There’s really no reason to beat around the bush, so I’ll just come out and say it. More than 95% of new products launched by established companies each year fail, according to an AcuPoll study.

Ouch, right?

This troublesome stat is due to a variety of factors: poor launch timing, inadequate testing, limited market size, lack of process and coordination, and inaccurate messaging. The good news is that there are some recent statistics that give us B2B marketers insight into how we can turn around this shaky track record. Here are three stats that will change the way you think about and plan your product marketing strategy.

1. B2B buyers conduct an average of 12 searches before ever jumping on a specific brand’s site (Click to tweet!)

This stat demonstrates how imperative it is that your website follow the three C’s of messaging: clear, consistent, and concise.

Your competitors are all fighting for the attention of your potential customers, so when a visitor comes to your website, they must immediately see value in your product as a potential solution for the challenge you propose to solve. To get to this razor sharp messaging, you’ll want to know exactly WHO you are talking to, and WHAT value you offer.

The concept is basic in theory, but so challenging to put into practice as you juggle competing priorities and myriad feedback from other departments like your sales and customer support teams.

Regardless, it’s critical that you stay clear, consistent, and concise across all your content. Here’s a list of questions to ask your team before distributing any piece of content in your product marketing strategy:

• Is this content asset using language used daily by professionals in your target market?
• Is this content asset tailored specifically to one of your identified personas?
• Is the value prop messaging used in this asset consistent with other content assets?
• Does this asset drive someone deeper into the buyer’s journey?

If you can answer YES to these four key questions, your content is on the right track to being engaging enough for your target audience and get you heard above the noise of your competitors.

2. 77% of buyers want different content at each stage of the product research process (Click to tweet!)

Content has become the cornerstone of modern product marketing—the days of simply creating a pitch deck and sales sheet to support a product launch are a thing of the past. In fact, 60% of people are inspired to seek out a product after reading content about it, and 70% of consumers would rather learn about a brand via articles than ads. The takeaway here is that quality content is now key to your product marketing strategy.

Try your best not to be reactive and avoid building new content ad hoc and in the middle of your product launch. Reactive marketing practices can lead to disjointed messaging and disruptive funnel activity. Instead, plan and finalize content at each stage of the buyer journey in advance of a product launch. If you must add content later, make sure that it folds seamlessly into your existing plan.

Schedule easy-to-consume, top-of-funnel content at the engage stage, such as an infographic or SlideShare. Use this content to drive readers to gated, information-rich content at the lead generation stage. Then drop product-centric content at the marketing/sales qualified stages. By planning this process early rather than mid-launch, this sets up your team for success from day one, and will allow for more bandwidth when ad hoc projects do pop up during your launch campaign.

3. We humans now have an 8-second attention span—one second less than a goldfish (Click to tweet!)

Yeah—just let that sink in for a minute.

In my opinion, this statistic from a 2013 Microsoft study deserves a national PSA. Attention world, we now have shorter attention spans than Nemo! It’s a sad, sad day for human kind…but I digress.

Despite this rather embarrassing news, this statistic does have huge ramifications for us B2B marketers. If our messaging doesn’t do the following in eight seconds or less, we’ve lost our opportunity to engage a potential customer.

• Establish credibility by demonstrating that you understand the target audience’s industry and the challenges that exist within it
• Communicate the unique value proposition that immediately addresses their business needs
• Distribute strategic content where they are already interacting, whether it’s social channels, email, search, etc.

The takeaway here is twofold:

1. This new reality pushes us B2B marketers to write clearer, more consistent messages when it comes to our product(s).

2. We MUST do our research and measure success (over and over again) to ensure that our messaging and product positioning are resonating with our target market.