Positioning your product as more exciting than others available in the market based on features, design, or efficiency
Positioning your product as the most affordable among competitors to build your customer base
Highlighting proprietary technology ( and functionality) that sets your product apart in the competitive landscape
Developing products for a specific and well-defined customer segment
Focusing on the needs of a specific (even narrow) group of users
Delivering the highest quality product in terms of , functionality, data, and reliability
Providing exceptional service and support to customers as an extension of your offering
Prioritizing production efficiency so you can shorten the time from concept to delivery
Looking at ways to solve adjacent problems for existing customers in an effort to encourage upgrades or new purchases
If you have worked in product development for a while you might be wondering if we missed the “differentiation strategy.” Keen eye, but no — this is an intentional omission. The strategies above are all ways that you show why your product is different and worthy of a customer’s purchase. You cannot have a differentiation strategy, when the goal of any product strategy is to differentiate in a meaningful way.
The following 10 tips can serve as a touchstone for any product manager when setting strategy:
Do your research: Take the time to do the analysis needed to inform your product strategy, from persona work to SWOT to evaluating the market landscape .
Know your target audience: Never underestimate the power of knowing and empathizing with your customers and embrace every opportunity to deepen that knowledge.
Avoid comparisons: Do your competitive research but fend off temptations to directly compare your product one-to-one or vet opportunities against what others offer (do not let another company’s product strategy rule yours).
Be aware of weaknesses: Understand the areas where you, your team, and your product could improve.
Limit goals and initiatives: Select only three to five product goals for a given time period to prevent dilution of your efforts.
Communicate effectively with stakeholders: Make sure you can succinctly articulate the value of what you want to achieve and can translate it for different audiences .
Foster a culture of innovation: Encourage the broader product development team to use the product strategy as inspiration for their own creativity.
Embrace an agile mindset: Allow your product strategy to say “yes” or “no” to prospective features, sidestep pet projects or one-off requests that do not align, and move quickly to pursue work that does.
Keep the roadmap updated: Ensure that your roadmap shows the most recent work and reflects how that work supports the product strategy.
Continuously monitor and evaluate: Be diligent about reviewing what you have identified as supporting your product strategy, from the moment you prioritize a feature to how it performs once you release it to market.
Setting your product strategy is just the beginning. Product development is most effective when product strategy is an integral and dynamic part of the process — the lens through which all decisions are viewed.
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Product development teams vary in terms of sophistication, maturity, and needs. (So do products for that matter.) In extremely early-stage companies where there might not be a product yet, you might be able to make do with researching, defining, and documenting your product strategy in Excel or PowerPoint. These tools were not built for strategy or product work though — over time you will begin to get frustrated with the limitation of using spreadsheets and presentations.
As you and your team grow in experience (or if you are already working on a complex product), you will want to choose a purpose-built tool. Integrated product development software offers all of the functionality you need to not only set strategy, but link it to active work in a dynamic way. You can prioritize features, build beautiful product roadmaps, and report on the value you delivered all in one place.
Aha! software includes everything you need to imagine, plan, build, and deliver lovable software.
Guided templates in Aha! software help you capture your thoughts and collaborate with the team. Some of the most popular that product managers use to set strategy are:
Business model template
Customer interview template
Customer research plan template
Customer journey map template
Lean canvas template
Market requirements document (MRD) template
Mind map template
Persona template
Porter’s 5 forces template
Pros and cons template
Segment profile template
Business plan templates
Competitor analysis templates
Product positioning templates
SWOT analysis templates
Product strategy is ongoing. Budgets, tools, and the market will change. Each shift can prompt changes in your overall strategy — adjusting plans, removing fruitless efforts, and exploring new opportunities.
You need a winning strategy, a clear roadmap, and a strong team.
Make adjustments as plans change, show progress, and create tailored views for different audiences.
Capture and share high-level observations about competitors in your space.
Browse topics.
Having a well-defined product development strategy isn’t just nice to have—it’s critical for success. Poor planning, misaligned priorities, or failure to adapt to customer’s changing needs can lead to product failure.
A comprehensive, data-driven product strategy framework that aligns with your target audience and business goals can dramatically increase your chance of success in creating products that thrive in today’s hyper-competitive landscape.
This article will guide you through the essential elements of crafting an effective product strategy, from understanding your target market to setting clear product goals and using the right product management tools for long-term success.
A product strategy is a high-level plan that defines your product’s vision, goals, and initiatives. It serves as a roadmap for product development , aligning teams and stakeholders around a common objective.
An effective product strategy integrates various aspects of product development, including market research, design, engineering, marketing, and sales. It is a central resource every stakeholder can reference throughout the product life cycle .
Taking a product from development to launch is a coordinated effort that requires input from various stakeholders over an extended period. Product development software like Jira helps teams navigate the complexities of the product development process and acts as the single source of truth during the product development life cycle. Jira also facilitates collaboration with cross-functional partners through its integration features, allowing teams to connect with other Atlassian products like Confluence. Use the free product breakdown structure template .
A well-defined product strategy is crucial for achieving business goals and staying competitive. It provides clarity and direction, ensuring everyone involved in the product development process is working toward the same objectives. A strong product strategy helps you prioritize initiatives, allocate resources effectively, and make informed decisions based on market insights and customer needs.
A successful product strategy consists of several key components that guide product development, including market vision, product goals, and initiatives.
A clear market vision forms the foundation of a product strategy. It defines the target audience, their needs and pain points, and how your product addresses those challenges. This vision should align with your company’s overall mission and values.
Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals is essential for tracking progress and ensuring your product strategy stays on course. You should choose goals based on your market vision and prioritize them based on impact and feasibility.
Strategic initiatives are the actionable steps taken to achieve product goals. These initiatives should focus on developing product features , user experience improvements, and market expansion. Prioritizing initiatives based on their potential effect and alignment with your product vision is crucial for success.
Companies can adopt one of several types of product development strategies depending on their market position, target audience, and business objectives:
A product manager plays a key role in defining a product strategy and ensuring the team delivers a minimum viable product that meets customer needs. The sections below outline the key steps to building an effective product strategy.
Pro tip: Use product development software like Jira throughout the product strategy development process to streamline collaboration, improve visibility, and ensure your strategy remains agile and responsive to changing market conditions.
Creating a vision and mission that resonates with your team and your target audience is crucial because it provides a clear sense of purpose and direction. It aligns everyone’s efforts toward a common goal and ensures that the product development process remains focused on delivering value to customers in a way that supports the company's overarching objectives. This vision should articulate the core purpose of your product, the value it provides to customers, and how it aligns with your company’s mission. To define your vision, start by clearly articulating the core purpose and value proposition of your product. Then, ensure the vision aligns with your company's broader mission and values. Next, craft an inspirational statement that captures the future state you envision for your product and its impact on customers. Finally, socialize the draft vision statement across your team and target users to refine it and ensure it resonates emotionally. Product roadmaps in Jira, enhanced by Jira Timelines, help you define and communicate your product vision effectively to align your teams around a common goal. Jira Timelines allow for a visual representation of your product’s development over time, making it easier to see how each phase contributes to the overall vision.
Conduct thorough market research to understand your target audience’s needs, preferences, and behaviors. Analyze market trends, the competitive landscape, and potential opportunities for growth to gain an understanding of the market that will help you effectively define your target market.
Jira’s integrations with third-party apps like SurveyMonkey and Typeform allow you to gather customer feedback and market insights using your product management tool.
Your value proposition should differentiate your product from the competition. By developing a unique value proposition, you can create products that resonate with your customers’ needs and communicate the benefits of those products to your target audience, highlighting how they address customer service needs and enhance their day-to-day lives.
