Product Management

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Building a Product Strategy

Introduction

⁠

Why Strategy Is Important

It is common to see product teams as order takers from stakeholders

Most companies do not have an effective strategy

Course changing and lack of purpose are key side effects

Lack of direction creates a culture of burnout and a lack of faith in the company and product

Effective Product Strategy:

Analyze financial factors

Define and prioritize

Communicate effectively

Chart a clear path, and stick to it

Tenets of a good strategy

A good strategy is like a map. It helps you get from point A to point B

This means achieving your business objective

What does success look like?

A good product strategy:

Shows you how to achieve your goals

What needs to be successful

Considers factors that affect your success

Explains your competitive advantage

Helps you make decisions

Helps you decide what to do and what not to do

Can continually measure progress

Aligns stakeholders

Elevator Pitch Framework

Product strategies can take many forms

Document your strategy

Describe concisely

Achieve clarity

Sum it up in one or two sentences

FOR (target customer), WHO (customer need), (product name) IS A (market category) THAT (one key benefit). UNLIKE (competition), THE PRODUCT (unique differentiator)

Elevator Pitch Step by Step

⁠

Determine your target customers

Not all people can be reached and not all products are for everyone

This helps you make clearer product choices

Customer segmentation:

Age

Gender

Income

Geography

Company size

Industry

Consider the size of the target customer segment

Determine customer need

Identifying customer need give us clear focus

It should real and something that exist for your target customer

Solutions must address real problems or satisfy needs

Customer need:

A problem that needs solving

Something that benefits the customer

We need to identify one strong need rather than several weak ones.

Determine the market category

Before customers adopt your product, they have to know what it is

We make sense of things by categorizing and comparing

Customers are going to compare to alternatives they already know

Talk to your customers and listen to them

They may say something like “Oh! So it’s like Facebook for ____ or Uber for ___.”

New categories are rarely created

Determine the key benefit

There is a key difference between customer benefit and product features

Features - things the product can do

Benefit - valued created by the product for the user

Example - Insurance Company

Features:

Payout for a loss

Benefit:

Protects the holder from large financial loss

Customers chose a product not for the features, but for the benefits

Determine competitors & alternatives

Identify relevant competitors

Why consider competitors? It figures into the customer adoption consideration

Customers will compare and contrast benefits and cost

Understand your target customers’ options

This should be identified from the customer perspective not yours.

Avoid your own biases

Determine the product differentiation

Customers will consider several other options and alternatives

Differentiator - a feature that makes a product stand out

It is about standing out rather than creating more value

Identifying a good differentiator

Differentiation is about doing something well and standing out.

Know what your competitors are doing

Map out your space

Read through competitor websites

Test their apps

Review marketing messaging

Try out our options on your customers

Ask: what could you do better?

Ways to achieve differentiation

Price

Level of service

Design

Brand

Business model

How To Develop A Product Strategy

⁠

Make strategy work

It is not just about the what. It is also about the how.

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