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Every product has a lifecycle. Understanding that lifecycle is very useful when it comes to marketing a product.
Different stages of a product lifecycle require different marketing strategies. When you know which stage your product is in, you will be able to make good, informed marketing decisions.
Every product lifecycle is different, but there are four broad stages through which most products go. These four stages are known as the Product Lifecycle Model.
The four stages
The four stages are Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline.
There is another stage that might be worth noting, depending on how much pre-production work your product needs. This is the research and development stage. It comes before Introduction, and might be needed if your product required a lot of innovation and effort before bringing it to market.
1. Introduction
During the introduction stage, your aim will be to drive awareness of your product. You want to get some momentum going in order to power the next stage, but you also want to bring in customers who will keep coming back.
So, this stage is all about building awareness, interest, and loyalty. Try things like introductory offers, free samples, sign-up discounts, and free trials. To build awareness, you could also run a wide-ranging promotional campaign.
2. Growth
If you play your cards right in the Introduction stage, sales and awareness will quickly level up and your product will enter the Growth stage.
The Growth stage is exciting. It's a time of expansion, profit, and development. In order to meet increasing demand, you may find that you have to ramp up production, bring in new investors, and hire new staff. Costs may increase, but so will profits.
As the Growth stage continues, you will also gather a lot of valuable data on your customers. This will help you to refine, personalise, and target your marketing. Rather than casting a wide promotional net, you will be able to focus on the people who are most likely to buy your product. You can also use your new customer insights to build loyalty.
3. Maturity
Maturity is the most profitable stage of the product lifecycle. Costs go down as you hit your stride, and revenue comes in. You also have to do less work driving awareness, as you have hopefully built up a loyal customer base who keep coming back.
However, you may also find that your profits start to plateau during the maturity stage. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it could be a sign that your product is entering the fourth and final stage of its lifecycle.
4. Decline
Finally, your profits plateau, then fall. This could happen for a number of reasons, including competitor products hitting the market and consumer apathy.
There are various strategies you can use to regain momentum and push your product back into the Maturity or even Growth stages. For example, if your product is losing market share you could make efforts to differentiate it from competitors.
If that drop at the end looks scary, it's not supposed to. While not all products hit every stage, no product is completely timeproof. In fact, the Decline stage can even be good for your brand, as it encourages you to innovate and freshen things up.
So, don't panic when the Maturity stage approaches. For a start, you can often push a product back into Growth with the right strategy. And allowing a product to mature and decline doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's sometimes better to bring in something new than to keep pushing a product nobody wants.
How the model works in practice
Take a book launch as an example. The Introduction stage begins long before the book actually goes on sale: teasing it to followers, sending advance copies to industry figures, gathering reviews, and lining up an interview series to promote it. So when it finally hits the market, the market is ready for it.
In Growth, sales climb and positive reviews keep coming in, building momentum. That momentum helps the book gain publicity, which generates interest from prominent industry figures, which pushes publicity further still.
When the book hits Maturity, sales become consistent and sustained, but eventually they may start to plateau. Maybe its premier audience will already own copies. Maybe competitor books will hit the market. To push for more growth you can promote it in blogs, ask industry figures to review it, add bonus content, or submit it for awards.
In Decline, you could update the book and release a new edition with new case studies, or write a whole new one on a different topic. The important thing is that the success of the first edition prepares the way for an update. When the first edition is popular and well respected, people will trust the second edition to give just as much quality and value.
Use the product lifecycle to make the right marketing decisions
The Product Lifecycle Model helps you to pick the right marketing strategy at the right time.