To develop a unique value proposition:
Jira’s custom fields and issue labels highlight your product’s unique selling points to ensure they align with customer requirements. By tagging issues with specific customer needs, pain points, and requested features, you can easily map how your product’s capabilities map to your target audience’s expectations. This centralized view enables your team to iteratively refine the value proposition, ensuring it accurately reflects the unique benefits you aim to deliver. Jira’s search functionality further simplifies analyzing customer data to identify key differentiators and craft a compelling value proposition that sets your product apart.
Define strategic initiatives that align with your product goals and vision. You can focus these initiatives on performing key product development tasks:
When creating product initiatives, it’s essential to collaborate with stakeholders from various teams, including marketing, sales, and customer support, to gather insights and ensure alignment. Next, examine buyer personas and analyze your company’s requirements to prioritize initiatives effectively. Then, prioritize initiatives based on their potential impact, alignment with your product vision, and feasibility given your team's capacity and resources. Finally, each initiative's rationale and expected outcomes should be clearly communicated to ensure stakeholder buy-in and alignment across the organization. You can use product management tools to keep track of these initiatives.
Use Jira Software’s boards and issues, complemented by customizable workflows, to track these initiatives. Customizable workflows ensure that each initiative follows a consistent process from conception to completion, enhancing team efficiency and product quality.
Continuously monitor key performance metrics and actively solicit feedback from customers and internal stakeholders. Use this data to assess the effectiveness of your product strategy and pinpoint areas you need to adjust.
Stay agile. Be ready to refine your strategy in response to market shifts, evolving customer needs, and emerging opportunities. Also, ensure your strategy is time-bound, marked by clear deadlines and milestones for accountability.
Use Jira’s robust reporting features and customizable dashboards to keep your finger on the pulse of key metrics. These tools visualize trends so you can harness data-driven insights to make strategic decisions to refine and enhance your product strategy.
Do you want to build successful products that delight customers and dominate the market? It all starts with a rock-solid product strategy. But crafting a comprehensive plan that aligns your teams and drives long-term success is no easy feat. Try our product strategy template , which utilizes Jira, the leading product management tool for software development .
Jira is trusted by millions of high-performing teams to organize work, keep workers aligned, and build better products faster. It’s a powerhouse of customization and connectivity designed to unlock new levels of efficiency for every team involved in the software development lifecycle. Jira brings everyone together under one roof, from developers to designers and marketers to managers.
So, how can Jira help you create a winning product strategy? It’s simple:
Get started with Jira scrum boards
What is an example of a product strategy.
Apple’s approach to the smartphone market is an excellent product strategy example. Apple focuses on creating premium, user-friendly devices with seamless integration across its ecosystem. This strategy involves continuous innovation, a strong brand identity, and a focus on customer experience.
A good product strategy is clear, specific, and aligned with your company’s mission and values. Creating a product strategy involves deeply understanding your target market, competitive landscape, and customer needs. A well-defined product strategy sets measurable goals, prioritizes initiatives, and allows for adaptability in the face of change.
A product strategy offers several key benefits:
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Sep 4, 2020
The question hangs in the air, laden with the heaviness that’s been growing inside you since you took on your new role as a product manager..
“It’ll be fun,” they said. “This is what you’ve been waiting for,” they said. And you believed them. Now you’re not so sure. You feel like you’re being pulled in every direction without anything to hang on to.
“Uh, Peter?” A voice cuts through your thoughts.
“Our product strategy,” you answer. “We should work on our product strategy,” you repeat with more conviction.
You’re right. You can’t manage a product without a strategy. When you finish this post, you’ll know what a product strategy is, why it’s important, and how to create one that’s perfect for you. And you’ll also get a few pointers for the execution of your strategy so you’ll have more insight about and control over your product delivery.
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According to Wikipedia, a strategy is “a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty.”
That last part is essential.
Without uncertainty, you don’t need a strategy. You can go straight to a detailed plan.
In uncertain circumstances, you have to rely on a high-level, general plan. One that says what you want to achieve, but leaves the how well enough alone. It gives direction without specifying speed or means of motion. It guides everyone’s actions and decisions without telling them exactly what to do.
A product strategy, then, is a strategy to create and further develop a product to achieve one or more business goals.
In an uncertain environment, it’s hard to know whether what you plan to do will pay off. But you still need to make decisions and produce results in line with your business goals.
It’s like navigating a ship.
You can’t get from A to B without a voyage plan and regularly checking where you are. And you’ll have to adjust along the way. You’ll have to avoid other ships (you’d be surprised how many you encounter at full sea), and adjust for currents and wind. You may even have to adjust your entire voyage plan to steer clear of a hurricane.
Your product strategy is the voyage plan for your product.
A product strategy is important because it helps you to focus. To stay on course and resist the lure of that nice tropical island along the way.
Many people think focus is about saying “yes” to something and ignoring the rest. It isn’t. Focus is about saying “no” to everything that sounds good but doesn’t fit your overall idea and planning.
Saying “no” is hard enough as it is. Everyone with an idea has good reasons why you should do it.
Having a product strategy will make it far easier to say “no” and stay on course. Because a product strategy doesn’t only tell you what you will do. It also tells you what you won’t do. Explicitly, or by omission.
Having and communicating a clear product strategy serves as the voyage plan, the initial course.
Knowing where you want to go and what you’re aiming for is essential for making quick, confident decisions. This allows you to respond and adjust more quickly to changes in your business environment, without veering too far off course.
For example, consider a developer who faces a dilemma between spending more time to polish the user experience of a task in your product or inventing a new way to calculate some metrics. If part of your strategy is to have the easiest-to-use product, the dilemma is off the table: the developer knows to focus on the user experience.
Clarity on what you’re aiming for means you no longer have to spell out what employees need to do.
What’s more, a product strategy works not just in your own product and development teams, but also in marketing, support, operations, and…well, actually, all departments in your organization.
So you no longer have to be involved in decision-making processes throughout your organization. Everyone can figure it out for themselves. And because of their knowledge and expertise in their own areas, they’ll come up with better solutions to contribute to those aims than someone outside their department ever could.
A product strategy is a high-level, general plan. It doesn’t yet tell you exactly what to do.
But it’s essential in creating those more detailed plans. Your product strategy guides the process of creating a product road map, including the decisions on what needs to be done first and what can wait until later. Exactly like it guided the developer in deciding what to spend time on.
And it serves the same purpose for other departments that work on or for the product.
Now that you know how a product strategy can benefit you, let’s talk about the different types of product strategies you can have.
This strategy, aka Leader, is to be the market leader, creating innovative products that’ll leave your competition lagging behind. It’s expensive, it’s risky, but the rewards can be huge.
This strategy, aka Challenger, is to challenge the market leader by beating them at their own game.
This strategy, aka Follower, is to piggyback on the innovations by the leaders and their challengers. You don’t create any innovative products yourself, but use them to create cheaper, derivative products.
This strategy, aka Niche, is to create a product for very specific types of people in an otherwise large market. This allows you to work with limited resources because you don’t cater to everyone in the larger market.
The most quoted elements that need to be in a product strategy are your vision for what the product will do, the business goals it’s meant to contribute to, and the initiatives to achieve those goals.
That, however, leaves out two essential topics.
What you also need is a description of who you’ll be serving (in other words, your ideal customer or customers), and how your product will solve their problems.
And you also need to include how your product is unique. The key features and differentiators that’ll set you apart from your competitors and attract your ideal customers.
Pro tip: include what your product will not do. The features that it won’t include. The bright shiny objects that you already know will be a distraction and that you’ll say “no” to from the outset.
