Launching a new item is challenging, no doubt about that. Countless hours are invested to make sure the branding, positioning, and awareness plans are just right. And yet, as we all know, there still are products that just don’t get the sell-in as expected.
How could this happen? Your team looks at the efforts and struggles to pinpoint the weaknesses of the plan. In that post-mortem have you considered TIME?
The time I am referencing is the length of time apportioned to get all that great messaging out. In any new venture people adopt at different rates. Frequently, I suspect success measurement is based on early adopters. If we plan to only capture those early adopters we are missing the full potential of the product launch.
Taking a look at 2014, roughly 14% of items launched in 2014 and currently showing movement in drug wholesale were not in warehouses at the end of 2014. Additionally, 39% of new products increased points of distribution between the end of 2014 and today (Q2-15). Many of those increases ranged from 10% to over 65%.
The key take-away is recognizing that a new item launch strategy needs to take year one, year two, and beyond into consideration. Take care not to sell your strategy short; factor in a longer support window to maximize your product’s ongoing success.
