Top 12 Factors of Product Success
We’ve all met the kid in middle school who went from being the slacker in class to becoming an unexpected success.
Let’s see if it’s the same with a product on the market.
It takes a team to bring a successful product to market. While designers are in charge of usability, utility, and the rest of the user experience, many other elements influence whether a new product succeeds or fails.
I’m not going to lie: marketing a new product is difficult!
As product managers, your ultimate goal is to create long-term product success: ensuring that your products meet the needs of your users and customers and that they continue to add value to our businesses.
It would help if you targeted the appropriate clients with the correct product and message at the right time.
The planning that takes place months in advance is crucial to the success of new product launches.
This includes conducting market research to understand consumer demands and developing efficient marketing tactics.
However, disruption looming around every corner and opportunities provided by fast-changing markets have become vital to business growth and survival in recent years.
“A product can rapidly become outdated; a successful product is ageless,” goes the adage.
What Exactly Is a Product?
Any item or service you sell to meet a customer’s need or desire is a product. They can take the form of tangible or virtual objects.
Durable commodities (such as vehicles, furniture, and computers) and nondurable items are examples of material things (such as food and beverages).
Virtual products are services or online experiences (such as education, software, and other digital products).
It is not enough to provide a decent product at a reasonable price to earn long-term loyalty.
Traditional analog products are embracing digital technology as a strategy to better reach and service clients. All of this results in hybrid products becoming increasingly popular.
Did you know that products classify in a variety of ways? Let’s have a look at how we can do it.
Based on the customer they serve, products are generally business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C). A third type is known as B2B2C, and this is when a company uses another company to target the consumer market.
Purchasing habits are in use frequently to categorize consumer goods further. Each product has its qualities that determine how people purchase it.
Isn’t that fascinating?
On the other hand, it also assists businesses in developing their products or running their operations.
Raw materials, equipment, components, supplies, and business services are examples of business products.
The industry in which a product is used can characterize it. Energy, healthcare, financial services, and information technology are broad industries. Products are also customized to fulfill the requirements of a particular sector.
A product is more than just the tangible or intangible item on sale. Of course, the product’s features and benefits are significant.
What Is a Successful Product?
Every day, new products enter the market. There are always two sides to each coin; we can’t design a formula for making every product succeed, but we can certainly try.
Numerous aspects go into creating a product, and we get involved in so many things that we develop intricate webs for ourselves. As a result, we may become engrossed in activities that are unimportant to the product’s success.
Millions of dollars are spent each year on product development and launch. New items are constantly on the market, yet most of them fail.
Fact: Only one out of every five products will succeed, and even fewer will have a long life.
A successful product meets the designers’ goals while also pleasing the user. To be more exact:
- It fits the market
- Generates organic traffic
- Engages customers well
- Is routinely put to use by them
- Has a low churn rate
A product’s success depends on its ability to meet user requirements, and the product should provide significant value to its users.
If done correctly, product value and messaging will attract customers to the product. However, product experience is also a factor in determining a product’s long-term success.
The following examples exemplify impressive product successes.
Netflix:
I couldn’t begin without using Netflix as an example.
Netflix’s founders have been interested in streaming media since the company’s inception.
However, the market wasn’t nearly ready for a streaming service to come in and supplant traditional video stores when they initially launched.
Netflix was able to establish a significant presence in the industry quickly.
Rather than wait and risk missing out on the potentially lucrative opportunity that streaming video looked to bring, Netflix pushed ahead and launched with a mail-order approach.
Netflix is now available in over 100 countries and has over 10,000 titles.
It’s unlikely that Netflix would have been as successful as it is today if it had started as a streaming service and the market (and internet capacity) weren’t ready to go directly to streaming.
Vivo:
During the pandemic, they faced a difficult challenge as they prepared to debut their V19 smartphone.
Their only concern was- how to use internet channels to duplicate the usual shopping experience and generate excitement around our new product? They wanted to consider this, given that in-person meetings were out of the question.
Vivo’s V19 smartphone was launched with augmented reality (AR) ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram Stories.
The business asked prospects to participate in a “virtual unwrapping” of the phone and even launched a contest based on a hashtag, targeting Indian consumers aged 18 to 35.
That is a smart move!
Finally, the tech company saw a 9.5-point boost in ad recall.
Isn’t it amazing how businesses have thrived in such a competitive environment?
Dropbox:
The origin of Dropbox is back in 2007, and after only a few short years, it has risen to the top of the crowded cloud storage market.
After its IPO earlier this year (2022), the file storage and sharing company have hundreds of millions of customers and values at well over $10 billion.
Rather than creating a “market-ready” product and releasing it into the world, Dropbox’s founders opted to get a prototype of their product.
They tested it in front of many potential consumers to collect feedback and iterate until they had something the actual users would like.
