What Do Anxiety and Hope Have To Do With New Products?

As a brand, the launch of a new product can be both exciting and stressful. You and your team spent all of this time creating, positioning, and marketing the product so you are tired and stressed out but so excited for the world to see what you’ve done. 

On the other hand, your customers both loyal and new are feeling the exact same way but from a different point of view. They could have high anxiety about the product, thinking that the product won’t perform as well as they think it should. They could have high hopes of the product, thinking that it will perform or even exceed the expectations given to them! Or they could have both, which is seen in customers that frequently shop in a specific category a lot; so they’re often researching that industry and know all they need to know about the different brands within it. 

What Does This Mean? 

It means that hope and anxiety are the driving forces when people decide to buy or not buy your new product. Think of hope and anxiety as your customers’ virtual specified hot buttons. In a brick and mortar, you use a customers’ hot buttons (feelings) as a way of gaging how the sale is going and what they would like to purchase, this is the same. 

That being said, this reasoning is only applicable to people that already show an interest in your brand or the industry you’re selling in. If someone doesn’t buy makeup then hope and anxiety have nothing to do with them not purchasing the new eyeshadow palette. As well outside factors can always sway the consumer from anxious to hopeful and vise versa. This may not be the case for loyal customers of a particular brand, but for those that have no allegiance things like customer/ influencer reviews can sway how they feel. 

What Can I Do? 

If you’ve done your market research and realize your consumers have strong anxiety about the product then through your marketing campaigns, you should emphasize the product features that your audience has high hopes for instead of downplaying what they have anxiety over. Market research can be anything from surveys, influencer PR, even coupons! Anything that will get a person to try your product and give you feedback helps with research. If you’re launching a new product that can’t be given out, try using existing products (ex. coupons towards existing products/giving free products to influencers) in exchange for their thoughts (either in a survey or a review) on what’s to come.

On the flip side of things, while you shouldn’t downplay the features they’re anxious about; there’s something to say about addressing their concerns. For example, if your consumer is voicing that something doesn’t look like it can perform because of x, y and z then explain to them the reasoning why something is the way it is. Don’t say “it won’t be an issue because…” instead say “the reason why we made it this way is because…”. 

If you find out that your customers have high hopes and low anxiety, it would actually benefit your brand to provide disclaimers, warning labels, or disclosures. It will lower their expectations which will enhance their product satisfaction. 

 

Want to learn more things for your brand? Read about Marketing Tips for Small Businesses or find out how to Protect Your Business.

 

Vanessa Niragira, Oakville, Ontario, Aug 2020

 

Additional Resources

https://www.ama.org/2020/07/21/how-anxiety-and-hope-can-drive-new-product-adoption/

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