Mastering the Product Life Cycle

As a product manager, one of your biggest challenges is keeping your product feeling fresh and compelling to customers over its entire lifecycle. Too many products follow the same disappointing trajectory - an exciting launch, a period of rapid growth, market saturation and then a slow fizzle into obsolescence.

However, some of the most successful products of all time have managed to reinvent themselves again and again, remaining vital and growing for decades. How do they do it? By mastering the art of product lifecycle management.

The Classic Product Lifecycle

Most products follow a fairly predictable lifecycle curve with four key stages:

1. Introduction - This is the launch phase when the product is brand new to the market. Demand is initially low as you work to build awareness and convince early adopters to give it a try.

2. Growth - If you're successful in the introduction stage, demand will begin rapidly accelerating as more customers embrace the product. This is the most exciting phase but also very precarious, as new competitors will start trying to crowd you out.

3. Maturity - After an intense period of growth, demand will eventually level off as most customers who will buy the product have already done so. Now the game shifts to protecting your market share and fending off competitors.

4. Decline - In this final stage, demand dries up as customers move on to the next big thing. Eventually you'll be forced to discontinue the product.

For most products, that decline phase is inevitable. But great product managers know how to reset the cycle through continual innovation and reinvention. Nylon is a classic example.

Stretching the Nylon Lifecycle

When nylon was first introduced in the 1930s as a durable synthetic fiber, its initial use was limited to parachutes, ropes and other military materials. This introduction stage lasted through World War II.

Then nylon entered its growth phase by being popularized for women's hosiery and circular knit clothing. By the 1960s, this growth started flattening out as nylon saturated the apparel market, entering its maturity stage.

But smart managers at DuPont kept finding new ways to stretch nylon's lifecycle:

• First they invigorated demand among current users by promoting nylon as a fashionable material with new colors, textures and patterns.

• Then they expanded to new user bases like men's clothing.

• Finally, they found entirely new use cases like nylon carpets and tire cord which opened vast new markets.

This cycle of reinvention kept happening over and over for decades. Every time nylon's growth would peak, managers would find novel ways to drive another growth spike through lifecycle extensions.

As a result, nylon never really entered a sustained decline phase. Its total production grew exponentially from just 50 million pounds in 1962 to over 500 million pounds just four years later.

Extending Your Product's Lifecycle

While it's unlikely your product will have decades-long relevance like nylon, the core principles of lifecycle extension are still invaluable. So how can you keep finding ways to restart your product's growth engine? Here are some key strategies:

Promote Different Usage Patterns - Look for opportunities to expand how your current user base utilizes the product. Can you enable more frequent usage? Bundle the offering with new complementary products or services? Identify untapped use cases?

Reposition for New User Segments - Which demographic or psychographic segments are you underserving or missing entirely? How could you reposition the product's branding, packaging and messaging to attract a new audience?

Leverage New Platforms and Channels - Perhaps your existing market is saturated, but there are still greenfield opportunities on emerging platforms, technologies or channels. This allows you to reset the lifecycle curve.

Expand the Product Portfolio - Sometimes the best way to revitalize growth is expanding beyond your core product through add-ons, integrations, premium versions or an entirely new but related product line. This gives you multiple products at different lifecycle stages.

The key is to build a mindset of constantly planning ahead for the next lifecycle extension from the very start. Don't wait until you're staring maturity in the face to figure out what to do next.

Start mapping out potential reinvention strategies early, while also instrumenting your product to gather behavioral data that could uncover future lifecycle extension opportunities. Then you'll be ready to execute smoothly rather than scrambling at the last minute.

The End is Just the Beginning

Of course, no product can escape an eventual decline forever. Even nylon's dominance won't last indefinitely as textile technology advances.

Rather than fighting this inevitable sunset, smart product managers anticipate and plan for it by developing a next-generation successor product. Then the lifecycle begins anew.

So the "decline" stage isn't really the end of the line, but simply the final phase that prompts you to restart the cycle with a major re-invention. Managed correctly, your products keep iterating and evolving perpetually to meet customers' evolving needs.

This cycle of continual rebirth is what separates the great products we love for decades from the flashes in the pan we quickly forget. Mastering it is what separates good product managers from great ones.

Reference:

1. Exploit the Product Life Cycle by Theodore Levitt