Understanding Product Life Cycle (Smart Monday/Product)

Once a Day Marketing™ featured video blog: Product Life Cycle and Your Marketing

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Smart Monday and we are taking a look at the classic product life cycle and how that impacts your marketing.

Products evolve a lot like people.  They are born, grow, mature, age and then pass on.  There are four stages to the classic product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

Introduction is when an idea is transformed into a product and introduced into the market place.  Production and marketing costs are initially high and profits may be low at the outset.

Next is growth.  Sales are climbing, consumers are adopting the product and the company is beginning to make a profit.

In the maturity phase the product has been on the market for a while.  Sales are still climbing but profits are declining because competition has now entered the market.  Other companies like the original product so they are emulating it and taking away market share.  This is the time before the product slides into decline that marketers have to consider how they are going to remarket this product.

During the decline stage, when sales and profits are falling off, a business has to evaluate whether they want to reinvent the product or retire it and bring a new innovation into the market place.

You can alter your marketing strategy anywhere during the process based on the marketing mix that is required at that time.  At introduction perhaps you employ more promotion strategies and later on move into leveraging pricing strategies.

Remember that the life cycle is different for every product.  Some may rapidly go up and then decline and others might take longer so you have to be the expert in analyzing your own product life cycle to determine the marketing strategies that you will use.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at noon (MDT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

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