Share 10 product release experiences

Product release is a very important task, and may even determine the success or failure of the product. Because the product release process involves R & D, marketing, sales, investors, agents, users, and other considerations. Based on the publishing experience of the control products of grape city, we have translated this article "Top Ten product launch mistakes" and shared it with you.

Top 1: No early planning

Based on our experience, we generally need to apply for various resources one quarter in advance to ensure smooth release. In general, the company's resources are limited, that is, it is difficult to set up marketing, sales, and technical support positions for a single product, so do a good job of early communication, it is helpful to win the resources for product release. With the resources, we can integrate them to boost the sales of various products. In addition, if distributors are involved, they also need to plan the cooperation plan in advance. Generally, distributors will cooperate with multiple product providers, and their resources are relatively limited and valuable.

Because there is no early planning, sometimes the product release can be completed in just a few weeks. However, based on our experience, if the product release cycle is very tight, it will lead to poor communication and poor implementation, and eventually it will be lower than the best expected results and lower market sales.

Top 2: no sustainable marketing plan

A particularly prominent example of a high-tech company is that the company's top executives mistakenly think that the launch of a new product itself is a "major event" and does not need a sustainable marketing program, senior executives are optimistic that new technology and team enthusiasm and product excellence will be sufficient to generate continuous sales momentum. Even more seriously, if the new product is very exciting, or the company has made a lot of news and generated some cash flow income in the early stage, generally, senior executives are not persuaded to launch a sustainable marketing program because they believe that everything is fine.

Unfortunately, in general, after initial sales peaks, excitement and revenue will rapidly drop to a low level. The company's senior management was puzzled by this, but could not understand what happened. After all, there were clear signs at the beginning that the process was going very smoothly.

Since effective marketing plans take weeks to plan and execute, these will lead to corresponding procedures within the company, and the real sales revenue will continue to be lower than expected.

Top 3: release an unreliable Product

In the market, users have a lot of room for selection. Coupled with competitors, once the released product has fatal bugs and severe functional defects, the product will face huge market pressure, sometimes the product image and brand will be permanently damaged or even lost.

To avoid this problem, the best way is to establish quality target QA in advance and reach an agreement with key stakeholders, including the executives involved. If you are in a public company, you may be under great pressure to meet the quarterly strategic goal: to get a new version release of the product as soon as possible, although the quality goals have not yet been achieved. This will make the company fall into a trap: a large number of users have downloaded defective products.

The following is an example of a reliable product:

• No fatal or dead-end Bug During Running
• Developed QA plans must meet
• The beta version of the product has been used by some users. For example, if 20 users spend about three weeks, 90% of the bugs have been fixed.

Top 4: insufficient product funds

This is particularly prominent in product R & D in China. For example, the human resources invested in the product planning stage are obviously insufficient. For example, some companies think that a 0.1 million budget can start a compelling product, such as Hotmail, Skype, and Google. In reality, there are few software products such as skyepe.

One of the methods to avoid this error creates an ROI (ROI ). To achieve this, you must first list all the customer channels you can access (news announcements, product reviews, marketing plans, reputation viruses, web ads, such as Google adwords ). In these ways, there will probably be several views. This gives you a rough estimate of the target market. For example, how many visits are expected to become users? Will 10% of users buy your product?

This will help you establish a more rational scenario speculation so that you can make more informed decisions.

Top 5: overestimated results of only one marketing campaign

Research shows that marketing information needs to be exposed 6 times on average before users can take real actions. That is, we need to influence consumers through marketing multiple times to encourage consumers to continue to pay attention and purchase.

Let's take a look at this point through a personal example. One night, my wife and I were watching TV and I saw ads selling staples shredders. This is also the first time I saw it. I thought, "Okay, it's another shredder. I don't need it ". Later, I once again saw a commercial advertisement, which was clever-describing the characteristics of its product: This is a heavy-duty guy, enough to tear up credit cards, or even a cd (I can't do an existing shredder ). Then I saw the advertisement of the local newspaper and realized that it was the same product. Then I told my wife. She told me: "We can consider discounts to break down the potential demand for unused credit cards ". Before that, I do not know that we have such requirements, or that this product will help us solve this problem.

There was a Staples shredder booth in the store, which was marked as 244.2 yuan. My wife and I started talking. You need to know that this is the fifth or sixth time I have been conscious of this product. This seems convincing. We decided we should study and purchase this product.

What happened to guide us to the next error.

Top 6: Drive users to buy competitor products

Then my wife and I started to look at other disservers that could be used. We already have this demand, but it seems a little expensive. We thought that 244.2 yuan was beyond our budget. We finally purchased a non-Staples shredder and spent 122.35 Yuan-satisfying all the features we wanted. However, in this case, the staples shredder still won because we were unconsciously guided to the store for purchase.

So how to avoid this situation?

First, make sure that you have a product that has been widely used and can be easily found by customers. Second, we must highlight the product positioning goal and pass it through external tags. Please provide competitive arguments. Unless your product is unique, the customer will find a competitor's product sooner or later. Make sure you have enough evidence and tags to demonstrate the best solution of the product, but all of this must be logical. Finally, do not publish your product strategy too early.

Top 7: Early product announcement

Early product announcement brings the following risks:

• The cards in your hands are exposed, and competitors will be brave enough to follow suit.
• It will drive consumers to compare products of other competitors.
• This will lead to the official release of the product and the failure to obtain news reports again because the product has been reported once.

 

There are three possible reasons for premature product announcement:

• You may have a great idea-you can change the world, and you want to share it with the world as soon as possible.
• You are worried that competitors will publish similar news to catch the user's eye, which will lead to insufficient consumer attention when your product is released.
• Your confidence in your product development plan is too high.

Through our experience, it is generally recommended that you release the product about 30 days in advance. At this time, your product is a beta version and is in a stable and mature stage. In addition, the release time you publish is relatively accurate. When users visit the website, they can see the latest version, which also improves product confidence.

For example, wijmo 5, as the latest control, is positioned as the "next-generation JavaScript control ". We released the Chinese official website in early September. One month later, the official version of "new-generation JavaScript control wijmo 5 officially released" was launched in early October 7. The product release was successful in the past six months based on market and technical support statistics.

In an interesting episode, csdn took the lead in exploring and reporting wijmo 5 in China. For example, in August 29, wijmo 5 beta made the headlines of csdn: mobile first! The jquery UI component set wijmo's five-year maximum update has aroused heated discussion on the network.

 

Top 8: no special product Review procedures

Product comments may be your greatest ally or your most terrible nightmare. Feedback with high praise will have better results than marketing advertisements. On the contrary, poor ratings will discourage your users.

It is important to actively review and manage product feedback. If the response is too late, the negative feedback will be seen by many people, so I believe your product is not a good product. However, few companies will invest a lot of energy and time to run a comprehensive and positive product review process. However, after appropriate resources are invested, the results will be greatly affected.

Top 9: no early communication

A common error is that you cannot communicate with key contact persons as early as possible. For example, before releasing a new product, contact the dealer so that you can release your new product to the dealer's plan. The contact person for the news and announcements should say hello in advance to reserve the remaining period and advertising space.

Of course, early communication may also lead to some risks. Your competitors will be aware of your clues; your salesman will not actively sell existing products; if the new product is released, it will lead to a decline in your personal credit and so on.

Top 10: International Strategy too late

Generally, the international market is a very significant revenue opportunity.

Therefore, please make sure that your branches and dealers in different countries communicate with each other in advance so that the other party can have a time synchronization preparation plan. Such as preparing marketing materials, press releases, packaging, resource localization, and price strategies.

Share 10 product release experiences