The Lifecycle of Product Marketing Explored

Lifecycle of Product Marketing Explored. A product’s life cycle is divided into four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

This notion is intended for use by management and marketing professionals as a decision element. Especially when it comes to increasing promotion, lowering costs, expanding into new areas, or redesigning packaging.

What is Product Marketing Lifecycle?

The product marketing lifecycle is a core process for product management and marketing. Its aim is to understand the factors that drive a product through its life cycle.

In this case, the product marketing lifecycle starts with the release of a single or an album (introduction) and ends with its discontinuation (decline). The product marketing lifecycle includes four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Four stages of Product Lifecycle

What are the four stages of the Product Lifecycle and how does it work?

Each stage has its own challenges and opportunities. The most important principle of product marketing is to know how to manage these stages. And apply the right tactics in each stage.

The concept of product marketing lifecycle is widely used in business strategy development. And implementation as well as commercial planning.

Some business models are based on it. To be more exact, they are based on categorizing products into four groups. Hence, according to their life cycle: introductory (new), growth (growth), mature (mainstream), and declining (decline). 

Each stage has its own characteristics and needs unique marketing tactics.

Let’s see what those are for each stage: 

Introduction Stage

In this stage, the level of competition is low because no other brands exist in this market segment; however, there are some competitors in other segments that may be interested in converting their products into alternatives for yours. Therefore, you should move fast if you want to stay in this market segment after your competitors enter it later on.

In order to do this, you must create awareness about your brand within your target audience by creating a unique positioning for your product and by making sure that it attracts attention from potential customers throughout all channels of promotion including social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram.

You should also make your first purchase extremely attractive so that customers can try your product without any risk or effort on their part when they purchase it. 

Growth Stage

During this stage, you should expand your customer base by making your brand more attractive to new audiences through a variety of promotional activities such as social media campaigns or viral videos targeted at specific groups including women or men aged 20-30 years old who like rock music or sports.

You should also expand into new markets and make your product more affordable by lowering its price, increasing your profits, reducing costs, or all of the above. 

Maturity Stage

In this stage, your brand becomes a household name. This means that it is time to stop aggressive marketing methods and instead focus on quality and reputation to attract new customers. You can also target loyal customers by offering them special discounts or other incentives to encourage repeat purchases. 

Decline Stage

At this stage, it is time to focus all your attention on being profitable. Therefore, you must reduce expenses by closing unprofitable factories or by firing unnecessary employees, reducing prices in order to attract more customers, and so on.

If you manage to do it successfully, you may also consider an exit strategy that will allow you to sell your brand at a high price after its value has increased.

The decline stage is the last part of the product marketing lifecycle; however, it is not the end of the product itself given that many products are redesigned or upgraded to be sold again as a whole new product with new features and functions.