Salute simon sinek.
According to Simon Sinek, in the TEDx talk that put him on everyone’s radar, you have to start with why .
Why you go to the trouble of creating your product. What impact you want to have. Whose lives you intend to change.
The vision for your product is essential. Without an inspiring reason to create your product, and for your customers to buy it, everything falls flat.
Google for its search engine: “Provide access to the world’s information in one click.”
Nike for its Nike Free shoe: “A shoe which mimics barefoot running in order to strengthen runners’ feet and legs, giving them more power and speed while reducing the risk of injury.”
The second step is to describe your ideal customer. Who they are, what they do, the problems they face, and how your product will solve their problems.
Understanding your ideal customer, your target audience, is key in creating a product that’ll appeal to them.
You need to understand what they want—and more importantly, what they need. The difference between wants and needs is the difference between shrugging and paying.
And you need to be specific. Large audiences—for example, parents—fall into different groups with different needs.
Parents with young children who need an educational app, as opposed to parents with teenage children.
Amateur photographers using their smartphones to take pictures who need a picture enhancement app, as opposed to professional photographers.
The third step is to identify which key features you need and how to differentiate common features in similar products to stand out from the pack.
This speaks to the characteristics of your product: features, usability, quality, cost, customizability, robustness, and so on.
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Word processing software specifically designed for users that rely on voice control.
To know how you’re doing on your journey to contribute to the business goals of your organizations, you need four things.
Your current state.
Your goals—your desired state or target condition.
The metrics that describe your current and desired state.
Measuring regularly to check you’re still on course.
Business goals:
Increase number of new sign-ups per month by 30% by the end of Q3.
Reduce time to market by an average of 20 days by year end.
Customer goals:
Increase the number of clients that create a full profile by 20% by the end of Q2.
Decrease time between sign-up and first valuable action by 50% by year end.
Finally, then, you get to make a plan. At least, a very high-level plan. With your business and customer goals in mind, you identify the initiatives you’ll use to achieve the goals you’ve set.
Initiatives are more technical than goals. You can think of them as the grand themes of the actions you’ll take to bring your vision to life.
Attract customers from a new industry.
Launch a Wimbledon site for your tennis stats app.
Improve responsiveness and accessibility across your website and apps.
Problems are good.
Focus on problems, not solutions. When setting a strategy, talking about solutions is a form of premature optimization. It blinkers you to other solutions that may be better, easier, more cost effective, more relevant.
While you’re still discussing what strategy to take, the focus should be on understanding the problem you’re trying to solve and the challenges you face in reaching your business goals.
Only when that’s clear can you start generating possible solutions and initiatives to make them happen.
When you start generating solutions to the challenges you face, don’t lean back when you’ve found the first. That’s only your start. Ask questions about how this solution helps you meet the business goals for your product. And how it doesn’t.
Ask yourself how else your product can meet the challenges you face.
It doesn’t matter how far out the challenges are. Feasibility is not the point at this moment. Creative thinking is. And far-out ideas can spark other ideas that are (more) feasible.
Plus, you’ll have plenty of time to cull any infeasible ideas before you start executing them.
That takes far less time and effort than prematurely picking a solution and realizing, halfway into executing it, that it doesn’t live up to expectations. U-turns and other sharp deviations of a set course are very expensive.
Don’t sit in an ivory tower thinking up a product strategy for others to follow. Collaborate. Use the benefits of back-and-forth conversations between people with different perspectives and cognitive styles. Recruit from departments across your organization. And organize conversations both to understand the landscape of the challenges you face, and to get a plethora of solutions to pick from.
Find a good facilitator and don’t get in their way.
Good facilitation isn’t easy. It takes skill and experience to guide a diverse group through problem solving. And it’s essential to ensure that everyone gets to contribute their best ideas.
You don’t want to jeopardize something as important as your product strategy with groupthink, loudmouths, shyness, HiPPOs (highest paid person’s opinion), and other group dynamics that discourage people from participating.
Pro tip: Hire an outside facilitator. Someone whose only interest is to ensure the quality of the process and has no interest whatsoever in the outcome of the conversation.
When you’re working on your product strategy, you want to be concrete—but don’t get bogged down by details yet. Three tools, or rather worksheets, can help you do just that.
Melissa Perri, CEO of Produx Labs and Product Institute, developed the product strategy canvas. It’s simple and straightforward, using a fill-in-the-blanks approach that doesn’t allow you to dig into details prematurely.
This canvas differs slightly in terminology from the standard vision-goal-initiatives template. It talks of your big business goals as the challenges you face. And instead of initiatives, it talks about your target condition—your desired state—and current state.
The product strategy canvas lets you focus on a single challenge-target condition combination at a time.
A complete product strategy will use more than one of these canvases. The vision will be the same for all, but the challenge can be different for each of your products. The target conditions and current states will vary across teams working on a product.
Including the current state in your product strategy is a smart move. It helps teams set the course to reach the target condition from where you are now. After all, if you don’t know where you’re starting out, you can’t set a good course to your destination.
And it brings another benefit. It helps you see how far you’ve come and celebrate your progress.
Finally, the language of the canvas helps you set SMART challenges, and measurable objectives to reach them.
Here’s an example of a filled-out product strategy canvas, from Melissa Perri’s blog :
Roman Pichler, founder of Pichler Consulting and author of several books on product management, developed the product vision board.
It too is simple and straightforward. It has your vision at the top, overarching the four areas you need in your strategy to make that vision happen.
The product vision board (“The Product Vision Board” (c) by Roman Pichler, licensed under CC BY-SA-3.0 US ) gives a broad view of the product and keeps all business goals together in one place. You can use it in a collaborative discussion across the organization. It guides these conversations with pertinent questions for each part.
To download a blank copy, go here .
Chris Butler, member of the UX Collective and author of uxdesign.cc on Medium, proposed the strategy kernel canvas.
Like the product vision board, it takes a broad view on product strategy and can be used in a collaborative discussion across your organization. And it too has prompts in each area of the canvas to direct the conversation.
Like the product strategy canvas, it makes your current state explicit by prompting you to analyze how you got where you are and what you’re going to bet on to get you where you want to go.
You can find a discussion of the strategy kernel canvas by Chris Butler himself, here .
Just as knowledge is useless without action, a product strategy is useless without execution.
Execution is what brings your product to life (when you’re creating a new one) and what keeps it relevant (when you’re refining an existing one) and contributing to your business goals.
In a world that’s changing faster than ever before, you’ll need to act and respond quickly. That creates two challenges for you as the product manager:
reducing the time it takes the teams to delivery value to your customers, and
having visibility of and controlling the software delivery process across the whole product.
As you can’t do everything yourself, you’ll want help.
From linking pins between you and the agile product and development teams, the product owners in Scrum.
And from tools, like Plutora’s dashboards for product leaders and managers , that give you insight into what’s happening across all the product and development teams, regardless of the software tools that each of them uses.
To reduce the time to value in developing your product, value stream mapping is a valuable technique to have in your toolbox, especially when you use a value stream mapping tool that integrates with your teams’ delivery toolchain. It will then provide you continuously with up-to-date metrics linked to the goals in your product strategy.
You now have everything you need to create a perfect product strategy for your product. And you know where and how to get the help you need to execute it and be confident along the way that you’re on course.
So take the plunge and start work on an inspiring product vision. It’ll be your North Star that’ll guide your decisions, help you say “no,” and keep you from feeling like you’re being pulled in every direction.
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A product strategy addresses two things: the goals a company has for its product and the actions needed to meet those goals. Comprehensive product strategies address product audience, goals for the product throughout its lifecycle, and product differentiation in the competitive landscape.
