Tech Startup CEO/CMOs: Three pitfalls you should watch out when launching your product

As an executive at a start-up, you know that it is often tricky to introduce a new technology into the marketplace. 

As a masters candidate of IMC(Integrated Marketing Communication) in Medill School, Northwestern University, I have identified two articles that can help you bypass the pitfalls with ease and grace. 

In the first article Failure Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Google Glass, The author Marcus Wohlsen points out the first blunder Google Glass committed is to target the wrong group, the lack of insightful user cases is to blame.  The author believes that google was crippled by an typical engineer kind of pitfall: Overconfident in “the sheer force of its(the products’) awesomeness” to loosen the purse string of the customers while overlooking user case and customer insight analysis. Google Glass may have been better suited in specific industry context, But Google played the wrong card —they put too much effort in creating the hype in the B2C section.

                                                             (Resource: The Forbes )

While Google Glass represents the most recent hallmark failure in the domain of disruptive technology, Google+ is another lesson Google present to tech marketers in the red ocean. Danny Crichton, a former employee at Google, has spoken out his thoughts over Google’s notorious failure in entering the social landscape. Danny acclaimed “focus is absolutely everything” in his A Personal Reflection On Google+, contending the lost of focus is fatal to Google+. In his perspective, the big internal chasm between engineer culture “where data and algorithm reign supreme” and the demand of everyday users also takes its toll in pushing Google+ one inch closer to the brink of failure.

After reviewing these articles, and based on my experience through the graduate program at Northwestern Medill IMC, here are three action which you should think about to shunt away botched product launch:

• Connect your customers - It’s not only about making awesome product, but also making it applicable to your customers in their day-to-day use cases.
• Gap the internal chasm. it’s paramount for tech start-up to build an effective way of communication between its key engineering people and marketing/business crew.
• Keep your goal simple.  Don’t try to overcomplicate your product -it will only confuse the customers and scare them away.

Rina(Xiaoru) Lin is a full-time IMC student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. I'm passionated about “connecting the dots”, combining the data and consumer insight and turn them into actionable strategy. I'm interested in tech market because I believe the power of technology makes the world a lot better, and I want to be part of it. 

@ her at twitter! @RinaXiaoruLin