There are very few things in the life of a business as exciting—and nerve wracking—as launching a new product.
Product teams pour blood, sweat, and tears (sometimes literally) into the development of new products. At Campos, we’re often involved in innovation research to inform the new product pipeline. This involves deep research with target customers to understand their pain points and unmet needs in a client’s category. And once an idea for a new product is surfaced, there’s the actual development and testing of the product. Something we also know quite a bit about.
But eventually the baton gets passed to marketing teams to develop a go-to-market strategy. Who are we selling this product to and how? All too often, the research-based approach of the product team gives way to a more…vibes based approach. Marketing teams and their agencies develop targeting strategies, positioning statements, taglines, logos, and more based on intuition, gut instinct, and their own personal biases.
When the product is then brought to market without testing any of those assumptions, the risks are enormous. Vibes don’t move units. And in a market where consumers are paralyzed by choice and shelf space (digital or physical) is a premium, guessing is a high-stakes gamble you don’t need to take.
The Essential Components of a Go-to-Market Strategy
Go-to-market research is the process of gathering information to create a detailed plan for successfully launching a product or service to customers. This can take many forms, but it all boils down to a few essential questions:
- Who is your target customer?
- What is your message or value?
- How do you communicate this message (think logo, tagline, etc) in a way that resonates with the target customer?
- What are the right channels for purchase?
- What is an acceptable price point?
The thrilling part of a product launch is that, if you get these answers right, your new product or service has the potential to inject explosive growth into your brand. The scary part is, if you get these answers wrong, it could cost your brand millions of dollars. But fear not! This is not a guessing game. This is where market research comes in.
De-risking A Product Launch
When Campos is partnering with a client to successfully launch a product, we start with the key questions listed above and gather data that will allow us to confidently answer each.
There is no one-size-fits all approach to go-to-market research, so the methodologies we use will vary depending on the client and situation, but we’re generally working towards building out a research-backed Go-To-Market Strategy Framework. This is an internal product launch “bible” that incorporates the following elements:
- Overview of the product/service value proposition and key attributes
- Target audience(s) and target customer persona(s)
- Target market location [if applicable]
- Customer journey and channel(s) to purchase
- Ideal price point
- Recommended positioning, messaging, and brand assets
Go-To-Market Research
Let’s look at an example project to understand how we get to that Go-To-Market Strategy Framework. In this example, the client is planning to bring a new consumer packaged good to market, a new healthy snack cracker. To build out a data-backed Go-To-Market Strategy Framework, we’d do the following:
- First, we’d start with secondary research and conduct an audit of competitors in the snack cracker space to understand how they position themselves and what their key marketing messages are.
- Next, we’d design and field a segmentation study to better understand the market for snack crackers and who within this market we should target (hint—not everyone!). Segmentation will allow us to identify and profile the target audience and glean insights to inform how best to appeal and market to the target.
- This segmentation study would also allow us to gather other insights related to target customers’ attitudes, motivations, and preferences that can be used to inform future messaging.
- What’s more, we can identify preferred purchase channels and retailers to inform your strategy.
- At this stage, our client would begin working internally or with an agency to develop creative and messaging assets (think tagline, logo, etc), which we’ll later test.
- While the creative folks do their thing, we’d conduct quantitative pricing research. This will allow us to identify an acceptable price range, and ideal price point, for the snack crackers.
- In our pricing survey we can also dig into the customer journey to inform targeting.
- Finally, we’d conduct qualitative research to test and optimize consumer-facing marketing assets, like tagline and logo options.
Go-To-Market Strategy
What we described above is a lot of research, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and if you partner with an external market research firm, it shouldn’t be.
Many research firms will produce a series of giant slide decks that summarize every data point collected at every stage of the research. This sort of data dump is essentially useless on its own. Someone has to roll up their sleeves, figure out what really matters and what the story is, and then use that information to come up with a strategy.
At Campos, we know our clients don’t have the time to do this on their own. Otherwise they wouldn’t be considering working with us. Our job is to do that digging and to present you with a clear data-backed story that builds to a clear strategic framework for successfully launching the product.
Other research firms will hand their client a stack of 100-slide decks that summarize every data point they found at each stage of the research. They leave it to you to figure out what to do next. At Campos, we think that’s a waste of your time. We don’t do “data dumps.” We provide clarity. And with that clarity comes the confidence needed to make big decisions.
- The Confidence to Kill: Sometimes, the research shows that a product isn’t ready or the market isn’t there. We help you identify those red flags early, saving you millions in failed launches and wasted inventory.
- The Confidence to Pivot: Maybe the product is great, but the “vibe” isn’t landing. We’ve helped clients completely shift their messaging strategy before launch because the research pointed to a value prop they hadn’t even considered.
- The Confidence to Launch: When the product truly meets a market need, our research gives you all the essential elements needed to dive head first into launching a product with confidence. You’ve done the homework on who to target, why, and how. Now comes the fun part.
Stop Guessing. Start Launching.
The difference between a “pretty good” launch and a category-disrupting success is strategy. You have the product; we have the insights to make sure the world knows why they need it.
Ready to move beyond “vibes” and into a data-backed go-to-market strategy?
