How to launch your new technology product

How do you launch a technology product?
Michael White, 2011

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You’ve got a new technology product and a finite budget. How do you launch the product on the market?

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When you’re launching a new product you should focus on an initial group of customers – your target market segment.
“Crossing the Chasm” describes an approach for selecting the most promising target market segment.
If you combine that approach with digital marketing, you improve your chances of success

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Launching a new product
A lot of technology startups know how to build a great product but are not sure how to bring it to market
One common problem is that the new technology has a number of potential applications and the startup is not sure whether to focus on one or else try to promote to all potential market sectors
“Crossing the Chasm” is a classic textbook on technology marketing
The book argues there is a chasm between “early adopters” of a new technology and the “early majority” (pragmatists).
One of the requirements to successfully cross this chasm and reach a larger audience for your product is to pick an initial target market sector and focus your promotional efforts on it
We recommend a variation of the approach combined with digital marketing to increase your chances of success

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The problem
Why can’t I market to everybody?
If you have a product that could be used in a lot of different ways, people are tempted to try to market to all potential users
You worry that if you focus on one group you will exclude the others
This is wrong for a couple of reasons:
Limited promotional budget – you have a fixed amount of money to spend on promotion. Concentrating that spend on a clearly defined target group will produce better results than spreading it thinly across multiple potential target groups
Trying to be all things to all people generally doesn’t work when launching a new product. If you designed a car that tried to appeal to young families, men in their 20s and elderly women, you would end up with a mishmash that appeals to no-one. The same is usually true with technology products. You should focus your product and promotion on one or two sectors for your launch.

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Target Markets
What is a target market segment?
A market segment is a group of potential buyers for a product or service that share some characteristics
The most important characteristic is that they think of themselves as being in a particular group and that they reference each other
For example, information security officers in large enterprises constitute a market segment if they think of themselves as working in the same sector, attend the same industry events and communicate regularly with their peers when evaluating solutions or services
A sector can be ‘horizontal’ if it crosses a number of different industries e.g. the information security sector is horizontal because IT security is deployed in multiple industries including finance, defence and healthcare.
A sector is ‘vertical’ if it is restricted to one industry e.g. ATM transaction processing systems are only sold to the financial sector

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Choosing a target sector
How do you pick a target sector?
You want to choose an initial target sector that is most likely to adopt your product
We suggest a slight variation on the method described in “Crossing the Chasm”
Idea Generation
Filter ideas based on criteria
Prepare propositions and test market online
Filter again based on feedback
Go to market

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Idea Generation
Brainstorm as many plausible uses of the technology as possible, in different sectors . Write up the best candidates identifying target customers and the benefits of the solution. Write a typical scenario describing how the solution would be used and specify the unique differentiators of your technology versus competitors.
Filter the ideas using standard criteria such as the potential size of the market for the candidate application of the technology; how quickly you could generate revenue from it; the level of competition; how credible you would be entering that market segment. You do not have to be exhaustive, but you are trying to pick winners, so avoid a market which is small, or where you have no experience or credibility. Use a table (see next page) to score the ideas during filtering. Pick 2 to 3 top candidates.
Filter ideas based on criteria

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Filtering your ideas
Example – using a table to score competing scenarios

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You can test market a product early and at low cost using digital marketing. Develop some web pages and product collateral and use pay-per-click ads, email, social media and PR to generate web traffic and potential leads. Pitch the proposition to some real candidate buyers too using storyboards to illustrate how it works and the benefits it will bring.
Prepare propositions and test market online
Filter again based on feedback
You should now have a sense of which of the candidates show real potential. Your choices at this point are to (a) select the most succesful proposition and go to market, (b) revise the propositions and test again or (c) going back to the start and generating a new set of potential uses of the technology, based on what you learned during the test marketing.

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How to test launch
When you have identified a potential application of your technology that shows real promise, prepare and execute a test launch – i.e. a launch where you are not committing all your resources
Use your website, email, pay-per-click ads and social media.
Create a “landing page” on your website that describes the proposition and proposed pricing in a compelling way – check out other SaaSor high tech product launch pages for comparison.
Your landing pages should emphasise the benefits, make the pricing clear, and describe how the product can be used e.g. with a video or storyboard slidedeck
Drive traffic to your landing page (using pay-per-click ads, social media and email initially, later SEO) and monitor the reaction
If you have lots of visitor signing-up and expressing an interest in your beta launch then this is pretty good validation – proceed to the next phase of a full launch
If there are no registrations, think about what might be wrong and test some hypotheses. For example, test some alternative landing pages with a different pricing model to see if that works, or try highlighting different benefits and features. If nothing works, switch to the next potential application of the technology and do a test launch for it too.

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Good resources
Here are some suggested resources (we plan to add to this list)
Links
Unbounce - http://unbounce.com – tool to build landing pages that you can use when launching a product
Lincoln Murphy’s blog Sixteen Ventures - http://sixteenventures.com/ - advice on pricing, SaaSfreemium models
Books
“Crossing the Chasm”, Geoffrey A. Moore – you don’t have to agree with everything in it, but it is recommended reading, especially for technologists with no marketing or sales background.
“Marketing High Technology”, William H. Davidow – written by Intel’s VP of Marketing, published in 1986, but still thought provoking
“Getting Real”, Jason Fried et al – advice from 37Signals, the people behind Basecamp

Email michael.white@dohertywhite.com
Mobile +353 86 383 8981
Phone +353 7493 81986
Twitter @michaelgwhite
www.dohertywhite.com
www.dohertywhite.com/blogs
DohertyWhite helps business-to-business (B2B) technology companies generate leads online and convert those leads to sales. We provide marketing automation, website design, digital marketing and PR services.

How to launch your new technology product

by DohertyWhite on Sep 12, 2011

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