Marketing Product Life Cycle: Give Your Product A Great Start

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.Extra sales and profit can boost your business from a good one to a great one, or maybe even from failure to success.This article focuses on the first two stages of the marketing product life cycle because they represent birthing and growing your product.Introduction (Birth) Stage of Marketing Product Life CycleJust 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.When you have a new baby, you want to show it off. You want all your friends and family to observe how wonderful your new baby is. You should feel just as strongly about your new product.Your primary marketing goal at this stage of your marketing product life cycle is to build demand for your baby product and to recoup your research and development costs. But because your product is so young, it is not popular yet. Demand is low, while prices are usually at their highest in this stage.But you may want to keep prices low to encourage more people to discover your new product. Keeping prices low and offering promotions and incentives to attract initial customers helps you to attract your new product's greatest admirers and potential buyers. It separates them from everybody else and determines to whom you should direct your product's birth announcements.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.After you have christened and promoted your baby product to the world, it's time to nurture your product's growth through childhood with a marketing growth spurt.Child or Growth of Marketing Product Life CycleIn this second stage, your product grows quickly because you market it to more distributors, retailers and customers.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.Your marketing goal at this stage of the marketing product life cycle is to introduce your child product to as many target market members as possible. You want them to see how your product can benefit them.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.ConclusionThe marketing product life cycle only provides a model of how products and your marketing should grow. Products move through the cycle differently, just as children advance through life differently.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.Information revealed through market segmentation, improves your marketing through each stage of the marketing product life cycle.