When it comes to product management, many people in this role prepare a road map of features and work diligently to hit milestones that evolve the product. These days I look at product management through a different lens. It's a lens focused on delivering the best possible user experience leveraging technology and processes that make conversion more efficient.
My customer, or their audience, dictate viability of the product. So, their opinions, actions, and behaviors while using or experiencing the product, matter most to me. This view includes aspects directly related to four sets of features that product managers need to be concerned with: acquisition, on-boarding, marketing, and functionality. All four of these need to come together to help a product evolve. At the same time, all four surround a central theme - to deliver the best possible user experience while enabling efficient conversion. If you are a product manager, and you want to blow the competition out of the water, focus on the sets that align with your business objectives and your marketing strategy before addressing the others.
The mistake I encounter most often is that the product manager focuses primarily on the functional features. Here's an alternative way to look at the challenge:
Always start with your end user in mind. Always stay in direct contact with these end users and appreciate their honest feedback. If you are able to please them to the degree where they can't help but tell others about their experience with your product, then add an additional set of features to your road map. If you are not able to get their commitment, start over.
If it’s costing too much or taking too long to acquire customers, then customer acquisition features should take precedence.
If customer support costs or churn are too high, then on-boarding features should probably have precedence over other features at this time.
If current customers complain that key functionality is lacking, integration is needed, or, if they are willing to pay more for specific features, then the functional features should dominate your planning. This is also the case if the market shifts when new technology introduces a way to leapfrog existing approaches or some new legislation is introduced and you need to pivot.
If your team haven’t discovered the best fit for your product or if the current market is becoming saturated (often indicated by shrinking margins), then market development features are what you might want to focus on right away.
Remember, acquisition, on-boarding and market exploration require planning, software, and integration before they can be executed. Be sure to include time and budget for the efforts and reach out to us if you need some help. The truth is - you'll be far ahead of your competition if you dedicate as much planning and discipline to these additional aspects of product management as you do with the actual operational features.
Examples of each:
Acquisition features help you attract new customers. Dropbox rewarded users like us with free additional storage when we invited our friends, family and coworkers to use their service. 'For every friend who joins and installs Dropbox on their computer, we'll give you 1 GB and your friend 500 MB of bonus space (up to a limit of 32GB)!'
On-boarding features often revolve around help screens, popups, wizards or even virtual agents to coach users with explanations, mouse-over text, and even video to help bring new users up to speed quickly. Games are a brilliant example of this since they bring the learning curve down so that players don't need to consult a manual to understand how to play. Mobile Apps designed to be downloaded and installed on impulse are typically masters of the on-boarding feature set.
Marketing features help your company position the product so that you attract an audience that cares about what you are doing and is willing to pay for the product because it helps them achieve one or more of their goals at the same time. Adding analytics and charts that make observations easy to visualize is a great example. Analytics offers your customers deeper insight into user behavior so that they can learn more about who really cares most about a given topic, where these people are in the world and what devices they use most frequently to access your service. Another example of a marketing feature is a browser plugin that makes it more convenient for your customers to get their work done. Perhaps the plugin also saves time by automating a manual task. The overriding theme here is that each feature you develop needs to help you convert prospects into customers in new markets. Each feature offers you an inexpensive way to explore the potential of new markets and start a conversation. Remember to brand each feature properly and add specific and measurable value that empowers each target audience to use your product and tell their friends about it and you'll be miles ahead of the competition.
