When is the Best Time to Launch My Product?
This article covers question 4 of 5 from the series: ‘Getting Started with a New (Software) Product’. You can access the rest of it here.
The adage “now is the best time” shouldn’t be universally applied to every idea. Timing plays as much a role in your product’s success as its features, pricing or even underlying technology.
If your entry into a market is too early or (as is often the case) too late, your product will face an uphill battle to gain user adoption.
This applies to both the launch of an entirely new product or an existing one in a new market.
On the flip side, if you release your product at just the right time, it can be catapulted to great success. The 2008 financial crisis proved to be a furtive ground for tech startups, such as Uber and Airbnb, thanks to an interest by investors and their deliberate focus on infrastructure services, which was ripe for reinvention.
Factors determining the best launch time
So what should you consider while selecting an ideal launch time for your product? Here are three main factors:
- Environmental Conditions
- Consumer Acceptance
- ‘Buzz’ Factor
Let’s look at each of them in more detail:
Environmental Conditions
Consider the case of WhatsApp — it needed the combination of smartphone market penetration and wide availability of 3G to rise in popularity. Likewise, you need certain things to be in your favour, namely:
1. Economic conditions: Medicines rarely see a dip in sales during recessions, but luxury cars certainly do. How essential is your product and would it sell in the time period you launch it?
2. Market interest: Every idea has a shelf life. There was a time Flappy Bird copycats were everywhere, not so much today.
3. Technology availability: While the Google Lens app still appears futuristic today, it is based on machine learning technology, which has never been as accessible as it is now. If your idea is too revolutionary or the technology you need to implement it is too expensive (think Iridium satellite phones), you may have several challenges ahead.
Consumer Acceptance
How familiar are customers with your product or its category? Newer ideas often need to focus on educating customers. Apple’s advertisements for its 1984 Macintosh prominently featured the computer mouse and highlighted how it would change the way people used their computers.
Acceptance also implies the general perception towards your product. There was a time people made fun of individuals who used bluetooth headsets, but today it’s acceptable to wear wireless headphones in public. If your product doesn’t have a widely positive perception, you may need to either repackage it or double down on what it represents, which brings us to the next factor.
The ‘Buzz’ Factor
Certain product categories become (or are cleverly made) a hype. In 2021, blockchain is all the rage. This article by Bloomberg lists one of many examples of companies seeing a significant jump in stock price by simply having the word ‘blockchain’ in their name! In an ideal world, you’d launch your product at the start of a wave and let the buzz factor propel you forward. Hype can do wonders, both as investment opportunities and adoption by customers.
That said, the reality is, for most product creators, waiting for the best time is not possible. This may be due to financial or investor obligations; market pressures (in the form of responding to competitors); or simply, not knowing the ideal time for a new idea until it is tried out. If any of this applies to you, your effort should then be to make the best of whatever cards you are dealt.
Let’s look at two possible scenarios and how each offers unique challenges for you to overcome:
What if I am too late to the party?
There are probably very few genuinely novel ideas left to be discovered. Author Edward Page Mitchell dreamt of a machine that delivers information similar to modern day social media newsfeeds in his novel The Senator’s Daughter all the way back in 1879! There is a reason why new ideas are often described in relation to old ones — for instance, AirBnB is renting but for a short span and over the Internet — almost everything has already been done or imagined in some form or another.
When I say ‘late’, I mean either the market is saturated with several products (think note-taking apps) or the product category itself is fading into obscurity (imagine releasing a feature phone in the era of smartphones).
If either of these apply to you, it may be wise to take a pragmatic approach and pursue another product idea (assuming you are still in the concept stage). This is especially pertinent if your likelihood of success is solely calculated on gut feeling.
If you still decide to enter late in a market, it is not all bad. Consider this, Nokia sold approximately 156 million feature phones between 2018 to 2020 by tapping the nostalgia niche (a strategy we’ll touch on shortly).
The fist advantage you have by being late is you get to learn from the mistakes of first movers. Apple has famously adopted technologies and product categories years after others. The Apple Watch has become the worlds most sold watch (not just smartwatch) despite being launched a decade after one of the first true smartwatches – Microsoft SPOT, which was released in 2004 – and three years after its modern competitors.
Because almost every feature users can think of has be made, copied, iterated and (in some cases) removed, you have the power of hindsight to study the successes and failures of your competitors in order to fine tune your product.
This is where the niche strategy and your second advantage comes in. By being a late entrant, you are likely to inherit a highly developed market of customers. Both first movers and customers have experimented and slot themselves into segments that work for them. Your risk of guessing will customers use such a product type is minimized, letting you focus on the questions: which of the available customers should I target for maximum success.
What if I am too early or revolutionary?
When Nintendo came out with the Virtual Boy and Apple with Newton, both were revolutionary for their time. Their problem was they were too revolutionary (read expensive and vague in their application). But today, the same products, VR headset and tablet, are relatively commonplace. This is not to discount their immense contribution in pushing the industry forward, but as a business, everyone wants to safeguard themselves from failing. Influential or not, history and your investors will remember the product as a failure. So going in with caution is essential.
One way of doing this is to relate your product to existing ones. Your marketing goal should be to show how your product would integrate into their existing life.
AR is a perfect example of this. Google, Microsoft and Apple don’t talk about how revolutionary their technology is, they showcase simple and relatable situations, such as aiming at an object and seeing more details about it, or measuring real-world objects with your phone. But you don’t need to downplay your innovation. Look at Mercedes-Benz as an example; they have converted AR into a talking point around the brand. Their latest range of vehicles projects arrows onto the windscreen alerting drivers where they have to turn or stop. This has got journalists praising the company and generating buzz.
And this is the key to a brand new idea. If the idea itself is the product, as history has shown, it is likely heading for failure. But if the idea is used to greatly enhance the experience of users (without necessarily being the focus point) it can change your industry.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments.
This article is a part of the series Getting Started with a New Product, where I address five crucial questions every product creator should ask before starting on a new product journey:
1. How do I know if my idea is good?
2. What is the best way to monetize this product?
3. Am I implementing the right technology?
4. Is now the right time for this product? (What You Read)
5. What kind of marketing do I need? (Up Next)
You can also read the series summary here.
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