With the increasing demand for animal health products, animal health companies are meeting the challenge by introducing new products and rebranding underperforming products they already offer. Some are doing it well while others are not. How can you be sure to be on the former list, the ones that do it well?
People want new, improved, better or different products for many reasons. According to the Nielson New Product Innovation Report, “Almost two-thirds of consumers (63%) say they like it when manufacturers introduce new products, and more than half (57%) say they purchased a new product during their last shopping trip.”1
There are many new and improved or rebranded animal health products every year, with 3,278 new products introduced in 2015 in pet food alone.2 There is also an increasing demand for animal health products, with a forecasted increase of 3.5 percent annually in the US.3 So if you’ve decided that brand loyalty and tried and true formulations aren’t helping you achieve your sales goals anymore, you’re ready to introduce a new product or rebrand one you already offer. Here’s what you need to know before you do.
It is important to begin with a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape. Know what gaps your product fills, what it could replace, or another way you could differentiate it. Price point, unique packaging and product attributes and benefits to the animal are all a good place to start. Does it work faster, better, or more naturally than the competition? Good planning, as well as product and competitor research, will help your product stand out.
For example, in 2007, the pet food industry saw a trend towards the grain-free diet, which was a limited pet food category at the time. Our team at WS worked together with our client Diamond Pet Foods to create a high-quality, grain-free, premium pet food to meet this growing demand. What resulted was a wildly successful brand, Taste of the Wild.
Once you’ve determined what makes your product unique, develop a cohesive marketing and communications strategy. Define your core message about the product and its position in the marketplace, and ensure that it is present in everything you produce. With our Taste of the Wild project, this meant highlighting the brand’s unique ingredients on all packaging and making them a key message in all marketing efforts.
It’s costly to launch and rebrand products, so think into the future and develop a strategy that will last. Customer loyalty and customers feeling safe and comfortable with the product are important, so you don’t want to rebrand often. You also want to be careful with what you consider “underperforming.” A product with brand equity and customer loyalty is worth a lot to your bottom line. Be careful, and be sure you really need an overhaul, or even a subtle tweak, before you start messing with a trusted brand.
What’s in a name? With so many products on the market, a product or formula name carries an immense weight in communicating what your product is about in only a quick glance or mention.
Package design is also paramount. Labels should be easy to read, with thoughtful placement of information on the packaging. Of course, you must ensure regulatory requirements are met by having a thorough understanding of what words, phrases, and images can and can’t be used, but repackaging won’t work if it’s not attractive to your audience, different from your competitors and compelling to the people who put it on their shelves. Do your homework, test some designs and work to make sure you’ve got a winner before you go to production.
When one of our clients enhanced their product line with new ingredients, we helped refresh the brand’s look and feel to support the new formulations. New packaging was created with fresh photography using the pet’s point of view. It presented how the improved product improved the lives of the end-users, the pets. We carried that theme through print collateral, point-of-purchase materials and a new website.
As you work on the design, be sure to communicate changes or new product attributes clearly. Step-by-step instructions and thorough descriptions are warranted. The last thing you want is ineffective use of your product—like animals getting sick or not getting better as quickly as they could have — because your customer didn’t know how to use it. If there’s a change in formulation or application, make sure it is taken full advantage of by using clear and thorough communication and instruction.
Think about the marketing mix and customer journey. Start with audience. Who will be buying your product and who will they buy it for: cats, dogs, horses, hamsters? Then, consider the audience’s path to purchase needs. Finally, determine what marketing and communications tools you will have at each step of that journey to make it easy for them to learn about, and be attracted to, your product.
Work with a marketing partner that understands the importance of your product’s position coming through clearly to your specific customer at every touch point. Whether that’s digitally on your website, social media interactions, talking points reiterated by sales staff in-store, copy in your brochure, or photography on the package, it must all work towards the goal of attracting your target and promoting trial.
Use traditional and proven ways such as print collateral, point-of-purchase or in-store materials, and a brand website to educate consumers about your new or rebranded product. Combine those with new ways to let people know about your product, like social media engagement through live chats, or experiential, on-site events that introduce the product. If they don’t know what it is or what it does, people will never buy your product.
Understand how different members of your audience help inform each other about your product. This includes distributors and their sales reps, retail sales associates, veterinarians, clinic staff, in-house sales teams, customer service and social community managers, and finally, end consumers.
Once you have that understanding, you will know how to best educate your audience. To help launch a new canine pain product, OroCAM Pain Relief Spray, the team at WS developed an integrated campaign with a strong educational component for veterinarians focused on compliance problems and factors that could influence treatment success. Because the product was a treatment for pain, we concentrated first on the people who would have the most influence over whether consumers would learn about and trust the brand, veterinarians.
Always listen in on the conversation surrounding your product. Use a variety of resources, from simple Google alerts to primary and secondary market research, to powerful social media monitoring tools that allow you to hear what people are saying about your product.
Once you’ve gathered the information, use it to adjust your product or messaging. When Diamond Pet Foods considered discontinuing their Professional line of pet food, we partnered with them to identify the successful aspects of the current brand and translate that information into a new brand name, look and messaging surrounding the science of balanced nutrition. Learning about what people were thinking and saying about the underperforming brand supplied a road map for the new brand, and for how best to talk about it.
You can also use this research to discover and then capitalize on a hot topic or trend that ties into your product by working it into your messaging. Be sure to take note of what is working for you, and work to increase your sales by continuing to reinforce points already identified as key attributes that people are responding to.
Lastly, don’t let a focus group at your fingertips, like your Facebook fans or website visitors, go untapped. Whenever you have the opportunity, ask and listen to find out how your product is being received in the marketplace.
You won’t have many opportunities to launch or re-launch a product. Make sure you take your time and do the work behind the scenes to prepare, and then follow a well-thought-out plan to communicate to your audience. This will help you take every advantage of both “new” and “improved.”
