Written by Dan Konstantinovsky
Strategic Marketing, RH Blake

You’ve spent significant resources to develop a new B2B product or offering targeting the manufacturing ecosystem. Now it’s time to organize and strategize your new product launch. But before you can do that, let’s review the reasons for launching a new product in the first place.

Why Launch New Products

In general, B2B manufacturers launch new products in order to:

• Gain market share.
• Enter a new market or application.
• Generate new opportunities with existing customers.
• Stay top of mind with existing customers.

Product launches vary in scale — from new products to refined products designed for new applications. In certain instances, manufacturers use product launches to show customers that they are continually innovating and to remain top of mind until customers are ready to buy.

As you think about your short- and long-term objectives of your product launch, what convinces you that you’ll be successful? You have valid reasons to question your potential for success. According to McKinsey, more than 50% of B2B product launches fail to achieve business goals and objectives. But why are new product launches especially challenging in B2B manufacturing?

Why Product Launch Marketing Is Challenging  

Launching a new product presents several distinct hurdles when trying to capture the attention of and engage with the target market in a meaningful way. There are several key reasons for this:

1. Competition: Competitors, both direct and indirect, are vying for the attention of your target customer.
2. Delayed pain points: Your target customer may not have the pain point your product addresses today. However, they may face it down the line. How do you create that initial awareness or perception to ensure that they think of you when their needs change?
3. Lack of awareness around related capabilities: Your customer may be hard to engage if they don’t know or understand your capabilities.
4. Lack of existing relationship with your firm: If your target customer doesn’t know you, they may not trust you enough to consider your new product or offering.
5. Market viability: Your customer may not have had a chance to completely validate the unique value proposition and effectiveness of your offering.
6. Lack of customer examples: These examples are needed to help demonstrate impact on business value and build trust in your customer.
7. Disruption to their business: New products introduce perceived potential risks to your customer.

Once you grab your prospect’s attention, how do you engage them and influence them to think differently? Your product launch strategy must be effective and engaging in order to compel your target customer to take action.

Product Introduction Checklist: 5 Steps to Mitigate Risk of Product Launch Failure

Wouldn’t it be great to have a checklist or template to ensure that you don’t miss anything when launching your next B2B product? To help minimize your risk of failure, we developed this checklist based on our own experience and best practices. Use these five steps as a touchstone to guide your next B2B product launch: