Diffusion of Innovation

Marketing a new product requires a lot in terms of planning, promoting, etc.

The theory of diffusions of innovations tries to explain why a population will adopt a new product at different times.  To understand how your small business can use this theory to master the launch of a product, let’s look at what the theory says:

When an innovating product hits the market, it will have a distinct product life cycle. The speed of adoption among users and consumers will basically determine the length and extremity of a product’s life cycle.

The theory suggests there are five main groups of adopters in a population. Below is a brief description of each group of adopters for an innovating product:

• Innovators: These are the first people to take a risk and accept your product. They are usually highly sociable people who have not only a lot of influence on a population, but enough financial stability to take risks. These prominent social leaders will have a large influence on the community.

 

• Early Adopters:  These people are usually the opinion leaders in their communities. They may have a lot to say on Facebook and Twitter or they may just simply be a “people-person.” They are also pretty financially stable, but are more discreet about their adoptions than innovators.

 

• Early Majority: The early and late majority groups are where most of a population will lay.  In particular, the early majority group adopts an innovation quite some time (depending on the product) after the first two groups. They don’t have positions of opinion leadership in their communities, but do have higher social statuses.

 

• Late Majority: These people are a lot more stubborn than the early majority and will typically wait until they are certain that there are benefits from this new product to adopt it. This group will wait until a majority of the community has adopted the product before they themselves skeptically adopt it.

 

• Laggards: This last group of innovation adopters tend to have lower social status, low financial stability, are usually older in age, and only really in contact with family and close friends.  These people may adopt the product but may also never adopt the product.

 

To successfully strategize using this model, it’s important to understand your product and what sections of your community (age, location, gender, etc.) will fall under each of these categories. Each group of adopters should be targeted in a different way.

How to use it?

Sure, this model has a lot to do with new tech products, but it can be used in just about any industry.

For a moment, pretend you run a new business that sells protein powders and supplements. You believe your product is much different than other protein powders, so you consider it an innovation. Let’s look at how you can reach each of these groups through your different communication channels:

• Innovators: Bring the product to fitness expos. Reach out to athletic influencers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook and send them a free product in exchange for a shout-out.

 

• Early Adopters: Offer a discount code to Early Adopters that they can give to their followers in exchange for a small commission. Discount codes increase your sales and create loyal costumers.

 

• Early Majority: Your work with the above two groups will hopefully aid the attraction of this group. But, in the case that this is not occurring, try Instagram and Facebook ads and promotion, create a blog section on your website, post recipes and how-to’s on your social media.

• Late Majority: As we said, this group is very skeptical, so testimonials and reviews will be very beneficial in attracting this group. Ask customers to leave reviews on websites like Yelp! to help attract this group.

 

• Laggards: This group is not really worth extreme investment, unless by chance you think trying to attract them is extremely beneficial. This group is this stubborn, so marketing to them will be wasted time.

This type of marketing strategy, where you essentially create 4-5 different strategies for one product, will be most beneficial if your product is an innovation. If your company launches many new products throughout the year, this type of strategy many not be as practical time-wise.

If your company is ready to take the next steps in promoting your new products, reach out to InMark Media today! InMark’s team of professionals in social media, design, brand and website development, can help get your strategic plan on its feet.

source https://inmarkmg.com/uncategorized/diffusion-of-innovation/