Bringing a new product to market can be an exhilarating journey. From idea generation and the early stages of product development to market testing and seeing your vision come to life, there are many exciting steps that comprise the product strategy process.
Yet, many aspects of developing a product strategy can also be quite overwhelming, especially when it comes to deftly positioning your new (or recently improved) product to address the unique needs, concerns, and challenges of your customers—all within a timely release schedule that gives your product an edge in a crowded marketplace.
In this article, we will highlight three best practices you can use to revitalize your product planning process, helping you reach your business goals, address market changes, overcome new obstacles, and achieve more success by outcomes rather than outputs. We’ve included several product strategy examples to kick-start your analysis of your own products.
A product strategy addresses the goals a company has for its product and the actions needed to meet those goals. Comprehensive product strategies should answer four key questions:
The answers to these questions will help establish your product strategy template. Think of your product strategy as an end-to-end vision or roadmap for your product. Within this product strategy definition, you can quickly form a system of measurable goals.
Like any roadmap, your product strategy will have its share of unpredictable detours and unavoidable barriers to navigate along the way to your destination. This is where the three best practices to revitalize your product strategy process will come in handy.
Explore our product roadmapping software and start developing your product strategy.
1. stand apart by offering a solution, not just a product.
Think about the world’s most memorable and iconic products. Venerable brands such as Coca-Cola, Apple, and IKEA are likely among the names that readily come to mind.
Why are these products popular? Especially with so many similar items on the market. They stand apart because their product strategy is to satisfy basic human needs, like:
Coca-Cola was never just a beverage company. Even its proprietary bottle reflects its status as a distinctive brand with a global mindset. Apple offers more than smartphones and laptops—it represents a lifestyle and creative ethos. As the first $1 trillion US public company, no one has changed the way products look, feel, or work more than Apple.
With IKEA, people aren’t just buying furniture with a minimalistic design aesthetic. They are fulfilling a sense of achievement from working with their hands or exerting frugality.
Such distinctions offer customers the type of value that competitors can’t easily match. And the solutions your offer are not limited to product features or traits. Your product strategy might play upon the convenience derived from your company’s ability to secure prime retail-shelf space or its use of customer-data mining to help create new products.
Solving problems creates value. And value will always help your product stand apart.
Within your product strategy, ensure that you can identify the problems your customers face and the solution your product provides. If this proves difficult, take time to reassess.
RELATED: Learn how to build a product roadmap in Lucidchart to better understand what your customers and product needs.
People naturally gravitate toward products (and companies) that offer value that others can’t match. This value isn’t just tied to cost. It’s how a product continues to differentiate itself from its competitors or how a business strives to stay relevant to its customers.
Customer loyalties change. So, if you already have a successful product, resist the urge to become complacent. Situational awareness should be part of your product strategy.
And if change or disruption within your industry leads to an opportunity, capitalize on it.
Case in point. Today, “on-demand” is part of the everyday vernacular. But according to Variety , those now-familiar words were dismissed by one-time Blockbuster CEO John Antioco as he abruptly ended negotiations with a “very small niche business” in 2000.
That business was Netflix. Its founder, Reed Hastings asked for $50 million to give up his company. In 2018, Netflix went on to post its largest ever US profit —$845 million.
As for Blockbuster—by January 2014, all 300 of its US corporate-owned stores would close. At one time, it had dominated the video rental business. But its leadership failed to recognize the opportunity in acquiring Netflix’s burgeoning DVD-by-mail business.
Unlike its predecessor, Netflix would not be a one-hit wonder. It would shift its product strategy to adopt online-streaming and start creating original programming of its own.
Industries quickly change—so do customer loyalties. As you can see from these product strategies examples, you need to be ready to change or adjust your product offering accordingly. And always take advantage of opportunities for quick wins.
Nothing lasts forever. Market demand and sustained growth are no different.
Eventually, people’s interests change. The once-large audience for your product begins to diminish and is slowly replaced by a new generation of consumers. One with different tastes and perspective. Inevitably, the demand for your product completely stagnates.
In this situation, it seems you’ve become a victim of your product’s one-time success.
As growth-strategy consultant and acclaimed author Clay Christensen describes in his best-selling book, The Innovator’s Dilemma , if you work in technology, you know the life cycle of products is on endless repeat. Basically, it looks something like this:
Christensen suggests that sustainable growth comes from aggressively seeking to kill your cash cow before someone else does. Instead of trying to protect what you already have, your efforts to innovate may need to destroy it. Once you are willing to cannibalize your existing audience, you can have a product strategy that can survive in the long-term.
Steve Jobs once said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”
Sure, the iPhone cannibalized much of Apple’s iPod business. And the iPad cannibalized the sale of Macs. Yet, the product strategy championed by Jobs prevailed because he recognized the larger audience he wanted to capture—the massive Windows market.
If Jobs had limited his ability to innovate new products out of fear of losing market share for its flagship iPod and Macbooks, would Apple be the successful company it is today?
As the world’s largest book retailer, Amazon made a similar decision when it released the Kindle—knowing that it would take away from the audience that purchased physical books. But they also knew that if they didn’t offer a digital product, someone else would.
Be fearless in your product strategy. Your innovative new product might disrupt existing sales. But then, you are the ones who are keeping innovation central to your company.
Taking a product from idea to reality doesn’t happen overnight. At each stage of product development, you must be willing to innovate, adapt, and make changes. By developing a product strategy, you will be better equipped to achieve your company’s objectives.
Solidify your strategy by creating a product roadmap.
Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.
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A product strategy is a high-level plan establishing a new product's purpose, audience, and goals. This encompassing plan is based on data and creates a foundation that can be referred back to maintain a sense of direction over the project's entire lifecycle.
A winning product strategy will focus on blending user needs , company mission, and product features into a cohesive plan that clarifies key goals. This stable touchpoint adjusts according to data and the market to keep the product viable .
A product strategy will establish a product's key audience and market placement. It will contain benchmarks and guidance for different parts of the organization to complete a cohesive plan that directs the entire lifecycle of a new product.
Simply put, your project will lack clarity and direction without the high-level, encompassing plan that a product strategy provides.
Here are three specific reasons to invest time in your product strategy:
Because a product strategy begins with comprehensive research into your target market and users' needs, the final iteration will keep your organization on track to meet those needs. Ensure all departments can access the high-level plan to ensure they stay aligned with the key goals.
When you create your product roadmap, every step will be organized to ensure your product reaches its core goals. Every team must refer to the overall strategy to avoid being too focused on their own interests and instead collaborate towards achieving the common goals.
It is natural for design and marketing teams working under the same project manager to have differing opinions on what to prioritize. The product strategy, which prioritizes user needs and company goals, will give the project manager a touchstone to refer to when deciding which part of the project will be prioritized next.
When everyone understands the overall plan, friction can be minimized, and the project can proceed in a focused way.
A product strategy can benefit any project to produce or enhance a product. It is particularly useful when a market has been identified, but the approach to reaching it is uncertain. In such cases, it is advisable to establish a strategy.
When there is no strategy in place, companies and their products may be hastily pushed to the market without a proper and essential understanding of what they are or how they may affect their position in the market.
Just upload your customer research and ask your insights hub - like magic.
A product strategy is the sum of your idea foundation, product vision, effective business models, and a key-in focus on market positioning.
The foundation of your product strategy should include a specific target market. Using extensive market research , find and truly understand your ideal user.
Once you understand who you are designing for, create a vision for your product that focuses on what problem you are solving for your target market. Use feedback surveys to understand what your users hope for and design accordingly.
