How to build your product strategy

Product Strategies Are Important
For Any Company That Wants To
Grow And Succeed.
They can lead to increased revenue, increased
customer loyalty, and an overall better business.
A good product strategy will help you make
decisions on everything from pricing models,
features of the products themselves, marketing
campaigns and so on.

If You Don’t Have A Plan For Your Products
Then It’s Highly Likely That Customers Won’t
Show Any Interest In Them – Which Means Less
Sales And More Wasted Time Spent Trying
Things Out.
It Doesn’t Matter If You’re Just Starting Out Or
Already Established,
Every business needs a good product
strategy in order to thrive today.

What is product strategy?
Product strategy is the process of defining what you want to achieve
and how you plan to get there. It also helps you understand the context
of the market that you operate in and guide the large themes of work
that will help you accomplish your goals. Product strategy aligns the
organization around a shared vision and keeps everyone focused on
the work that matters the most.
A goal-first approach is a product manager's best path towards
innovation. Strategic planning should take place before you dive into
the detailed work of building your roadmap and developing new
features. Done well, you will be able to tie every feature back to a
larger goal — so your work adds real value to customers and the
business.

What makes a great product strategy?
A great product strategy is stubborn on vision but flexible on
details . It's stubborn on the business goals it needs to hit and the
customer problems you are solving. But flexible enough to cater for
changes in market, timing and product scope.
A product strategy is a high-level
plan that describes how your
product intends to achieve your
companies goals.

In fact, 70% of companies consult their product
strategy when making important decisions. As a
result, it’s essential to develop a detailed and
comprehensive plan to ensure that each task is
performed correctly and on time.
The product strategy describes how the product
can help the company. It explains the issue that
the product will solve as well as the effect it will
have on customers and the business.

Once you have a clear strategy, you’ll
be able to provide a clear product
definition of what you aim to develop
and when.
The product strategy then serves as a
benchmark against which you’ll
measure your success before, during,
and after production.

An effective product
strategy consists of three
key points. Let’s go over
each one of them in more
detail in the sections
below.

Product Vision
The PRODUCT VISION explains who will use
your product and how it will affect your
business. PRODUCT VISION emphasizes your
target buyers, how you’ll position your product, and
how it will compete with other PRODUCTS in its
category.
A go-to-market strategy, that outlines your
consumers’ needs and how you’ll produce a
compelling offer, should also be a part of your
PRODUCT VISION.

Product Goals
Without clearly defined goals, it’s impossible
to develop a product strategy.
These are particular objectives or benchmarks
that you can meet as a result of building your
product. They provide guidance to your
development team and assist you in measuring
success once the product is launched.

What is a product backlog? A product backlog
is a prioritized list of work for the development
team that is derived from the roadmap and its
requirements. The most important items are
shown at the top of the product backlog so the
team knows what to deliver first.

When setting goals, it’s crucial to make
them time-bound so that you have a sense
of urgency about when you’ll achieve them.
When you add a time constraint on a
product’s development success, it gives it
even more importance.

Product Initiatives
Initiatives are high-level themes that should
be implemented in order to meet business
goals and included in the PRODUCT
ROADMAP.
These are big goals, so the product team must
break them down into smaller, more
manageable chunks.

You should be familiar with the core
components that go into designing a
product now that we’ve clarified the
anatomy of product strategy.
However, the way you use this information
can vary depending on the product you’re
working on and the management’s
expectations.

3 Things To Include In Your Product Strategy
The content in a Product Strategy can be simplified into the following
three core areas: “The Now”, “The Future”, and “How we get
there”

1) “Where Are We Now” — Describe the Current State
Before thinking about the future, you need to highlight the current
internal and external landscape.
Some information you can include are:
 The current business goals or problem
 The customer’s problem or need
 The technology and market landscape
 Product’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, and threats (SWOT)

2) “Where Are We Going” — Describe the Future State
To bring people on the journey, you need to paint a picture of what the
future looks like. Base the view of the future on customer and market
insights from the validation phase.
 The vision for your Product
 High-level concepts & product differentiation
 Revenue opportunity for the product
 Key metrics you want to move

3) “How Do We Get There” — Describe the Journey
Ahead
Lastly, provide a view on the steps you’ll be taking and what you
need from your team to get there.
 Milestones and key releases
 Alignment to company initiatives and goals
 Dependencies and risks
 Resource requirements (people, money and time)

How To Create A Good Product Strategy

It’s not easy to develop a PRODUCT
STRATEGY. It entails taking a closer look at your
product or idea and making adjustments to your
design process at the right time to help shape the
product design direction.
Every product is unique, so it’s difficult to have a
one-size-fits-all guide to developing a specific
strategy, but I can give you some very useful tips
that will help you.

So, here are NINE TIPS to help you and your team
get started on developing a good product strategy.
1.Identify your target audience
One of the most common reasons for a startup failure is a lack of
product-market fit.
Too many businesses expect to figure out their strategy
after releasing a product to the market.
As a result, they send out a product and measure its effectiveness
And this rarely works out right.

Since they are built without a solid understanding of the target
audience, it’s not uncommon to find thousands of launched products
on the market that are still searching for customers. Usually, these
products were created to solve problems that did not exist.
Since products are used by people, it’s always a good idea to
prioritize users and their needs.
That is why, long before you begin creating something, you must
have a deep understanding of your target audience’s desires and
needs.
This is of crucial importance if you hope to offer them something
that adds value to their lives.

