Expert's Panel

A collection of timely and important topics posed to our panel of experts.

Is there any value in spending money on promoting a mature, entrenched product?

 (ep109)
1. Not much! Remember the object, strategically is to minimize your costs. Targeted cheap promotion such as application notes and very direct emails to target customers might be worth it.
2. I agree, but there is the idea of branding. I had a customer with a mature, entrenched product. We promoted the fact that we were the originators of the product and it helped create the brand.
3. If this product still has a substantial active life of perhaps five years, you may want to rethink the answer. Competitors may see your lack of promotion as an opportunity to unseat you and you may need promotion to make sure you see the expected revenue stream. The value is in discouraging an interloper.
4. I had such a product and we enhanced it, re-branded it, re-named it, and didn’t introduce it as a new product, but put it back into the growth part of the life cycle curve. We did a lot of promotion of this new modification and milked it for a long period of time.