Explore different business models to ascertain how to solve problems in the way that makes the most sense to your market. Find longevity opportunities for your company to grow in the market with your unique product.
Adapt dynamically using ongoing surveys and research where your product will fit in the current market.
There isn’t just one definition or method that makes up a given product strategy. Many companies mold structures to their own strategies. For the intents and purposes of this article, we will stick to these four elements of a product strategy.
Because every product and organization is different, remain flexible during the product strategy development to ensure that your strategy reflects your users and your brand's voice.
Although the end product may look different for every unique product, developing the product strategy should include the following:
Building a brilliant product strategy begins with intense research. Pulling existing reports and big data where available, running surveys , and researching the target market's needs and wants will create the backdrop of the entire strategy.
Based on your findings, you’ll then adopt metrics that make sense to achieve usefulness to your target market.
Aligning your products or services to your users’ needs means you are now valuable enough to purchase.
Work with the stakeholders who define the company to ensure your product strategy meets their long-term expectations.
Bringing in existing internal insights is a great step to build buy-in across your company while ensuring no work is redone. First, communicate your initial data to the involved teams. Then, put together their insights into priorities that align with your main objective of providing users with what they want through the lens of your organization's priorities.
Review and clearly articulate the strategy to your entire organization. Use it to identify your company’s position in the market and pinpoint where the users’ needs and the organization's goals meet.
Create a feedback loop between your company and your users to ensure continuity with your strategy today and into the future.
Create core goals, including metrics and benchmarks for checking progress, and give teams the autonomy to do their part in reaching them without too much oversight.
Put together a working product process that creates effective and predictable progress with the right amount of flexibility throughout the product’s lifespan.
Once your product strategy has been established, understand that to stay dynamic, you may need to stray from your backlog or roadmap or abandon them completely to keep up with competing and changing markets and hold your share.
Some of the biggest companies in the world use product strategies that lead them to the top of their markets. Think of Netflix.
Netflix wasn’t always the top streaming service on the market. They started as DVD vending machines before streaming ever existed. Technology grew and developed, creating a new opportunity. Without seeing into the future, it’s hard to say if it was or wasn’t their plan. Still, they certainly secured themselves a strong enough foothold in the market that once the technology caught up, they could easily usher their existing users to “stream” rather than rent and return their DVDs—essentially nullifying their own business model into a much more dominating model. They became the leader in their industry by following a very successful product strategy to provide entertainment conveniently to customers.
After their success, other companies, like Hulu, employed a challenger strategy and created a rival service that brought its unique take on what people wanted in their streaming entertainment.
Since then, many companies have followed suit, creating various options at varying price points to attract both niche and market share customers.
Your product strategy should involve anyone in your organization with data and trends to share, including stakeholders in your organization.
At its inception, a product strategy that will lead to ideal results will benefit from as much data, business acumen, and perspectives as possible.
Because a key element in your product strategy is the users’ needs, involve your target market as much as possible by conducting exhaustive research. You can do this through feedback surveys or ethnographic studies .
One of the biggest challenges in developing a product strategy is completing enough research into your users and target market to create a product that can stand the test of time.
Failing to be flexible to user feedback and data analysis results could cause an outdated product strategy that cannot accommodate your product's desired lifespan.
Many of the mistakes that occur when creating a product survey boil down to impatience. When creating your product strategy, take the time to fulfill all the best practices.
Once you have developed your product strategy, it's important to remain open to deviating from it to capitalize on emerging opportunities. A great example is Netflix, which shifted its focus to streaming when it became a viable option.
Adjustments can be made to keep your product relevant in the wake of unexpected circumstances or new information. The key is to find the balance in your strategy and stay flexible enough in the market space you compete in.
A well-crafted product strategy keeps your product useful to your users and beneficial to your organization throughout its entire lifespan. While it might require some patience to develop a successful strategy at the beginning of a project, the time you save by avoiding conflicting perspectives later on will ultimately make your initial patience well worth the effort. Use your product strategy to touch base with your core goals as your product improves user experiences throughout its lifespan.
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Other teams sometimes operate with a lean methodology and think this excuses them from developing a strong product strategy to guide development.
It doesn’t.
A solid product strategy is an important part of building a functional and coherent product and it shouldn’t be overlooked.
In this Process Street article, we will avoid long explanations and unnecessary detail, cutting straight to the point to give you a clear and actionable understanding of product strategy.
And we have provided an actionable product strategy template you can use in your business!
A product strategy is about understanding how your product will develop in the future, while being responsive to external factors. It’s not just about creating a good product, but about creating the right product.
In its most basic form, a product strategy seeks to tie together three main things and turn that knowledge into an actionable approach:
By understanding these different factors, you will be able to create a product which people want to use and want to buy.
Practically, a product strategy should serve the following purposes:
For investors, a product strategy will help them see how healthy the business is within its niche. For employees, a product strategy should show them what work they will need to do, and why.
This presents a large scope for a product strategy but it is achievable through these four elements:
Let’s look at each individually.
The vision you outline will be the high-level overview of what the business is trying to achieve long term.
This is where you would include your competitive analyses and assess the changing nature of the market.
You can then outline what market opportunities you have identified and how you intend to capitalize on those.
You can illustrate why your company is suited to capitalize on the available market opportunities – or, perhaps, the weaknesses which your company possesses that you need to combat in order to survive in a changing and highly complex market.
Useful tools for this section include:
Your roadmap is a practical timeline for how changes will come about.
Some market opportunities may require significant changes to your product or products. These changes may require various stages of action:
Building out new products isn’t as simple as building one thing and declaring it done. Similar to the bulleted examples listed above, if your company product is a piece of software – a SaaS product, for example – then how you develop new features can rely on interdependencies within the platform.
If you decide you want to offer 10 new features because they will appeal to enterprise clients, then before you begin that effort to develop the first feature you may have to make significant changes to the database, or overhaul the platform’s security to meet the standards required of enterprise software.
Sometimes there is an enforced chronology which results from the nature of the work you are trying to do, other times you will have to work out that chronology yourself.
In the roadmap section, you can also define the type of methodology you intend to use to work through the roadmap – outlining the extent to which your methodology will make your roadmap flexible and responsive.
The big picture context presents the minutiae of the roadmap.
The necessary changes or feature additions can be explained here in greater detail. You may want to give some very rough estimations for these features while outlining how they fit into the overall goal of the company.
How you present this section may depend on whether your development approach is more waterfall or agile.
If you take an agile approach to development then you may want to illustrate the big picture context through detailed user stories.
This section should serve as a practical guide from which your development team can get started immediately. This can form the background context they draw from when constructing their sprints.
The initiatives are like high-level action items.
With these initiatives it is useful to outline a series of factors:
So, for example, our fictional SaaS company wants to release 10 new features to attract enterprise clients and position itself differently in the market.
In order to serve an enterprise segment, it needs to be able to demonstrate that the company is well run and its security levels are high. Without this foundational work, the 10 new features will not be able to achieve their goals.
The company decides to become ISO certified. This initiative may then contain the following information:
The benefits of a strong product strategy are:
How you use your product strategy will impact on what its benefits are.
As such, here are a few recommendations to make the most out of your product strategy:
So now you should understand broadly what is required in a product strategy, but where to get started?
Every product strategy will be different based on the needs of the business in question. There is no one size fits all approach to developing a product strategy.
However, it is possible to formulate a flexible process you can follow when looking to create a product strategy.
Below is a Process Street template for developing a product strategy. This template can be edited to add or remove tasks and information depending on your needs.
When you come to formulate a product strategy, you simply run the template as a checklist and follow the process ; checking off completed tasks as you work through.
