Construction brandsHow (not) to nail your product launch in three key steps

Are you a manufacturer or brand in the construction and housing sector, tired of pulling off brilliantly successful product launches every single time? Exhausted at the mere thought of having to present outstanding results to your teams at the annual review? Does the very idea of an effective, well-planned product launch make your hair stand on end? If so — and provided you also have a sense of humour — then this article gives you all the foolproof keys to botching your product launch in spectacular fashion. A good opportunity to step back — with a little levity — from a stage that is absolutely essential to your brand's success.

What matters above all is putting in place a strategy directly connected to your audiences' needs and habits.

Launching a new product, range, service or solution is THE essential rite of passage for any manufacturer wanting to showcase its expertise. But sometimes, with urgency and habit lending a hand, the same ways of doing things get mechanically reproduced year after year, without questioning or challenging one's habits, vision and communication reflexes.

The most effective strategy for botching your new product launch is therefore to replicate, to the letter, the recipe you have already applied to all your previous launches. Strategic direction, creative angles, choice of communication tools, activation levers: all of these parameters are ingredients that need to be measured out and regularly challenged — for better... or for worse.

Indeed, a successful product launch is one where you have managed to evolve your reflexes to adapt to:

1. Your audiences' new needs and their new communication habits
2. The new market reality (the digital transformation of the construction sector, shifting audience expectations, the health crisis, materials shortages, new regulations, etc.), new persona profiles, the emergence of new patterns of influence and specification in the sector, and so on
3. The specific strengths, uses and benefits of the new product or service

Even with a fantastic visual and the most effective of headlines, failing to take all the levers of action into account is the surefire recipe for a launch that will never perform at its full potential. The multiplicity of communication channels, ever-fiercer competition between brands (on the technical battlefield as much as the communication one) and the evolving expectations of your audiences all demand product launches designed with finesse and with a single objective in mind: embedding your new solution in your audiences' purchasing (or specification) reflexes.

This step will not allow you to wreck your product launch with absolute certainty, but it will guarantee you a launch far less effective than the strengths of your new system might have promised.

Whether you are targeting tradespeople, installers, housebuilders, builders' merchants or specifiers, by focusing only on the short term (in concrete terms, a communication campaign of around three to four months), you are most certainly depriving yourself of a major opportunity: that of creating with your audiences the bond that will allow you to establish yourself durably in their decision-making reflexes.

The novelty of your solution will undoubtedly guarantee it some visibility for a while, but there is a real risk that this initial opportunity will dry up as market news moves on and the advertising pressure subsides. That said, there is no need to plan your launch 5 years in advance and spread it over the following 4 years. What matters above all is putting in place a strategy directly connected to your audiences' needs and planning follow-up waves over a long enough period (around 1 to 2 years) to allow your innovation to genuinely “infuse” the market and take root in your audiences' habits. Indeed, in the construction industry, it has to be said that purchasing practices and reflexes sometimes fall victim to a deep-seated tendency towards inertia. To get your audiences to rethink their habits and choose your solution, you will need patience and tangible proof. One-off, tightly time-boxed shock campaigns are not effective at shifting the market.

This is the secret ingredient for being 300% certain of sabotaging your product launch: just talk about your solution and take no interest whatsoever in your audiences and their needs, their behaviours, their habits and their customer journey.

Ignoring your audiences means missing the fact that today, proof-based messaging is absolutely essential for manufacturers and brands in the housing and construction sector. If they want to create lasting bonds with their customers and prospects, brands must be able to demonstrate concretely what their solutions and systems can do for their daily lives and the success of their business. They must be able to prove that they are partners in that success (and therefore that they understand their needs and know how to meet them). From a 100% pragmatic standpoint, remember that product-centred technical arguments need to be reoriented towards the way your solution solves your audiences' various day-to-day problems. The idea is to focus on the famous "pain points" and on how your solution can save them time (and money) and allow them to showcase their expertise.

Ignoring your audiences also means overlooking the fact that today, particularly in B2B, interactions with the brand are manifold, and a product launch strategy must therefore be omnichannel to reflect the new realities of customer journeys. In this respect, digital and influence levers cannot be ignored.

Finally, ignoring your audiences means fixating on a purely “product” approach, disregarding the service dimension that is nonetheless essential to becoming your audiences' go-to partner. They no longer need technical performance alone; they also need a customer experience that promises them a holistic approach, as close as possible to their needs. Your audiences no longer just need to hear about products — they want to hear about services, solutions and experiences too!

The little extra that makes all the difference if you really want to botch your product launch is leaving out your sales force. By not including representatives of your sales team from the very earliest design phases of your product launch, you can be certain:

• Of not benefiting from their field-level insight
• Of not challenging your ideas in the light of your audiences' real-world expectations
• Of not involving in the process a lever that is nonetheless absolutely essential to the commercial success of your launch strategy
• That they will not be able to act as ambassadors for this solution, internally and externally alike.

If you (and your sense of humour) have enjoyed exploring this crucial, strategic subject in a format that doesn't take itself too seriously, and if you are keen to launch your product under the best possible conditions and with the best possible prospects, then we have only one piece of advice: put your trust in an agency that specialises in your markets and has been recognised for over 30 years for its creativity and expertise. To talk through your needs together, it all happens here!