How to futureproof your product strategy with custom product research

Will your new product succeed? That’s a high stakes question, but all too often, there’s no sure answer. NewtonX COO Leon Mishkis introduced the Product Research Lifecycle, with three takeaways for a well-informed product strategy in his talk at the Product-Led Summit. The summit, held in San Francisco from September 7-8, brought together product leaders and growth gurus from innovative companies around the world. 

Failure IS an option when it comes to B2B new product launches

Companies pour effort into product development and go-to-market strategy. Yet many still fail. Seven out of the top 10 reasons new products fail are for reasons that come down to: “We didn’t know.”  

The weak point is having trustworthy information as a basis for the product strategy. Who will buy? Why will they buy? How much will they buy? What will they pay? The questions go on.

98% of professionals consider having dependable data as very important. Yet, only 49% of decision-makers think their data can be trusted (Experian). 

Why is trustworthy B2B product research so hard to obtain?

Getting B2B product research you can trust is a challenge for several reasons:

1. You cannot find the specific people with the insights you need.

Say you’re looking for a specific profile like the CTO of a small energy company that is using multi-cloud solutions. Your product research provider, however, may be relying on an expert network of people who have answered their surveys in the past. The odds that your CTO is in that group is low. 

2. You cannot engage the people you need to reach.

Your product research provider may send out an invitation dangling a $25 Amazon gift card to 50 thousand people on their “IT Executives” mailing list. Most of them are not qualified to answer your questions, yet many will participate anyway for the quick money. The CTO you really want to talk to doesn’t have time to chase a gift card.

3. You can’t talk to enough people.

When you are making a multi-million or billion-dollar product decision, you don’t want to talk to 20 customers. You need 2,000. You cannot achieve this scale with traditional closed panels. 

4. You cannot get the right mix of quantitative and qualitative insights with just one product research approach.

You can get statistically valid numbers with a quantitative survey, but you can’t dig into the why’s and how’s. You can get deep understanding from a few people in a quantitative study, but you can’t know how widespread those views are. Without the right mix of methodologies, you are left with just a partial picture for your product strategy.

Answering the important questions at each step of the Product Research Lifecycle

While getting trustworthy B2B product research can be challenging, it’s vital to find the answers to core questions at each phase of the Product Research Lifecycle:

1. New product launch

• What product should we launch?
• Who do we target?
• How do we price it?
• How do we message the value prop?

2. UX pain points

• What are our potential customer’s problems?
• Which are most troublesome?
• How are they dealing with them today?
• What is the value of eliminating them?

3. Unmet user needs

• What is holding our customers back?
• What do they wish they could achieve?
• What patterns do we see that might signal an opportunity?

4. New market entry and expansion

• What near-in market needs can we satisfy?
• Would a complimentary product find traction in the market?
• Does geographical expansion make sense?
• Should we buy a competitor?

5. New product opportunities

• What features are most valued?
• What should we name it? Which visual identity works best?
• Will this product cannibalize our current business?
• How can we validate our design?
• What about the competition?
• What is the ideal business model?
• How should we price it?

How does custom recruiting for product research work in the real world?

Leon rounded out his talk with examples of innovative companies who are using custom recruiting at different stages of the Product Research Lifecycle: 

• See how Tableau uses custom recruiting to source competitive intelligence for new market entry 
• Explore how Pinterest is transforming their UX and addressing pain points with hybrid research methods

Three takeaways for increasing your new product success rate

The stakes are too high when it comes to bringing new products to market to have a product strategy based on guesses and flawed data. You can be a better product leader with a solid track record of success by with these three approaches to improving the B2B research that goes into your product strategies: 

1. Partner with B2B research specialists who know how to overcome the challenges and collect data you can trust.
2. Use hybrid research methods to get in-depth insights and robust data.
3. Incorporate research across the entire product development lifecycle.   

Use cutting-edge AI technology and hybrid approaches for product success

NewtonX is a new kind of B2B research company that has broken through the constraints of old product research approaches. With technology and automation, we futureproof your product strategy from launch through maturity.

What’s different about us? We replace the old expert panel model with a way to scale your reach to over 1.1 billion people. We use AI-powered custom recruiting to find the exact professionals to answer your product questions. Our screens ensure that each person is 100% verified to give you the insights you need. We eliminate data fraud and ensure you have trustworthy product research to serve as a foundation for your successful product strategy.

We get beyond the limitations of having to choose quantitative versus qualitative with a suite of research methodologies used in careful coordination for depth, breadth—and confidence.

Looking for a research partner? Get a quote today.