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Marketing Product Life Cycle: Give Your Product A Great Start

By Linda P. Morton

When you extend your marketing product life cycle, you increase your profits. The longer life you infuse into each stage of your marketing product life cycle, the more money you make.

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.

The first two stages breathe the most life into your profit potential and are the focus of this article.

Introduction or 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.

Just as you send birth announcements to let all your friends and family know about your new baby, you should send marketing messages to let everyone in your target market know about your new product.

Although demand is often low at this stage of your marketing product life cycle, you need to recover some of your product development expenses. Thus, many business owners charge more at this stage. This limits demand even further.

Marketing at this stage in your marketing product life cycle often concentrates on running promotions to attract new customers and offering incentives to get them to try your new product. This type of marketing enables you to find the people from your target market who are most likely to buy your new product.

If you were sending birth announcements about a new baby, you'd send them to your friends and family because they are the people most interested. You should do the same for your new product. Direct your marketing messages about your new product to target market members. They are the people most interested and most likely to buy your product.

Once your target market members all know about your new product, you are ready for the second stage of your marketing product life cycle. This is a time when your new product and your marketing grow rapidly.

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.

The best way to grow your product through this second stage of your marketing product life cycle is by using market segmentation. It will help you 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.

Summary

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.

But unlike a child, you want your product to spend as much time as possible in the growth and following stages.

You can use market segmentation to find ways to extend the life of your product.

You can use market segmentation research to enhance your marketing in every stage of the marketing product life cycle.

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