When it comes to managing your product’s lifecycle, you must be in tune with the market and with your audience. You must be close to the product, and you must learn to establish what stage you are at and when. Managing what will happen or occur next is essential for any product. When you can plan, and you can see what is going on, you ensure that you have more control over the whole process. A product’s lifecycle includes introduction and development, growth, stability, and then decline. Establishing where you are will allow you to focus on the next step.
Focusing on Where You Are Now
So, are you just launching a product, or are you in a period of growth? When you have established where you are at, you can then begin to move forwards; planning and preparing in advance will ensure that your product is as successful as possible. If for some reason, you are struggling to work out what stage your product is at, then you should consult sales figures and data. This information will allow you to be able to clearly see when changes have occurred and taken place.
Utilizing Software
Software will allow you to quickly and easily see what stage you are at, as it will have collected and recorded important and essential data that has been entered. From here, this data can be manipulated and used to create a plan. Product lifecycle software can quickly and easily allow you to say what needs to happen next and why. If you fail to use adequate software to report on your product’s lifecycle, you will struggle to get the most out of each product.
Using a Professional Agency
If you are in a period of launch or growth, then you need to focus on marketing and advertising using an advertising agency, as this will allow you to focus on monitoring sales and data. Agencies have experience and knowledge under their belts, which you may have too, but when you are closely looking at and following a product through every step of its life, you can struggle to see the bigger picture. Agencies and professionals are also necessary when you have multiple products on the go, all at different stages. Simultaneous offerings can be difficult to manage effectively and efficiently.
Knowing When to Make Decisions
Decisions can be made by evaluating and looking at data. Monitoring your product lifecycle will allow you to see when your product is headed for its next stage. It is important to be consistent with monitoring and evaluating information as this will affect sales and development. All these areas can affect the decisions you make moving forwards, and if you make the wrong decision, you could potentially be cutting your product’s lifecycle short. Similarly, if you drag out a product lifecycle too much, then customers and end-users may question and query what you are up to. For example, they may think that you are trying to get as much money out of them as possible, and as a result, they may well think that you don’t care about advancing and enhancing products, which ultimately will affect your customer retention.