This template is designed to direct your efforts and give you a process to follow. However, the template also has interactive form fields throughout where you can enter information as you work through the checklist.
This means that you can rapidly create a summary document.
There are two ways to do this. One way would be to export the completed checklist to a pdf file format. This shows the reader your conclusions and also the process you took to reach those conclusions.
The other way would be to connect Process Street via Zapier to a document generator. All the information you enter into the Process Street form fields can then be moved directly into a document template – automatically creating a summary document with your design requirements.
You can look through the product strategy template here:
If you are looking to launch a new product and need something slightly more informal than a product strategy template but with the same broad theme, you can check out this product launch checklist instead:
You could also use other Process Street templates to help you construct your product strategy. Templates like this SWOT analysis template below:
Every product strategy will be different.
Each business has different needs, goals, and surroundings.
A brand new software startup might look to create a slim and minimal product strategy, where a large multinational with factories all over the world might produce a 100-page document!
Whatever the size of your business, if you start correctly and follow a coherent process you should be able to produce a strategy which stands the test of time and helps drive your business forward!
How have you approached your product strategies in the past? What tools have you used to help you on your journey? Let us know in the comments below!
I manage the content for Process Street and dabble in other projects inc language exchange app Idyoma on the side. Living in Sevilla in the south of Spain, my current hobby is learning Spanish! @adam_h_h on Twitter. Subscribe to my email newsletter here on Substack: Trust The Process . Or come join the conversation on Reddit at r/ProcessManagement .
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October 5, 2021 by MindManager Blog
By: Leanne Armstrong
Like any profitable endeavor, engaging in product strategy is all about coming up with a plan. And as a prime component of product development , the point of that plan should be to sort through exactly what your business hopes to accomplish with a particular product – and how it intends to accomplish it.
On its own, a fantastic new idea isn’t usually enough to carry a product through to success. But by creating a solid strategy around your solution, you can significantly increase the likelihood of its both reaching and pleasing the right audience.
In this introductory guide, we’ll delve into the question of what is product strategy, find out what it’s used for, and discover why it’s so important for proper market positioning.
You can think of product strategy as your “vision-turned-blueprint” for what you want a specific product to achieve. Essentially, it explains what problem your offering is going to resolve, while simultaneously outlining what its impact on both your customers and your business will be.
By connecting your company’s overall mission to an agile product roadmap , for example, product strategy effectively funnels the vision you have for your solution in the marketplace toward the benefits and objectives it will help you attain. And it does that by turning the entire journey into a practical plan.
That said, most every product strategy can be broken down into a sequence of 5 key questions.
To answer these questions, you’ll generally need to speak directly with prospects or stakeholders. You can then use the information you glean to create a strategic document your development team can follow – and a product plan you can continuously review and update.
The angle you take with your strategy will be determined in part by the business you’re in. But an even bigger influence in most cases will be your product’s purpose, and the market-positioning goals it’s intended to serve.
If, for example, your aim with a particular offering is differentiation , your strategy will likely revolve around what’s different, innovative, or revolutionary about your product in terms of specific features, superior performance, or unique benefits.
Here are some other common product strategy angles you could adopt :
No matter the approach you take, your vision can be brought to life with the help of a product development roadmap – one that clearly defines all the tasks you and your team will need to complete to reach your product strategy goals.
One of the main reasons for using product strategy is to successfully direct, and plan around, your company’s marketing activities.
You can use the strategy you create, for example, to outline:
Not only will forming such a plan help you determine the steps you’ll need to take to ensure your product (and any upgrades) gets embraced by your customers, you can use it to prepare for the inevitable response from your competitors, or eventual changes in the market you’re targeting.
Product strategy is also a great way to develop a baseline for measuring your company’s success before, during, and after the development, launch, or revamp of a product.
Your team will probably want to use the product strategy document you generate as a reference guide when they have questions or need to make important decisions during the development process.
So, to maximize practicality, your document or diagram should be based on 3 core components.
As you think about how you’ll pull these core components together, it’s a good time to recognize the importance of product strategy for setting a direction, reducing waste, and aligning everyone around a shared set of goals.
Thoughtful, visual planning will take you further no matter what your business goals are. But a strong product strategy is especially important for ensuring your new or repurposed solution gets positioned impactfully in the market.
As a minimum, product strategy prevents you depending on instinct, luck, or a biased experience to reach the successful outcome you’re after.
By providing a constructive method for channeling the innovation and enthusiasm around a new product, the right plan will keep your team focused, and prevent them going off on expensive or time-consuming development tangents (very easy to do when you’re excited about a great new idea ).
As we’ve already discussed, product strategy is also essential for:
At its best, the plan you build will give your team a clear product overview, as well as a direct line of sight to your company’s bigger mission and aims. From a practical perspective, however, it will also serve as the central cog around which all the moving parts of your promotional, launch, and marketing activities can revolve.
Because product positioning is intimately tied to whatever’s driving your product strategy, it’s important to narrow that strategy down to a single approach – be it cost, quality, or differentiation.
Remember – determining marketplace fit and positioning is all about drilling into:
Not only is correctly positioning your product a critical step for long-term success, it’s what dictates the various promotional aspects of your offering – including the sales and advertising steps your business will take to show your audience what your product offers, that comparable solutions can’t or don’t.
Here are a few key points to take away.
Fit is an important facet of product strategy . A good strategy should help your team prioritize their focus on researching, and even testing, market fit. If, for example, your objective is to boldly develop a brand-new product category, how will you convince your intended audience they need something that didn’t previously exist?
The message that springs from your strategy is key . Your business will need a plan for carrying your messaging forward consistently if you’re to cement and sustain product demand.
Risk management plays a prominent role . Even in established categories, if you don’t use product strategy to determine who your prospective buyers are and why they should care about your solution, you risk wasting valuable resources developing a marketplace dud.
By mapping out what your offering is, why it’s unique, and how you’ll communicate that vision to your audience, a tool like MindManager can help you create a solid product strategy that will position your company for better long-term performance.
MindManager helps boost collaboration and productivity among remote and hybrid teams to achieve better results, faster.
MindManager® helps individuals, teams, and enterprises bring greater clarity and structure to plans, projects, and processes. It provides visual productivity tools and mind mapping software to help take you and your organization to where you want to be.
Welcome to our free guide on building a powerful product strategy.
Today is essential for companies to have a clear direction and purpose for their products. A well-defined product strategy not only aligns teams but also ensures that their efforts are focused on achieving the desired outcomes. In this guide, we will explain what a product strategy is, its benefits and importance, key elements to consider, where it fits in the development plan, effective business models, steps to build an effective product strategy with examples, and why a fine-tuned product strategy is key to product success. Let’s get started!
A product strategy is a high-level plan that defines the direction and goals of a product. It outlines the value the product aims to deliver to customers, the target market it serves, and the differentiation from competitors.
A product strategy provides a roadmap for the development and evolution of the product over time. It helps teams understand where they should focus their energy and resources, enabling them to make informed decisions throughout the product lifecycle.
Having a well-defined product strategy brings several benefits to businesses.
Firstly, it provides clarity and purpose to the entire organization. It aligns teams and stakeholders on the vision and goals of the product, fostering a shared understanding and commitment. This alignment enhances collaboration and improves decision-making, leading to more efficient and effective product development.
Secondly , a product strategy helps prioritize efforts and resources. By defining the most important features and functionalities, businesses can allocate their resources wisely, ensuring that the product delivers the maximum value to customers. It also enables teams to make trade-off decisions when faced with constraints, such as time or budget limitations.
Furthermore , a strong product strategy enhances the ability to adapt to market changes. It enables businesses to stay ahead of the competition by anticipating shifts in customer needs and preferences. With a clear strategy in place, teams can respond quickly and effectively to market dynamics, ensuring the product remains relevant and competitive.
