Innovation remains a cornerstone of success for most organizations. It is new products and services they keep a company fresh and relevant. Yet, success does not come simply through the creation of products. Organizations must invest time, energy, and resources to push their innovation to their target market.
Recent growth in technology touting predictive analytics has caused some organizations to put their marketing plans on the back burner and let artificial intelligence push new products to customers online. Unfortunately, this does not always lead to successful outcomes. A strong marketing plan for putting your innovation in the hands and minds of consumers remains essential for success. Here are our favorite strategies to help you market innovation for your organization:
Some organizations make assumptions about their target markets and their needs. This means they miss out on new business that can positively impact their bottom line. Your market might not know they need your product or automatically grasp the way your product can improve their lives or help them. Nielsen reports that more than 25 percent of innovation does not align with consumer demands.
Before Bluetooth, consumers were not concerned with wearing wired headphones or plugging their smartphones into their car adapter to play music or podcasts. Today, almost all applicable products are Bluetooth-compatible, eliminating pesky wires from the lives of consumers. In fact, Bluetooth expects that the number of devices shipped each year will continue to compound annually at 12 percent.
You might have a great innovation, but you really need to dig deep to understand the things that influence your product's appeal, especially as it related to the perception of your product. It's crucial to explore the cultural, social, economic, and psychological dynamics that inform how consumers perceive your product. A new innovation should represent your organization's belief about what consumers want and where your industry is headed.
This means you need to dig in and do the data mining that gives you insights about your product's appeal on a deeper level. Consider the example of a Segway. These exciting motorized scooters were fun for those who could afford their $5,000 price tag. Yet, they don't have the same ease of use as other scooters and bicycles, to the company had to drop their price and sell them for less to police forces, tour companies, and warehouse companies.
When you are offering a new innovation, you need to educate your market about how to use your product and why it benefits them. You can market the product's exciting features, but if a potential customer cannot make the connection between the feature and the gap it fills in their life, you likely won't get the sale.
You can educate and engage with your customers soliciting case studies that you can use to share with others. Case studies also provide you with the opportunity to order the value of the benefits your products provide. Your innovation marketing strategy can also include sharing your customer research information through social media channels, emails, and blog content on your organization's website.
Marketing innovation means more than just marketing the product. You also need to ensure that your customers can use the product and reap its benefits. No matter how spectacular your innovation is, if your customer has a poor user experience, you will not have long-term success.
E-readers are a great example of integration between innovation and customer experience. Kindle and Nook provide content for readers as well as service, making it easier for readers to buy the product and use it. The Sony Reader, which was the first e-reader, failed because they didn't partner up with publishers and other content providers to give users what they needed.
Your organization needs to use marketing strategies that align with your innovation. Although this is an extreme example, you would not use snail mail to market a product for the internet or email. It's natural that you want your innovation to end up in large retailers, but this isn't always the way to achieve success.
Many electronic device companies have used promotions with cell phone carriers to sell their products. This includes tablets, Bluetooth speakers, Fitbits, Apple Watches, and more. Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers have offered specials on each type of these items for already existing customers and new customers, getting them into the hands of those who will use them.
When your organization stays abreast of the latest trends in your industry and the latest marketing trends, you can continue to innovate and find the best strategies to market that innovation. Not only will you position yourself as a leader in your industry or sector, but you can position yourself as the company that always has the newest, trendiest, and most innovative products.
This means your customers will be looking for more products from you before you even launch them. Apple's continuous releases of the iPhone and new features serve as an archetype for marketing innovation by continuing to introduce new and updated products.
When you truly launch an innovative product that customers haven't seen or used before, you might find they discover new and exciting uses for your product. Some companies get this user feedback and market research and immediately enter panic mode because customers aren't using their products as intended.
You cannot control what consumers do with your product, but you can control the narrative. Leverage these new and creative uses of your product as a way to build your brand, market your innovation, and engage with existing and potential customers, so you keep in control of your innovation's narrative.
Learn how to market your innovation at Asia's largest experiential conference, Corporate Innovation Summit 2020. Visit our website to book your tickets to attend this: cis.riseaccel.com