CoGen Marketing

What does it cost to go to market with the wrong message?

        What does it cost to go to market with the wrong product or service? 

Going to market and failing is a very real fear in business, and there are many well known examples—remember New Coke?  Or Betamax?

Certainly bringing new products and services to market is a combined effort of R&D, Marketing, Manufacturing, Sales, Service and Support; perhaps even more functional areas depending on the company and the product or service.  This discussion is focused on Marketing leaving other areas to the domain experts in those fields.

Go-to-market failures divide into two categories: 

Products doomed from inception share an inadequate understanding of the customer.  This can include poorly defined customer problems, poorly quantified customer problems, lack of understanding of customer buying processes, overly optimistic forecasts, incorrect pricing, late to market, lack of customer validation, and being customer compelled instead of market focused. Often these products are called solutions looking for a problem.  

Poor product introductions simply don’t grab the attention of customers.  This can be caused by poor messaging, incorrect positioning, targeting the wrong customers, inadequate publicity, bad timing when releasing public information, and inadequate internal and channel training.  Sometimes these products are too early to market, requiring a much larger introduction budget than available.

What do go to market failures cost? 

Do any of the following sound familiar?

• nine out of ten new businesses fail in the first year

• 80-95% of new products fail

• Less than 10% of R&D expenses are recaptured one year after product introduction

Why is this pattern repeated over and over again by company after company?  Are new product introductions truly just a shot in the dark? They don’t have to be!

Marketing Is a Process with Predictable Outcomes

To learn more click on The Process of Marketing