In summary, a product strategy:
A comprehensive product strategy should consider the following key elements:
By considering these key elements, businesses can create a robust product strategy that guides their decision-making and helps them stay on track toward their goals.
Product strategy plays a pivotal role in the development plan of a product. It sets the foundation and direction for the entire development lifecycle. Ideally, the product strategy should be defined before the development process begins and inform all subsequent activities.
The product strategy influences the prioritization of features and functionalities during development. It guides the product backlog, ensuring that the most valuable and impactful items are addressed first. By aligning development efforts with the product strategy, businesses can optimize their resources and maximize the value delivered to customers.
Throughout the development plan, the product strategy acts as a reference point to evaluate progress and make adjustments as needed. It provides a lens through which teams can assess whether their work aligns with the overall goals and vision of the product. This alignment ensures that the product remains on track and delivers the intended outcomes.
So, the product strategy is the guiding force that shapes the development plan and ensures that efforts are focused on achieving the desired results.
When creating a product strategy, businesses can consider different models based on their goals and market dynamics. Some effective product strategy business models include:
It’s important for businesses to evaluate these business models in the context of their industry, target market, and competitive landscape. By choosing the most suitable model, businesses can maximize the impact of their product strategy and achieve long-term success.
Building an effective product strategy involves a structured approach. Here are the steps to guide you along the process:
Remember, an effective product strategy is a dynamic document that evolves as the market and customer needs change. Regularly review and update the strategy to ensure it remains relevant and aligned with the overall business objectives.
A fine-tuned product strategy is essential for product success. It provides a clear direction, aligns teams, and ensures that efforts and resources are focused on achieving the desired outcomes. Here’s why a well-defined product strategy is key:
So, as you can see, a fine-tuned product strategy is crucial for product success. It provides focus, alignment, adaptability, efficiency, and optimization, ultimately driving the product toward its goals and delivering value to customers.
To assist you in creating an effective product strategy, I have prepared a Product Strategy Template . This template will guide you through the process, providing a structured format to capture and organize your strategy. To download the template, please send a request to agileandscrummasterclass | @ | gmail.com , and I will promptly send it to you.
Building a powerful product strategy is essential for businesses to achieve their goals and deliver value to customers.
A well-defined product strategy provides clarity, aligns teams, and prioritizes efforts and resources.
By considering the key elements of a product strategy, understanding its importance and benefits, and following a structured approach, businesses can create a robust strategy that guides their product development and leads to success.
Remember, a fine-tuned product strategy is not a one-time exercise but an ongoing process that requires regular evaluation and adaptation. Embrace the power of a strong product strategy and turn your vision into reality.
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Product strategy provides a clear direction and purpose for Agile teams, guiding their efforts and ensuring alignment with overall business objectives.
A product strategy defines the “why” and high-level goals, while a product roadmap outlines the “what” and provides a more detailed plan of features and milestones.
A well-defined product strategy aligns teams, prioritizes efforts and resources, enhances collaboration, and enables businesses to adapt to market changes effectively.
Market research helps businesses understand customer needs, preferences, and market trends, providing valuable insights that shape the product strategy and increase its chances of success.
Regularly reviewing and updating the product strategy ensures its relevance in a dynamic market, allowing businesses to adapt and respond to evolving customer needs and competitive landscapes.
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A complete product strategy guide (+10 examples).
Don’t be intimidated by the lofty definitions of product strategy you’ve seen so far!
Product strategy is like the GPS you trust.
Just as a GPS helps you get to your destination avoiding traffic jams & roadblocks, a product strategy steers your idea from a whiteboard to sustained market success.
Notice the emphasis on ‘sustained’? That’s right!
It means, Product strategy is not static. It evolves with the product & the market it operates in.
Ever tried assembling IKEA furniture without the manual? Did you end up with extra screws and a wobbly chair?
A clear product strategy is like that instruction manual. It ensures you have the right parts and steps to build a sturdy product that everyone loves.
Product strategy is essential because it helps you align your team, set clear goals, and navigate the competitive landscape.
In this definitive guide, we’ll explore what product strategy is, why it’s important, its components and how to create one that drives success.
In the last section, we will also cover 10 product strategy examples for product managers.
By the end of this post, expect to have a solid understanding of how to build a product strategy that works.
Product strategy is a plan that defines what you want to achieve with your product and how you plan to achieve it, in the long term.
It is not just about what the product is.
It is about why the product exists, who is it for & how it will grow.
Think of it as a blueprint that guides your product development and marketing efforts.
A well-defined product strategy helps you make informed decisions about product features , pricing, and positioning. It also helps ensure that everyone on your team is working towards the same goals.
Product launch & growth activities are chaotic with a lot of unknowns thwarting your plans to succeed.
That’s where a strong product strategy acts like a lighthouse guiding your ship through stormy seas.
A detailed product strategy acts as a compass, guiding decisions about product features, target customer segments , and competitive positioning.
Here’s why a strong product strategy is important –
Imagine you’re trying to build a puzzle without the picture on the box. A strong product strategy provides that picture, making it easier to put the pieces together.
A robust product strategy is like a well-built car. It has several key components, each serving a unique purpose. These components work together to create a solid structure.
Let us look at each of these components in brief:
Vision & Mission statements are the soul of every product strategy.
While product vision is the big picture – the ultimate goal your product is meant to achieve, product mission is more specific. It articulates ‘how the product will help achieve that vision’. Together, Product vision & mission statements provide a clear direction for your product team.
Once you have a clear vision and mission, next logical step is to set goals (or OKRs , if you prefer).
These are the milestones that your product aims to meet.
They provide a roadmap for your product development process. And they help you stay the course in the mid to short term.
Initiatives are the actions you take on a day-to-day basis to achieve your goals and objectives. They translate your product vision and mission into concrete steps.
Each initiative should be tied to a specific objective. And each initiative should contribute to your overall product goals.
Initiatives can involve various activities. These can include developing new features, improving user experience, or enhancing customer support.
This one is a corollary to the above point where you are setting up goals & objectives. You need a way to measure the success of your product strategy.
This is where KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and metrics come in. KPIs are the key measures of success for your product.
They help you track your progress towards your goals and objectives. (Similar to the GTM metrics detailed here )
Metrics, on the other hand, are specific measures related to your initiatives. They provide detailed insights into the performance of your product.
Choosing the right KPIs and metrics is crucial.
And they should provide actionable insights to your product team.
To avoid confusion, let us take a step back to understand the difference between Product strategy vs Go-to-market (GTM) strategy .
This is the long-term plan for your product | This is a shorter-term plan that focuses on launching your product |
It focuses on the vision, target market, competitive landscape, product positioning, and value proposition | It includes tactics for sales, marketing, and distribution |
It’s about what your product is and how it evolves over time | It’s about how you introduce your product to the market and gain traction |
Think of product strategy as planning the journey and GTM strategy as how you start the trip. Both are crucial, but they serve different purposes.
For example, a company like SpaceX might have a product strategy focused on building rockets that are capable of reaching Mars. Yet their GTM strategy, on the other hand, would detail how they plan to initially gain market share in satellite launches, target potential customers, and handle other logistics.
Crafting a successful product strategy isn’t a mysterious art – it’s a systematic process that combines research, analysis, and creative thinking.
Let’s break it down into manageable steps that you can follow to develop a strategy that will drive your product’s success.
Start by painting a clear picture of what you want your product to achieve in the long run. This vision should be inspiring and ambitious, yet grounded in reality.
