A Product Strategy is a Product Manager’s most valuable weapon.
A well defined, thought through and effective Product Strategy is necessary to: –
Attract and retain users – Improve retention and engagement of users – Increase revenue (directly or indirectly) – Achieve product/business fit by iterating on the strategy as you learn from feedback loops from experiments
Here are 5 things that every Product Manager should know about the Product Strategy he is working with.
1. A good Product Strategy addresses a specific problem faced by your users . It does not simply state that ‘XYZ’ will be solved by the proposed product/solution – it clearly spells out how the XYZ problem is being addressed in a way that matters to a particular group of users or is specific to a certain context.
2. A good Product Strategy is not just about delighting your customers but also helping them achieve their goals . For example, if I am preparing for an upcoming presentation, the product strategy that helps me learn new vocabulary words in context is different from one that teaches me how to present those words at my best. A product strategy should be focused on the user’s goals rather than tasks the user needs to complete with help of your solution.
3. A good Product Strategy is focused on users’ mental models , unlike competitor analysis which focuses more on the artifacts of competitors’ products and therefore may miss out important aspects of their value propositions that might still resonate with some portion of your target audience.
If the product strategy has been made clear, use case development should be a continuous process. Use cases can show different aspects of a product’s value propositions and help you to prioritize the most important ones based on customer feedback or data that have been gathered – this is why testing your assumptions is so crucial for successful product strategy development.
4. What are some of the common pitfalls in writing use cases?
Use case writers should avoid being verbose and describe only what they want to highlight instead of trapping themselves into a lengthy narrative that might distract them from the goal. Remember that you’re not writing a story but rather just listing actions that will ultimately help you reach your product’s vision.
Many writers also make the mistake of prescribing too much detail when writing use cases, opting to share every aspect of what a user does in order to reach their goal rather than focusing on essential steps that will convey the process clearly.
The most important thing for you to do is to focus on telling a story about your product’s value proposition . You don’t necessarily need every tiny detail in there, but make sure it feels like something someone would actually say out loud while using your product. If it doesn’t, then chances are you’re not really presenting an accurate enough picture of what this story is about and how people get it done.
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5. Who are you talking to?
When writing use cases, it’s very important not to lose sight of who your product is for. You should always be thinking about the persona that will benefit from using this product and all the characteristics they have that make them who they are.
For example, if you’re designing a time management tool for stay-at-home parents , then there are some things you should know about how their lives work so your use case reflects this reality correctly. If you neglect these details, there’s no way somebody reading your use case can gain an accurate picture of how this product works in someone’s life so they won’t feel compelled to read on or act on what you’ve written.
Product Strategy is thus all about understanding whom the product is for, how they live their lives and what opportunities you see in this space to offer are some example sentences that can be used to kick off this section:
The best way to build Product Strategy is by researching your audience thoroughly and putting yourself in their shoes, which will help you understand how they live their lives and where they spend most of their time. We recommend using a tool like personas or customer journey maps that will give you a better sense of this particular user group so that you can write a product strategy that meets their needs and keeps them engaged.
Product Strategy is the foundation upon which everything else in your business will be built, so it’s important to define your product or app’s main goal. That means you not only have to think about the goals of your company, but also understand who your target market is and what they need. An example of a main goal could be “to help doctors keep their patients healthy” or “to provide busy entrepreneurs with recipes for quick meals.”