Why Product Launches Fail and How to Keep from Experiencing One

One thing you always have to be prepared for as an entrepreneur is a failed product. It should not deter you from taking risks on your next product launch, and failed products happen to even today’s most successful companies. Nonetheless, you can still take steps to minimize product failure and learn from what other companies have done when fixing their own products.

Identifying True Causes of Product Failure

Before you launch your product, you should know if it’s the right one for the consumer demographic you’re trying to sell too. There have been many companies over the years who have claimed they knew what customers in their target group were looking for, yet when their product was rolled out it was rejected because it did not fully meet those customers’ needs. Customers count on your product to do what you promise it will. Even if it has a nice looking design and can appear to look good in advertisements, if it’s bad quality or falls short of customer expectations, it will be unsustainable.

Another common cause of a product launch failure is a contrived product vision, one in which misrepresents reality to make a potential product make sense on paper but not in practice. Perhaps it’s incorrectly assessing the problem the product is supposed to solve, or misunderstanding the market from the onset. Whatever the cause, using product roadmap software is the first step in the right direction when it comes to developing a product which is functional and appealing to the consumer. Such software allows product managers to focus on development in a way which doesn’t sacrifice the elasticity needed to make adjustments.

Sometimes when product launches fail, it’s because the product was not unique or did not offer a distinct advantage over its competitor. For example, one of Microsoft’s failed products was its Zune player, a product they had attempted to enter the market to compete with Apple’s iPods which were huge at the time. The product itself was not bad, but it didn’t have any features that other mp3 players didn’t have. What’s more, the Zune came out five years after the first iPod was first released. The lesson to learn here is that consumers want products that are different and do more than what they already have.

Sometimes product launches fail even when they succeed. There was a case when one company developed a mosquito bait and kill device that actually did work, but for whatever reason, the company was unprepared for mass distribution of the product when it became a success. When they did try to increase production and distribution by outsourcing their factories, the quality went down and the product ended up being sold to another company. The lesson in this failure is to make sure you have the sales and marketing plan ready when your customers want the product.

Tips On Successful Launch

Customer feedback is one way to learn about what they want and expect from products. Surveys that aren’t too long but that allow them to talk about their experiences with products and what they would like to see different can give you valuable insight into how to achieve a successful product launch in the future. Your marketing message should be more than just a funny or suspenseful story video even with high-quality effects. While all of those are important, people who see your product advertised want to know what it’s all about and how it can help them.

In conclusion, failed products aren’t always just because the product was bad or had no use for anyone. Sometimes you just need to wait until you know your consumers are ready and you know that it will be helpful to a broad demographic. And your marketing message can be everything when it comes to selling your target group on the product.