Making user research an important part of the product
design and development lifecycle can help you understand
what your potential users need .
 To better understand who your customers are and what
they want, conduct a series of field studies and user
interviews.
 Use this information to create personas which are model
characters that represent different user types based on the
most relevant information collected from different target
users.
 Personas that have been well-researched will serve as
a proxy for the user.

2. Understand the problem
In product strategy, problem definition is essential. Your
product should help your customers in solving their problems.
You must not only define the problem, but also determine if it is
the one worth solving (i.e. that your target audience really needs a
solution for this problem and is willing to pay money for it).
It’s important to know the reason why you want to create a product in
the first place (your business motivators), and then to assess your
product decisions in terms of the value they provide to your
customers (potential conversion).

3. Define your product vision
Product strategy defines a product’s journey. And
as with any journey, you must have a clear idea of
where you want to go. Many product teams
mistakenly believe that product vision and product
strategy are the same thing, but they are not.

“Vision is an inspiration for making a
product; strategy is a guide on how to do it
correctly.”
The reason you’re creating a product in the first
place is because of your vision, which is an
ultimate view of where the company is going.
Therefore, your business’s north star becomes a
clearly defined product vision. It encourages
everyone to see the big picture when working on a
product.

Here are a few things to have in mind when defining your product
vision:
 Establish the long-term goals. When you have an inspiring long-
term goal, it’s easy to create a vision (i.e. what the product will look
like in 2 or 3 years).
 A vision should be motivating and it’s crucial to get emotional buy-
in from your team members when it comes to motivation.
 It’s also crucial to define your product vision and make sure that
everyone on your team is on the same page. Many companies use a
video for this purpose because it is much easier to communicate a
message this way.

4. Define the current state and target
condition

For many companies, there are two states that can be defined:--
Current state (the current state of your product experience)
And target condition (the ultimate user experience that you’re
striving for).
VISION HELPS YOU DEFINE A DESTINATION
(TARGET CONDITION). (PULLQUOTE IMAGE)
By focusing on exactly what you need to create, you can plan your
route to the target destination. You can change the direction of your
product efforts by setting a goal (challenge).
Before your team begins working on your project, it’s important to
spend time analyzing, measuring, and quantifying challenges.

5. State product design principles
It’s risky to make product decisions. No matter how hard you try, there will
always be an element of doubt in your decisions.
However, by adding a basic but effective TOOL—PRODUCT
DESIGN PRINCIPLES—you can make the decision-making
process easier. Product design principles will help in defining what
good design means in your business. Principles that are clearly
established reflect the product design philosophy and are genuine.
“Direction over choice,” for example, is one of Medium’s design principles.
During the creation of the Medium editor, the Medium design team applied this
principle. They intentionally traded guidance and direction for user interface
(layout, type, and color choices).

6. Stay in sync with other teams
It doesn’t matter how good the product concept is if
no one knows about it. The product strategy should
be formulated as a result of cross-functional
collaboration between the core teams within the
company such as design, development, marketing,
and sales team.
“You should expect to get the same answer from
everyone in your company when you ask them
what you’re building and why.”

7. Stay focused
Before you begin working on a problem solution,
you must first gain a thorough understanding of the
ultimate experience you want to create.
This is a move that many businesses miss.
Although they understand the problem, they believe that
adding more features to their product would make it more
valuable to the target audience. As a result, they keep
adding too many unnecessary, poorly built features,
jeopardizing the user experience (this effect is known as
feature creep in the software industry).

When Apple released its first iPhone in 2007, it had just a
few features, but they were well-implemented.
Copy and paste, one of the very important features today, was missed
out in the first edition of the iPhone. Since the copy and paste feature
did not reach the team’s minimum expected experience, it was not
included.
Rather than releasing a buggy feature, they released the iPhone
without it and only added it once it reached their standards for the
user experience.
“Product teams must understand that successful
product strategy involves more than just shipping a
large number of features.”

8. Define success metrics
Setting direction alone isn’t enough; you still need to keep track of how
quickly you’re moving towards the goal.
Metrics allow a team to track their progress and measure their
performance.
I suggest starting with Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, if you’re
looking for practical advice on how to choose the right metrics. The
goals in this model are what you want your business to achieve, and
key results are how you intend to measure that goal.
What numbers will change as a result?
The goals should be inspiring, and the key outcomes
should be measurable.

9. Execute the strategy
You won’t be able to establish an ideal product strategy on Day 1 if
you’re missing the key pieces of information.
Also, you won’t be able to develop an ideal product plan on Day 1
if you don’t have all of the knowledge you need.
However, beginning with clear goals and willingness to try new things
will help you create a well-defined strategy.
“Look at your product strategy as a living, breathing organism
that evolves alongside your company.”
Start with the basics and work your way up. The earlier you get the
feedback on your product strategy after launching, the faster you
can implement it.

Conclusion
Remember: The user experience is shaped by
product strategy.
When it comes to justifying Customer experience
choices, product strategy should be your primary tool. Any
product design project should begin with a definition of
experience you want your customers to have with your
product or service.
The ultimate goal of product strategy is to deliver the right
features with the right user experience for the right people.

How to build your product strategy

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