In my last few emails, I’ve explored the power of timing in marketing — from trigger moments to competitor vulnerability windows.

Today I want to focus on one more kind of trigger moment that might be the most powerful timing opportunity of all: life stage transitions.

When someone moves, gets married, has a child, or changes jobs, something remarkable happens to their purchasing patterns.

Those patterns completely blow up.

Decades of habitual buying decisions suddenly come up for review.

Product loyalties that survived countless competitor attempts are suddenly vulnerable.

And the barriers to trying something new temporarily collapse.

These life transitions create what behavioral economists call “discontinuities” — rare moments when our arch rival the status quo loses its grip on our decision-making.

In I Need That, I explain how the status quo bias is one of the most powerful forces protecting established products. We default to what we know, even when better alternatives exist.

But major life transitions temporarily suspend this bias, creating extraordinary opportunities for new products to gain consideration.

Think about what happens when someone moves to a new city:

• They need new service providers (doctors, dentists, mechanics)
• They get excited about the feeling of change
• Their shopping patterns disrupt (new stores, new commute routes)
• They often need entirely new categories of products
• Previous brand loyalties face reconsideration in a new environment

This explains why Target famously developed algorithms to identify pregnant shoppers even before they even announced their pregnancies.

Pregnancy and new parenthood represent the most significant buying pattern disruption in a person’s life. And the rare opportunity to establish DOZENS of new brand loyalties at once.

The key is identifying which life stage transitions most directly affect your product category:

• New homeowners need everything from furniture to lawn care tools
• New parents suddenly prioritize safety, convenience, and time-saving
• New graduates transition from student budgets to career spending
• Recent retirees shift from accumulation to lifestyle experiences
• New remote workers (or newbie consultants) suddenly need home office setups and productivity tools

Product Payoff: Home security company SimpliSafe‘s founders Chad and Eleanor Laurans built their business by targeting new homeowners during their first 90 days of ownership. Rather than competing head-on with established security companies for existing homeowners (who rarely switch), SimpliSafe focused exclusively on the narrow window when people are establishing new home routines. Their welcome packages arrived strategically timed with other new homeowner materials, positioned as part of the “setting up home” process rather than a security system switch.

Action for today: Identify which life stage transition most directly impacts your product category, then develop a simple trigger identification system. This could be as straightforward as asking “Have you recently moved/married/changed jobs?” in your lead capture forms, or as sophisticated as creating partnerships with companies that naturally interact with people during these transitions (moving companies, wedding planners, job sites).

The goal is to recognize when a prospect is experiencing a major life change and position your product as part of their new normal.

Have you noticed YOUR purchasing patterns shifting dramatically during major life transitions?

Which brands successfully captured YOUR business during these big moments?

Tap that reply arrow and share your experience with life stage marketing.

Or reach out to my amazing team of product marketing agency leaders at Graphos Product.