Understanding the Innovator stage in the Product lifecycle

The first stage of the product lifecycle is the Innovators. They can be a very useful group for getting your product or service going and for getting you a foothold in the market. They are great for latching on to new products and are happy to spend to have these new products.

When I started my career at Britain’s first always-open telephone bank (First Direct) in the mid-1990s, it was a new and exciting concept. Until then all banks required you to come into a branch and meet with one of their employees. Even simple transactions like paying in a cheque (remember them?) or checking your balance required a trip to the branch or to the ATM. They might provide a telephone service but it would be difficult and, like the branches, would close at 3.30pm in the afternoon on weekdays and only be briefly open on Saturday mornings. First Direct arrived with a new and radical approach. It appealed to people fed up with the approach of their old bank or people who had been treated badly by their old bank. But what united these people was a desire to try the new and interesting.

Our brilliant qualitative market researcher, David Douce, visited the homes of many of the new customers to interview them and find out why they liked First Direct, why they had joined First Direct and what they needed next. The first three customer’s homes he visited were all different but they all had one thing in common. They all had a parrot or parakeet. When the fourth home had one as well, he could not believe the coincidence and he even titled his report “The Fourth Parakeet”.

But this was not a coincidence. These were people who liked things to be a bit different and a bit whacky. They were Innovators. Even though only a small percentage of the British population keep a parrot or parakeet at home, the people who do are much more likely to be Innovators. This resonated with me at the time as my own father was an early First Direct customer and kept a parrot who eventually outlived him.

The trouble with Innovators

My father had also spent a lifetime acquiring early technology or products at the Innovator stage much to the frustration of me and my brothers and sister. When our friends all had brilliant Spectrums and could share their games, we had a Dragon 32 and couldn’t share with anyone. When our friends had VHS videos, we had a Betamax. We only juts managed to talk him out of investing in a LaserDisc player. For younger readers, I need to tell you that he bought the most exciting and innovative product rather than the mainstream one. Whilst this might seem cool now, it certainly was not the case at the time.

The other disadvantage of Innovators is that they can move on to new products just as quickly as they came to yours. At First Direct they were brilliant for getting us going but we knew they would move on as soon as new offers arrived. And they did. As soon as new banks like Egg, Smile and Intelligent Finance were launched many of Innovator our customers had left us to join them. But they had given us a head start and got us launched into the Early Adopter phase.  We could have innovated to keep them. Many companies adopt this approach and keep innovating to keep their customers but this is both difficult and costly. To keep producing new and great ideas is tricky. Many companies simply prefer to use the Innovators to get going, to prove their concept and to get it into the market.

As I am sure you know, most products and services meet a previously unmet consumer need. But with Innovators, sometimes, in fact quite a lot of the time, their unmet need is to have something new and innovative! So, sometimes they can be misleading to you about your products and services. At First Direct our Innovators loved being with the new and exciting bank but it wasn’t until we got to the Early Adopters that we could understand the real strengths of the service.

Talking to Innovators

This creates an interesting challenge for advertisers and communicators for a new product. The creators of a new service might be excited about its benefits and the consumer problems that it addresses. For Netflix, one of the great advantages was to avoid the late fees of Blockbuster. For First Direct, it was to be open (in every sense) whilst traditional banks were closed.

But for Innovators, the most exciting and motivating product benefit can be that it is new and different. This is exactly the feature that puts off many of the Early Adopters, and the Early and Late Majority. They don’t need reminding that its new but they really need to be told the product benefits. Innovators are a quicker and easier win with the offer of a new and different service.

If you’d like to discuss the Innovator stage on the Product lifecycle and how to talk to them, contact us to find out more.