3 Reasons Why Your Product Launch Failed

June 19, 2019

A new product launch is always an exciting time. You’ve spent months or even years building up to this point. What started out as an initial idea has been through the planning and design stages until eventually, you’ve got a product that you’re really proud of and you’re ready to release it to the public. In the months and weeks leading up to the launch, you’ve been marketing the product to new and existing customers and you anticipate a huge surge in sales when the big day finally arrives. Then that day finally comes and the whole thing is a huge flop. There doesn’t seem to be that much interest in the product at all and you’ve only made a handful of sales. So, what went wrong?

You Didn’t Showcase The Product Effectively

When you’re trying to build hype around a product, you need to show consumers exactly why it’s amazing and why they should be buying it on day one when it finally gets released. If sales aren’t very good, it might be that you didn’t showcase the product effectively. In the weeks leading up to the launch, your social media pages need to be filled with great pictures and videos of the product that highlight all of it’s best features. Often, the problem is that you didn’t take good enough photographs of the product and they didn’t do it justice. Ideally, you should be getting a professional photographer in to take all of these shots but if you’re trying to do it on a budget, you might decide to do it for yourself. If that’s the case, you should at least look for the best online photography courses for beginners so you can learn a few tricks and ensure that the photographs look professional. Making good use of videos is important as well because they really help you to give people a sense of what the product looks like in action. Don’t just tell people how amazing your product is, show them.

You Delayed The Launch

Delayed launches really hurt your chances of making a sale because you allow time for the hype to die down. Let's say that you did a great job of marketing the product and there are thousands of people following your social media pages, eagerly awaiting the launch. Then that day finally comes and you release a statement saying that the launch has been pushed back. You might keep the attention of some of those people but a lot of people are just going to lose interest and when you do eventually launch, you will have lost a lot of that momentum and sales will be slow.

You Priced It Wrong

When consumers are deciding whether they want to buy a product or not, the price is always the biggest factor. It doesn’t matter how amazing they think the product is, if it’s too expensive then they’re not going to buy it. That’s why it’s so important that you price your products properly if you’re going to have a successful launch. It’s important to note that pricing too low is an issue as well because even though it might boost sales, it means that your profit margins are going to suffer a lot.

If your recent product launch was a bit of a flop, it’s likely that you made one of these mistakes. You can’t do anything about it now, but take it on board and learn from it next time.

Mark Asquith

That British podcast guy, Mark is co-founder of Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast host. A Harvard, TEDx, Podcast Movement and Podfest speaker (amongst many more!), he's a wildly approachable Brit and Star Wars/DC Comics geek.

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