Christa Tuttle — February 3, 2020 
New product or service launches can be rollercoaster rides, ranging from excitement about launch day to anxiety about early results. There’s a lot of hard groundwork that happens before you’re ready to introduce your brainchild to the market, from funding to framing to hiring. However, there is one question you must answer that is critically important to your product’s long-term success: Whose needs are you solving with your product?
Even if you think your product’s innovation speaks for itself, it cannot be successful unless there is a market need for it. Developing buyer personas can help determine and articulate who the audience for your product is and whether they even exist. These personas can be leveraged for a successful product launch, inform your marketing strategy moving forward and ultimately shape your long-term product roadmap.
Targeted Product Launch
Without a clear picture of who will want to buy your product or service, your launch can feel directionless. For example, if you’re launching your product over the web, how will you know which platforms to advertise on? Where will your ideal buyers be at the time of your product launch, and will your launch strategy interest them? These are all vital considerations that can be answered by identifying your buyer personas and their needs before going to market.
To make sure you’re fully prepared prior to launch, take the time to conduct primary market research via focus groups and/or 1:1 conversations with open-ended questions and also examine secondary research to uncover further details of your buyer’s pain points. These steps are imperative as they can give you an authentic understanding of who you’ll be talking to and looking to connect with as well as what messages are likely to resonate with them.
Personalized Marketing Strategy
As we’ve noted, having a firm understanding of your target audience is critical for developing strong messaging and positioning for your company. In today’s market of hyper-personalized content, your message should be uniquely tailored so that you can speak to your audience directly with information that is highly relevant to their needs and aspirations. Getting this right allows you to immediately build rapport with your buyers, even if you haven’t been in the market for long.
Understanding your position within the market is also essential for contextually structuring your marketing strategy. For example, if your technology product is poised to solve needs for those specifically in the medical device industry, you won’t want to market at trade shows geared towards hospital or med clinic products. It is more important to develop a highly targeted segment of the market you wish to speak to, rather than casting a wide net in hopes of snagging a prospect here and there.
Developing a strong buyer persona is also the first step to building an overall marketing strategy for your new company. By recognizing the needs your product solves, this can serve as the underlying thread for future marketing campaigns and initiatives.
Future Product Mission
Now that you’ve identified your customers’ pain points, how are you going to solve them more effectively, more cheaply or more quickly than the solutions that already exist? These are questions that should be answered in order to structure the long-term vision for your company. Ultimately, your product should bring something new to the market that differentiates it from competition. Or, if you are creating a product in a new space, the pain point needs to be big enough that addressing it adds lots of value over maintaining the status quo.
Having a deep understanding of how your product solves your customers’ pain points, as well as how your competition is seeking to address those same frustrations, will provide you with the insight needed to craft a durable product or service mission for years to come.
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