Either as an entrepreneur or if you work for businesses, it is crucial to understand the product life cycle in business. Why? Because it helps to identify what stage your item is in so you can take the right actions at the right time.
This would help it from becoming obsolete and reaching the end of its life cycle. You would be able to prevent it by making better marketing and business decisions. In this article, we would learn about what the product life cycle is and its stages.
What Is The Product Life Cycle Strategy In Business
It is the duration of time from an item being launched for the consumption of users till it is removed from the market. This process is usually broken down into four phases: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
But we have broken it down into six in this guide just to provide a more detailed understanding to you. Our six phases are development, introduction, growth, maturity, saturation, and decline.
The Six Stages of Product Life Cycle
These six stages are handy for managers and marketers to determine further strategies to prevent the removal of items from the market. These strategies include advertising schedules, amendments in pricing, packaging redesigns, expansion to new items, et cetera.
Let’s wade through them one at a time!
- Development
Starting with the first, development stage in which the object is still not yet launched in the marketplace. It is the time when companies put their great efforts into bringing investors.
Item’s effectiveness is tested and plan strategies for the launch are. In this phase, companies and investors invest without getting any returns as no sales are made yet. The length of this phase can vary depending on the complexity of the item.
What should be the strategy here?
Though your product has not been introduced to the consumers, you can still begin to build hype and buzz around it. You can do this through several ways such as early consumer research and testimonials. Your marketing goal during this time should be to spread awareness about your goods and appear as an innovative company.
For example, you are about to launch an essay writing service. So, make sure to create buzz regarding it in the student community. Connect with the students aka your potential clients and establish yourself as a creative assisting company.
- Introduction
Here comes the second stage in which goods are launched and introduced to their potential customers. The way it launches depends on how low or high the budget is. The marketing teams build awareness through numerous ways to reach out to prospects.
Their goal is to convert prospects into customers and generate leads. In this phase, just because the item is newly launched, sales and demand are low. However, the role of marketers is to build demand and they do it by advertising and running different marketing campaigns.
A lot of times, they distribute testing samples to their prospects to inform them about the item. If they like it, then they would end up buying the item.
What should be the strategy here?
The strategy that should be used here is fun. Inbound marketing and content marketing are generally used for promotion. One of the most important and useful techniques here is to educate your prospects about the problem they are unaware of.
Educate them on how your product is the solution to their problem and how it is more beneficial compared to one of the competitors. If your marketing strategy makes it to success, then it results in growth
- Growth
In the growth stage, consumers have accepted the problem they are facing, and not just that but they believe your goods are the best solution for it. Therefore, they keep buying, the demand grows hence profits too. By the time your newly launched item expands, the competition will also grow more. Your competitors would notice your success and would want to take your place.
What should be the strategy here?
In this phase, marketing strategies should shift from getting clients to building a strong brand image. As your brand will grow, introduce new channels for distribution and better support services. Make sure to advertise these things as well.
- Maturity
The maturity stage is more of a steady level compared to the above growth phase. Here you might need to lower your pricing a bit or use some other strategies to stay on top of the competition.
What should be the strategy here?
In this stage, you might feel the prick of fear as the sales are not going further high. Here comes the critical part where you need to appear as a leader and make your brand unique. Constantly grow and improve your existing items and let your audience be aware of them.
Suppose, if your business offers diploma assignment writing services, advertise in a way that shows your services have got better than before. This would enhance attraction and pull customers towards you.
- Saturation
Saturation is the phase where your competitors have started accumulating a portion of the market. You would experience neither growth nor decrease in sales. This is the second last stage. So, companies need to be alert and take the right actions to prevent their item from reaching the decline phase.
What should be the strategy here?
As the competition is at its peak in this phase, so represent the product of your brand as superior over the other similar ones. Achieve this by making amendments to the features, brand awareness, price, and customer service.
- Decline
And if you failed in the above stage then sadly your sales would decrease due to the extremely increased competition. As such competition would be hard to overcome due to the arrival of new trends. So, at this phase, either innovate their item in some way or stop manufacturing it and even sell the company.
What should be the strategy here?
The decline stage can be hard to ignore especially if the entire market has reached a decline. However, some companies who still don’t want to give up on their items can reduce prices, explore new markets, and add new features. Companies can also look for other countries and continents to begin a brand new cycle.
Conclusion
You must have realized by wading till now the importance of a product life cycle in business, how many stages are, and how they work. It helps marketers to examine goods and their relationship with their target market. You can use this lifecycle to examine competition, costs, profits, and longevity.
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