Product management best practices
Today’s article is a list of thoughts and insights from the sphere of product management. These thoughts are dedicated to such product management aspects as product launch and product promotion.
It is widely known that product model means significantly more risks than outsourcing one. In outsourcing, we have a request for project, we develop some software and deliver it. Simple model. In product model we have a factor of market demand and in general 50% of chances to success that depends mainly on the market demand. Surely, there are also multiple factors, but basically any startup or product always has 2 possible results: successful and unsuccessful.
Obviously, it is easier to develop a product than to sell it nowadays. This is thanks to existence of multiple prototyping services, team work tools, availability of freelancers and outsourcing companies, design tools etc. Software development itself is not a problem anymore.
Product Management tips
First we would like to pay your attention that there is a so called low customer acquisition cost competition. This is for live products mostly, the lower customer acquisition cost startup has – the more competitive it is.
Survival bias in startup and product development often takes place. This is about the situation when a startup has a base of initial users and collects users feedback in order to understand strengths and weaknesses of a product. And without regard to what questions they ask users, the result of research will be incomplete because a startup forgets about users who don’t use their product or service. It would be more useful to ask non-users why they don’t use the product and get their feedback. Potentially the segment of non-users research can provide a startup with more insights. But usually a startup doesn’t know why people do not use a product because gets feedback only from existing users.
Working on any product or startup it is important to apply a so called product thinking. Product thinking is a complete, complex understanding of multiple aspects of the product, such as what pain or problem the product addresses, what is the audience the product is aimed at, how should this audience be reached, what value the product provides with; why we will do it, or what is the vision of a product, and strategy – how we are going to do this.
What is the niche where it is not recommended creating a product?
Marketplaces. Marketplaces, or any kind of platform where a seller meets a client, is considered to be a very risky niche because customer acquisition cost is really high: marketplace means that we sell (base of) clients, but to get clients we need sellers and vice versa. This is really difficult, especially at launch.
However, launching a marketplace platform on a market where there is no marketplace seems a constructive step.
What aspect is the MOST important at product launch?
- Working product. It is a problem when you launch a service and, for example, registration module doesn’t work properly.
- Be prepared for a big amount of users. There were a lot of cases when many users came to use a service thanks to word of mouth and downed a server.
It is also necessary to understand that product launch is not a single action. Product launch is a project activity itself in fact and it requires a project-oriented approach.
What is the cheapest customer acquisition channel? – The one we do not pay for. An example of such channel could be partner relations of free piece of service. Let’s pretend that the product is a digital marketing education center that operates both online and offline. One of our customer acquisition channels could be free webinars every 1-2 weeks where a coach presents a piece of content that will be in upcoming course. At the end of webinar every participants may be provided with a discount for the course. Surely, running webinars requires some efforts, however in comparison to running a complex advertisement campaign these efforts are really little.
Example for partner relations: startups makes an “Uber” for fitness coaches. So managers can try to discuss cooperation with fitness clubs to place their coaches’ offers for free or at a discount in the app.
Software products promotion tips
Let’s talk also about some tips for products promotion. Obviously product’s promotion is a complex activity, and we will today touch just some tips that may be added to your existing marketing campaign.
Product marketing strategy is about the following aspects:
So the task of any startup is to analyze market, define such basics as market demand, trends, market size. What is the target audience and how the ideal customer looks like.
Surely, do not forget about basic 4P – Marketing Mix framework.
Focus your efforts on empowering your brand. Try to earn trust and reputation. The best advice here is to publish case studies (if you work in B2B) or clients’ reviews (if you work in B2C).
Ideally your simple, clear unique selling proposition (with description of plans and buttons “Order now” and “Contact us”) should be placed on your website. This provides you with a basic lead generation channel.
If you use influencer marketing, do not forget to define what is blogger’s/influencer’s target audience and is it necessary for you. What’s more, ask for influencer metrics not depending what platform influencer works on. Be it Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or any other, an influencer has to provide you with metrics so that you can understand is it worth paying to this or that influencer for promotion.
SMM is also a good tool to get traffic to your website. The situation is that a traffic you need really exists in socials, however, this is a great challenge to manage it.
Summary
That’s all for today, and we really hope these tips based on our experience will somehow help to improve your product. If you have a project idea or live product do not hesitate to contact us and we will discuss how we can contribute. Code Inspiration’s team wishes you to be successful in your projects!
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