The Importance of Timing the Market When Starting a Business

You’ve done your homework. You’ve researched your market, you’ve identified a need, and you’ve developed a best-in-class product to meet that need.

Now you’re ready to introduce your innovation, but before you jump into the deep end just because can, ask yourself: should you? Is the market truly ready for all you have to offer? The simple reality is that it often doesn’t really matter how superb your product or service is if you time your launch ineffectively. In fact, the success or failure of your go-to-market strategy may well depend on your timing.

Why Timing Matters

No matter what your industry, product, or service, the key to a successful business is the ability to meet the consumers’ needs better than your competitors can. To do that, though, you need to be able to accurately identify not only what your target audience needs today, but also what they are going to want in the foreseeable and unprecedented future.

That means that the ability to identify emerging market trends will determine the fate of your startup both in the near term and the long term. After all, product and service innovations take time, and you have to begin preparing to provide for your consumers before they even feel the need.

Too Little Too Late

To be sure, timing the market effectively can feel something like being a fortune-teller. You’re going to need both the analytical skills and a future-focused vision to be able to anticipate today what the market will look like tomorrow.

However, if you focus on being proactive rather than reactive in the market, you can help to shape market demand, rather than leaving it all to the fates.

On the other hand, if you wait until the market has already matured to launch your business, then you’re already too late. When it comes to starting a business, it’s far better to enter the market a bit early so that your business can drive and define the market rather than entering a field that is already populated by competitors.

When you’re the first in your class, then consumers are almost certain to identify the product or service with your brand. That’s going to put later entrants into a subordinate position. They will always be playing catch-up with your product or service. They will always be compared with your company.

Listening to the Market

As important as it is to enter the market early and ideally lead in your field, there is a caveat. You don’t want to invest precious time, effort, and resources in commanding a market that does not exist or isn’t emerging.

This, again, speaks to the critical importance of research. Before you launch a business or endeavour to bring a product to market, you have to ensure its prospective viability. This means that you’re going to need to devote significant time to assessing how legal, economic, and social variables may impact your product development strategy.

After all, it makes little sense to invest in developing a product that may soon be rendered obsolete by an emerging innovation. Likewise, if new tax laws will go into effect at the start of the fiscal year that will render the product prohibitively expensive to produce or purchase, then you should probably turn your attention to another development project while you wait for market forecasts to improve.

Timing in the Face of Uncertainty

There’s no question that these last few years have been volatile. There’s been a public health crisis. We’ve faced protracted lockdowns, extended business furloughs, and devastating supply chain crises. The threat of global economic recession persists.

And that means that the market is rife with uncertainty, making the task of timing your company’s launch effectively even more difficult. Nevertheless, even significant uncertainty does not negate the importance of market timing. If anything, it increases its importance.

As we’ve already seen, being an early entrant to the market is far more desirable than coming late to the party. That doesn’t mean, though, that you have to disregard the factors that are rendering the market unstable., at least for the foreseeable future.

What it does mean, though, is that you have to be prepared to manage the uncertainty even as you time your market launch. You may, for instance, need to scale back your go-to-market approach.

Instead of entering the market with 50,000 units of a new product, for example, launch your business with 25,000 and then grow systematically in alignment with market demand. Instead of onboarding 20 new employees to get your startup off the ground, begin with a core staff of 10 and recruit as needed.

Spotting Consumer Needs

The key is to streamline your market entry while at the same time ensuring that your launch coincides with the green shoots of a real and growing consumer need. For instance, paying close attention to consumer reviews, questions, comments, and complaints is an ideal way to understand what expectations are going unmet or are being only partially addressed by existing companies (including your own). But don’t just pay attention to customer feedback, engage with it. Build rapport with your customers by humanizing yourself and showing empathy for their needs and suggestions.

Related insights can be gleaned by soliciting customer satisfaction surveys. Through this kind of rigorous, on-going monitoring of your target customer’s responses to existing products and services, you will be better able to identify opportunities for fulfilling unfilled market needs.

By introducing your brand ahead of your prospective rivals, your company will be in the driver’s seat when it comes to setting product standards, even as your startup comes to be aligned and identified with your flagship products and services. You will be the innovator and driver of the market, and your future growth will be timed with the growth of demand.

The Takeaway

You can offer the most innovative products in the industry. Your service can be second-to-none. But if you don’t time the market effectively when you determine to launch your business, you may as well be dooming your company to failure. Timing the market means ensuring that you’re entering the market just as consumers begin to feel the need for the product or service you offer. It means anticipating future market demand and preparing to meet it. It also means ensuring that your product development and business launch strategies can accommodate and adapt to changing market conditions and lingering economic uncertainty.