Birth and Growth Through Your Marketing Product Life Cycle
Your product’s marketing product life cycle is similar to a child’s life. Getting either off to a good start makes a difference in how far they go in life and how much reward you reap.
If you are a small business owner that extra profit can mean the difference in success or failure, a good business or a great one.
Getting off to a good start in the marketing product life cycle requires marketing to breathe life into your product.
Introduction (Birth) Stage of Marketing Product Life Cycle
The introduction stage of your marketing product life cycle represents the birth of your new product with marketing giving it life. Like a child, your marketing in this stage, requires your time and money without giving much back.
You have to market hard to nurture your baby product. You have to show it off and emphasize how it benefits potential customers.
At this stage of your marketing product life cycle, your major purpose is to get a return on your development and research investment. So prices are often high while demand is still relatively low.
You may want to delay recovery of development expenses in order to attract more customers. If you offer incentives to buy and promotions to attract new customers while keeping prices low, you can attract more potential customers from your target market.
Write and time messages announcing your new product. Direct those messages to your target market and concentrate those messages on the greatest benefits that your product offers target market members. You will reap far more profits that way than if you send marketing messages to everyone.
Now that you have introduced you new product to your target market, it’s time to move to the second stage of the marketing product life cycle.
Child or Growth of Marketing Product Life Cycle
As your marketing grows, you must continue to win more customers, retailers, and distribution avenues.
Continued marketing growth is required at this stage. Just as you support a child with lots of attention, love and care during childhood, you must support your product with enhanced marketing now.
Marketing during this stage should grow and expand to saturate your target market with knowledge of your product and a desire for its benefits.
To assure consistent and continued growth through this second stage of the marketing product life cycle, use market segmentation. It helps your product grow by:
discovering more target markets for the product, differentiating potential retail partners to determine those providing the best fit with the product and determining the best geographic areas for new growth and the best distributors to reach those areas.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that your product may not grow in the same way or at the same speed as other products. Like children, products grow differently. Don’t expect every product to mature through the marketing product life cycle the same.
The difference between a child and your product is that you want your product to spend as much time as possible in the growth stage of the marketing product life cycle. The longer it is in this and following stages, the longer its life becomes.
You can use market segmentation to find ways to extend the life of your product.
Information revealed through market segmentation, improves your marketing through each stage of the marketing product life cycle.