Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Marketing Product Life Cycle: Give Your Product A Great Start

By Linda P. Morton

Extending your product through each stage of its marketing product life cycle increases your sales and profits.

Extra sales and profit can boost your business from a good one to a great one, or maybe even from failure to success.

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

Just as a new born baby needs your constant attention, your new product needs constant marketing. It also demands time and money without returning much but dependence.

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.

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.

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.

Growth (Child) Stage of Marketing Product Life Cycle

This stage equates to childhood, the time of greatest growth. Part of that growth comes from marketing to more retailers, distributors and customers.

You must assure that your target market gets to know and likes your new product. You need sustained marketing growth to help you sell more and increase your profits.

You want your marketing at this stage of the marketing product life cycle, to enlarge your product's support system. It needs to saturate your target market and assure that everyone in your target market knows about your product and how it can benefit them.

Market segmentation will aid you in growing your product through this stage of the marketing product development cycle by:

expanding your customer base to include new target markets, determining which retailers provide the best match with your product, and researching which geographic locations offer the most new growth opportunities and which distributors best reach those locations.

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.

Market segmentation can extend the marketing product life cycle and the total life of your product.

It provides research to successfully market your product through all stages of the marketing product life cycle.

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