebook ads depending on the age of your customer. Accumulate information that will give you key insights into the buying habits of your customers.
Start a Revolution?
Revolutionary products are items that customers may not know that they want it or need it. These customers can not tell you that they have a need or desire for it because they have never seen it.
It may be the time to market a revolutionary product. This may be a new product or a new product introduced for the first time to a certain country.
An excellent example of this is Red Bull. An Austrian businessman traveling to Thailand bought a drink there, popular among Tai truck drivers and workers, claiming it cured his jet lag. He decided to develop this drink to the taste of westerners with his Thai partner. This new product was marketed, also a new product category, in Austria. After several years of marketing and nearly losing all of his money the product took off first nationally and then internationally throughout Europe, UK and finally the USA. Since 2019 it is the most popular energy drink brand. The owners are known to be among the richest people in the world.
Revolutionary products, like Red Bull in Austria, can get a lot of initial resistance or criticism. It seems so different from what everyone has done or used before. But once people are convinced the product is viable it can take off quickly and even internationally.
Always Research Your Competition
Know what your competition is doing and go beyond a google search. There are many tools that help keep an eye on the competition. Some of these are google trends, google alerts and other resources like Spyfu
Search through the social network like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and others. Looking at the tweets or posts is a cost effective way to stay in tune with the competition.
Talk to your customers and suppliers about the competition. It is one of the best ways of collecting real information on the competitors. Your supplier may also be the supplier of your competition.
Attend conferences and industry trade shows is a great way to learn about who your competitors are and what they’re offering.
Know what your competition’s strengths are so you can figure out ways to distinguish yourself from them. The research about your competition should extend to their product line, branding, advertising, customer service, and their overall experience.
Create a Market Plan
With the information above you should be able to work on a plan on how you’ll enter your market. Think of the opportunities, your strategy and the action or steps you will be taking. Plan how your product is going to make its way to the customer.
Opportunities – Strategies – Actions
Are you going to use wholesale distributors or retailers? How will your product get to those places? Having the logistics of your product mapped out will be key to success.
Be Open to New Opportunities
There have been several companies that have completely retargeted who their main customers are. Markets can change fast, so this is also a good practice to help make sure you are keeping your product line fresh and relevant when growing your customer base.
Keep Track of Your Inventory
Keep good track of how much stock you have and how quickly you are selling your product. It is essential in knowing when to reorder your parts. There are inventory and point of sale systems that can help you track how much you are selling. Running out of stock or having too much of it can both hurt your business. More information can be found on the page: Inventory & Supply Chain Management
Have a Good Team
It is difficult to effectively run all areas of a company on your own. You will need help with your surgery. We Global Trade Specialists can help you at every stage of your product launch, including product development, prototyping and manufacturing.
