A new product launch takes a lot of time and effort. You think you have done the proper background work, and now you are ready for the new product launch and all the sales and new clients it will bring in. The problem is that a lot more products fail than succeed, and a properly conceived new product launch is incredibly important for this success. Below are some important pieces of advice when you are putting together your new product or service and the ensuing launch.

7 New Product Launch Tips

- The first step for your new product lunch is to closely study the competition. Many beginner marketing classes teach students the basics of a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis, or SWOT. This is important, even if you truly believe you have an original and unique product that no one else offers. Go online and do some research to figure out what other businesses have to offer. Check out the way that they are marketing those products, what their prices are, and what their ads consist of. Try to figure out if your new product compares well with theirs, and what kinds of threats those products pose to your ultimate success.

- Figure out who your perfect customer base is, and target them specifically. A new product launch cannot be successful if you are spending money advertising to people that will not be interested in buying it. You need to figure out exactly who would be willing to buy your new product and what they would be willing to spend. These could be existing customers of yours that would be interested in improvements or innovations that your new product offers, or they could be customers that have bought something similar from another company.

- Analyze why your prospective clients will want to buy your product over the competition’s. Hopefully by this stage in the process you know what you need to do to make your new product launch stand out from the field. More than anything else, you need to analyze what they most want in a product such as yours, and make sure they understand what and why they are getting it, and why it is something they cannot do without.

- Figure out exactly how you want to market your product, including which advertising mediums to use. There are many to choose from, including: print, television, email, direct mailing, and the internet. Using multiple methods simultaneously often yields the best results with a new product launch, because you are able to hit those shoppers that like to be able to shop whenever they want. These people spend more than normal shoppers.

- Do not skip the testing phase! At this point you probably feel like you are ready for your new product launch. Because this can be incredibly expensive, especially if it fails, it is very important to test. This can be done through a focus group, a roundtable discussion with members of the target base, an online research company, or you can even give your product and marketing materials to those who you feel would be interested in the product. After testing you can make any final tweaks to the product and ads that you feel need to be done.

- Time to introduce the world to your product. PR is very important at this point, and it should be all planned ahead of time to get the ball rolling. Media outlets should be contacted to let them know about the product. There are hundreds of places on the internet to post product launch articles. You can hold a new product launch party that the local news channels can attend. Make sure you have a large enough supply of your product to handle the demand if it takes off. After the initial PR push, make sure you are ready to begin all your other advertising efforts.

- Watch the sales trends carefully. After you implement the initial introduction and advertising phases for your new product launch, you will need to keep a close eye on trends. When you start to see your returns on advertising investment start to decline, it may be time to update the product, or even come up with a new product. At this point the process starts all over again.

New Product Launch Summary

A new product launch can be an incredible success if planned and implemented carefully. The above steps are just the beginning of what it takes to market a successful service or product.

Another amazing product launch from Apple

Apple has become something of a paragon of business practices over the last decade. They have not only been turning out revolutionary products, but their marketing methods (specifically the product launch) have also been brilliant. Because of this, they have had one of the fastest expanding market presences in recent memory over the last decade. Once a company that lagged far behind Microsoft in every important category, Apple has now carved out its own niche, cornering the market on hand-held electronic devices like ipods and ipads. Part of Apple’s success surely has to do with their widely publicized product launches, and good example of this is the iPad product launch.

The ipad represented an evolution for Apple from their specialization in personal computers to their specialization in hand-held computers. Its release was preceded by the iPhone, which revolutionized the market of mobile computing with its innovative touchscreen system. During 2007, the year the iPhone was released, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had announced that Apple would no longer go by the moniker Apple Computers, and instead would be called Apple, Inc. This was representative of the shift to mobile devices that Jobs envisioned for Apple.

Rumors about the iPad began circulating not long after the iPhone had hit the shelves and experienced tremendous success. It would later be admitted by Jobs that the iPad actually was developed before the iPhone, but work on the iPad was stopped when he realized all of the capabilities of the tablet could be packaged into a phone.

It seems very possible that Apple leaks of information contributed to the rumors swirling around the iPad. This is part of the genious of Apple’s marketing ploys surrounding the iPad product launch. They developed consumer interest through rumors and speculation long before the iPad was turned out to store shelves. This led to a building level of interest fueled by Apple devotee gossip about what the upcoming iPad might offer.

By the time the iPad product launch occurred, it almost seemed anticlimactic. People had been discussing the tablet for what seemed an interminable amount of time, and Apple fans were waiting for the iPad like anxious kids on Christmas morning. The iPad product launch occurred on April 3, 2010. Pre-orders had begun mid-March, and even though Apple initially only offered the iPad at The Apple Store, they sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of the product launch. A month later, they had sold 1,000,000. By the time of the product launch for the second generation of iPads, Apple had sold 15 million of the first generation.

Since then, Apple has unveiled two more generations of the iPad, each of which experienced similar success to the first version. The device is now fully Wi-Fi and 3G capable, and has garnered world-wide success.

What the iPad product launch tells business

The iPad product launch tells business scholars many things about how to create interest in a product, then how to foster and maintain that interest until the actual product launch occurs. First, it’s impossible to negate the fact that Apple already had a natural buzz surrounding the company since the launch of the iPhone. Thus, it seems like some of the interest in the iPad was undeniably an offshoot of that. Still, however, the principle holds true that kindling interest long before the actual launch of a product may go a long way toward developing a pre-existing market of curious consumers before your product even hits the shelves.

Steve Jobs helped to do this by not being shy about unveiling prototypes before his products hit the shelves. He held a public demonstration for every Apple product before he began to sell it, knowing that these quick glimpses are all that is needed to get tecchies salivating over the next new, big thing. The same approach, however, can be used in any field of business.

The idea of niche marketing and creating interest rests heavily on knowing your customer base and what sparks their curiosity. Steve Jobs was acutely aware of this, and used the information to plan his iPad product launch. The result was that, in many countries, thousands of people waited on line in order to be the first to of their friends to get their hands on a new iPad. The same tactics, however, can be applied to any business.