Dropbox established an extensive list of potential clients using this “lean” technique before launching the product.
There are many reasons for Dropbox’s success, but its clever guerrilla marketing techniques immediately helped it get a leg up on the competition.
Uber:
Do you know the unique story behind Uber’s inception? Let’s have a look.
In 2008, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp developed the Uber concept. The two were stuck in Paris on a chilly, snowy December night, unable to get a cab. They realized that the taxi industry was old-fashioned, inconvenient, and overly complicated due to their experience.
As a result, UberCab was introduced in San Francisco. Uber is now available worldwide, a little under ten years after its first inception.
Uber’s huge success was made possible by a confluence of circumstances that created the perfect storm.
Uber can eliminate the most unpleasant aspects of the experience, such as hailing a cab, forecasting when the cab will come, ensuring that the driver drives you to the correct location, and keeping track of who your driver was for safety reasons with pricing and payment transparency.
Now that we’ve looked at some fantastic influential examples let’s look at the various aspects that contribute to the success of these products.
Top 12 Factors of Product Success
Support From the Top
Top management’s backing is crucial to a project’s success. Without that backing, the project is unlikely to receive a budget or resources, and it may not have the importance it requires within the company.
For design teams, how to persuade management is a crucial ability. Taking on tasks without the assistance of control will fail.
Desirability
Desirability is, without a doubt, the most crucial aspect. A product will fail if people don’t need or want to utilize it. A product must solve a specific problem or provide a genuine benefit to be desirable.
Demand in the Market
The first stage in marketing is market research to determine customer needs and preferences. This aids in creating a commercial product or service solution with a high likelihood of success.
Consumer surveys, test product sample marketing, and polling are in use as they help to determine what customers desire. This information helps create goods that give customers distinct benefits over the competition.
Product Development Is a Collaborative Effort
Startups generally have the advantage of being small, with a team of multi-skilled individuals working together on one killer product that they think will change the world.
However, this connection may be lost when a company grows, and its personnel become more specialized and geographically spread.
You may bring disparate teams together using the correct digital tools more effectively.
A few examples are screen sharing software, video conferencing, instant messaging, and comprehensive document management systems (DMS).
Satisfaction
Get frequent feedback on features to get the most out of them. Aside from improving the user experience, customer input can also help a SaaS company.
Knowing how satisfied your consumers are with your offering can help you predict renewals.
Customer happiness is a clear indicator of product success, and it should be a continuous objective to keep consumers happy and understand what that means to them.
Feasibility
Feasibility suggests that you can design and build the product: the necessary technologies exist, or you can bring them into the light.
Furthermore, you can recruit sufficient people with the required abilities who are readily available.
Technology
The technology to develop and deliver the product must be appropriate for the market. While the design team is unlikely to have the last say on technology budgets or appropriations, they are likely to be able to influence the development teams’ technology choices.
You must keep the end-users in mind when selecting technology.
Advantages of the Product
Knowing what customers want isn’t enough to ensure success. In product development, there is a gap in the marketing function’s ability to control results.
Although marketing understands what customers want and how to advertise the benefits, they rarely design or develop things. Nonetheless, a high-quality product or service is required to provide clients with anticipated benefits.
Ethicality
It stipulates that a product must not harm people or the environment: it must not impair people’s mental health, for example, by hooking them or providing content that promotes disinformation, self-harm, or violence.
Furthermore, an ethical product does not contribute to climate change. It does not harm the environment in how it develops, is provided, manufactured, distributed, and disposed of (if it involves hardware and plastics).
Management of Information
Knowledge is a powerful tool. This is sometimes put aside in developing businesses, but numerous studies have shown that teams can get disassociated from a shared grasp of procedure and corporate goals.
The ability to retain and communicate knowledge about projects and companies might impact your ability to meet all of the criteria.
Engage in Promotion Techniques That Work
The marketing function is in charge of promotion, a critical component of strategic product marketing success. Paid advertising, public relations, free media exposure, and sales activities are examples of this.
Choosing the correct media to interact with target customers and crafting compelling messaging that appeal to them in the right way are crucial aspects of a promotion’s success.
Examine Your Marketing ROI Numbers
Your company’s branding strategies can help you understand customers’ preferred approaches.
Understanding your marketing tactics’ return on investment (ROI) can aid your organization in making informed decisions and modifications.
Conclusion
Remember that successful goods do not emerge overnight; they result from a gradual process that necessitates labor, patience, and, most importantly, a positive attitude.
You can consider developing a prototype to estimate the future success and perception of a new item or service.
This can serve as a cherry on top of computing metrics analyzing the feature success that is already sold.
Consistently investigating and evaluating your consumers’ needs, tastes, and aspirations can assist your firm in creating a product that meets the priorities of its target audience.