In marketing, the life cycle of a product or service refers to all the stages it will go through. This ranges from product conception to its end of life (cessation of production and market withdrawal). During the different phases of the life cycle, the product will enter the market, develop until it reaches a certain maturity, and then decline. What are the benefits of engaging your community across the 5 stages of your products or services’ life cycle? Trustt explains…
What are the 5 Stages of a Product Life Cycle?
The 5 phases of the life cycle are traditionally defined as follows:
1 – Conception: product development according to a concept;
2 – Launch: introduction of the product to the market;
3 – Growth: product sales are increasing;
4 – Maturity: stability phase where the product is profitable, without gaining or losing market share;
5 – Decline: end of product life with decreasing sales and profitability, until production ceases.
It is important to study the life cycle of products or services because analyzing this curve will allow for strategic decisions to be made, based for example on the identification of market segments and the definition of target consumers. This directly affects the marketing strategy and can lead to the following actions: introduction of a new product to replace a declining product, product development or service innovation to return to the growth phase. Proposing an evolution with a well-optimized V2 on a product can indeed extend its lifespan by several years.
Why Should You Engage Your Community at Each Stage?
The Trustt tool allows brands to place their community at the center of their marketing strategy by engaging their own community – and developing it – at each stage of the product cycle. There are many benefits for brands and companies, starting with optimal product development. But engaging your community involves a different strategy depending on the cycle phase:
Community Co-creation
Instead of designing a new product or service only internally, it is possible to “opt for co-creation and benefit from community insights to refine the R&D phase. By relying on highly segmented feedback from your target, a more qualitative product will be developed, more in line with their expectations and desires. There are different examples of” actions that allow you to “achieve this Product Market Fit (or the” perfect match between a product and its market).
To engage the community from the conception phase, social listening is an excellent tool. By listening to its community, a company will gather valuable data: product quality, efficiency, problems encountered…. Between feedback on prototypes and comments on social profiles (Facebook, Instagram…), consumers leave many traces of what they think, like or dislike about the product or service.
At this stage, the entire community can also be more directly solicited with collaborative or participatory marketing techniques, such as campaigns allowing them to choose elements of the future product (color, shape, price, functionality…).
Another possibility is to identify strong elements of the community, influencers or loyal customers, and make them brand ambassadors who participate in product development.
After the conception stage, it’s time to move on to the testing and refining phase of the product or service. Here again, the contribution of an engaged community will be beneficial. Indeed, before the actual launch, a panel of consumers from the community can be assembled to test the prototype. This allows for identifying the degree of interest of the target audience for the products or services being developed. It’s an opportunity to adjust the concept based on feedback, to stand out from the competition and to avoid commercial failure.
Inspired by co-creation? Find examples of successful community co-creations here.
The Launch Phase
Product or service campaigns can take place through the implementation of Trustt software on your e-commerce site. This involves calling upon a panel of ambassadors perfectly identified by SophIA®, the smart matching technology that selects profiles according to their affinity with the products and services. These perfectly selected ambassadors will provide detailed feedback on the handling, operation, use, and price of the products and services.
If the community is engaged, then members will be happy t “o be involved in these phases and will feel valued t” o be listened to by the company.
Leverage Awareness to Increase Your Conversions
During the launch and growth phases, advertising efforts are substantial. This is why it’s interesting to rely on an active and engaged community to ensure good communication channels.
By identifying influencers within its community, the company can set up an ambassador program. This offers great visibility against the competition and excellent conversions during this stage. It’s a form of advertising or promotion at a lower cost.
Consider Diversification to Extend the Lifespan of Your Products
It’s important for a company to regularly consult its community and gather customer feedback, even once the maturity phase is reached, in order to offer a better customer experience. Moreover, this allows the company to continuously update and evolve its products and services. This opens the door to innovation and ensures the longevity and popularity of the offer among the public, thanks to good product management and a good sales volume. It’s also a good way to avoid saturation among customers and to push back the decline phase or the flight to competitors. By postponing product decline, waste production is also limited, and the company embraces a more sustainable approach.
To summarize, engaging your community at all stages of the product lifecycle allows you to reap numerous benefits. Among other things, it allows you to:
- Drive your marketing strategy, fueled by data at each stage;
- Refine targeting;
- Understand customer needs and desires;
- Launch a Market Fit product or service;
- Extend the lifespan and profitability of the offer;
- Limit costs and maximize profits;
- Optimize the management of your product or service catalog;
- Renew community engagement;
- Stand out from competitors.
Brands and companies therefore have every interest in soliciting their community at each stage of the product lifecycle in order to extend its curve.
The solution developed by Trustt helps companies collect insights and proprietary data. You can thus develop products or services that are closest to your customers’ expectations and needs. Request a demo to discover how you too can create a virtuous circle between your brand and your consumers.