Ask yourself:
Your vision might be something like: “To become the go-to platform for remote teams to collaborate seamlessly, fostering productivity and connection across time zones.”
You can’t create a winning strategy in a vacuum.
Dig in deeper into your market:
Use frameworks like SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to organize your findings. This research will help you identify opportunities and potential pitfalls.
Get specific about who your product is for. Create detailed user personas that include:
Remember, trying to please everyone often leads to pleasing no one. It’s okay to focus on a specific niche.
Transform your vision into concrete goals. Here are some tips for setting effective product goals and objectives:
For example: “Increase user engagement by 30% within the next 6 months” or “Launch in two new market segments by Q4.”
What makes your product special? Your UVP should clearly communicate:
For instance: “Effortless team collaboration with AI-powered project management, designed for remote-first companies.”
Now, plot the course to achieve your objectives. Your roadmap should:
Use techniques like the MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have) to prioritize features. Remember, your roadmap is a living document – review and adjust it regularly.
How will you introduce your product to the world? Consider:
This is slightly different from just setting goals & objectives. Here, determine how you’ll measure success.
Here are some common KPIs to track success of your product strategy:
Make sure you have systems in place to track these metrics consistently.
Your strategy shouldn’t be set in stone.
Plan for regular check-ins to:
Consider implementing an agile approach, with sprints and retrospectives to continuously improve your product and strategy.
Identify what will set you apart in the long run. This could be:
Focus on building and maintaining this advantage as you execute your strategy.
Think ahead to ensure your product can grow without breaking. Consider:
Building with scalability in mind from the start can save headaches later.
No strategy is without risks. Identify potential obstacles:
Develop contingency plans for each major risk you identify.
Creating an effective product strategy is a journey, not a destination.
It requires a blend of analytical thinking, creativity, and adaptability. By following these steps and constantly refining your approach based on real-world feedback, you’ll be well on your way to developing a product strategy that drives success.
Remember, the best strategy is one that’s actually implemented. So once you’ve crafted your product strategy, the real work begins – bringing it to life through focused execution and continuous improvement.
The product strategy helps managers prioritize features and timetables faster to meet the most critical customer needs.
A well-planned product strategy focuses on the collective product development efforts and customer needs, market positioning, and the ultimate business goals. This focus on value enables the team to deliver a product launch with every feature in alignment with the original vision.
A product strategy is a high-level, general plan that helps product managers go into detail.
It does not tell what exactly to do but gives essential directions on what can be done to launch the product or features in the best possible way.
We talk about 10 product strategy examples below along with a brief around each one of them. The idea is to make you aware of the space & help take informed decisions for your own contexts.
Differentiation is a product strategy example when the product is unique compared to existing solutions in the market.
The special features, which competitors don’t possess, become highlights in communication. The idea is to draw customers in through capabilities they may need to extract maximum value from the solution they are using. This can be achieved by developing an entirely new feature, including related features, and providing a comprehensive experience, increasing the product’s usability.
Example – Take the example of Snap (earlier Snapchat) in the Social media space. It continues to co-exist with other social media companies such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter through its differentiated offering.
Quality and reliability matter a lot in B2B software, as business-critical functions rely on them.
Ensuring the highest quality of reliability, experience, and capabilities positions the product as the must-have solution. If the customers get accustomed to the high-end aesthetics, this is a good product strategy example to get easier buy-ins into the ecosystem and offer more solutions. It is also important to measure the customer satisfaction using metrics like nps vs csat .
Example – Look at the ITSM space. Legacy giants such as Servicenow are ceding their marketshare to a relatively new entrant such as Jira service management.
Making a good yet affordable product is the idea behind the cost strategy.
Products using this strategy are usually priced at a lower price point than their competitors. New entrants into an established market tend to start with this strategy, especially if the product differentiators and other value-centric aspects are incremental.
This strategy is contingent on gaining enough customers and streamlining the development process. The cheaper it is for product managers to develop a competitive product, the lower they can price it – but the focus should always be on improving the value provided.
A pricing race often makes customers skeptical, as the belief that an inexpensive product can’t be of high quality is prevalent. This is a good product strategy example that nudges customers to pay more for something they believe adds value to their systems.
Example – Consider SpaceX & its reusable rockets. Their engineering innovation has helped them achieve success through their cost strategy. They charge fraction of a cost for launching satellites into orbits as compared to the traditional leaders in that business.
Product vendors operating in the B2B sphere can gain much using a focus strategy.
Focus strategy allows organizations to develop features for a well-defined segment. It helps them target a particular demographic, geographic area, or problem segment across industries.
Having a place to focus on also allows vendor organizations to be the thought leader in the sphere, which can attract newer clients looking for similar solutions.
Example – Tesla is a good example of a focused product strategy. In its initial days, Tesla’s strategy was to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model.
Providing quality without considering pricing is a high-risk, high-reward strategy, but product organizations can pull it off by hiring the brightest minds and building the best versions possible.
But this expertise is costly, and the product’s final pricing reflects this.
These products are often considered ‘luxury,’ but areas like data security and finance transactions need the most evolved versions of products at all times—which only makes the product more desirable. This example of product strategy forces customers to streamline their processes to make the most out of the solution they’re using.
Example – Inevitably, Apple comes to the mind. Although they have successive incremental improvements in the iPhone segment for past few years, they continue to come up with products that are at the edge such as Apple vision pro.
While focus strategy narrows the field of competition, niche strategies allow product managers to focus on narrowing the features to address the specific needs of a small group.
Unfunded startups usually start with a niche strategy by serving a very narrow target audience to test their assumptions. Once they have a foot in the door, they find ways to expand their relationships & grow their target audience as well as their products.
Example – Our apps on the Atlassian marketplace are a classic example of the niche product strategy.
This global product strategy example is similar to competing on price strategy but also encompasses competing on features provided by the market leader.
The aim is to challenge the price, efficiency, or feature set status quo.
Product managers should be clear about their product’s vision to identify areas where they can challenge the leaders. They can do so by creating an economical version of a popular product, a faster version of a feature, or any process that saves time and resources for customers.
Example – Challenger banks are called ‘Challengers’ for a reason! They try to challenge the traditional banks on various aspects – such as convenience & user experience.
This is a strategic approach where a company aims to compete by offering products that are nearly equivalent to those of the leading competitors in the market.
Subtle differentiation underpins this product strategy example.
Example – Observe the smartphone market over time & you immediately understand the equivalence strategy. You will notice that the hardware & software seems to converge in the same direction for all the different brands.
When managers and teams are clear about the goals of the product, they can be dynamic about their strategy.
By establishing a robust feedback mechanism, product managers can streamline feature requests and evaluate them against the product vision. These requests can be discussed in an open forum involving all team members, and decisions on further actions can be taken.
Example – Typically, this strategy is used in the initial days of a product to test the customer traction. More or less, all products in their MVP stage rely on this.
Suppose the product is matured and serves a saturated market. In that case, it makes sense for product managers to consider adjacent problems that can be solved – and increase the target market.
Product managers can emphasize user benefit by measuring and analyzing product awareness, sales leads, or customer lifetime value (CLV) results.
Example – Atlassian uses this strategy effectively to move customers from standard version of Jira to premium by offering better features.
Product strategy examples we highlighted above are exactly that – examples. Product strategy in itself is a broad domain & it is impossible for anyone to create an exhaustive list of all such strategies.
More importantly, avoid following mistakes around the product strategy:
Ideally, product strategy should focus on creating a product or solution – but to arrive at that, product managers have to sit down with various stakeholders like business, customer service & sales teams to identify unique user needs . By understanding how customers use the product, they can understand the reasoning behind any issues raised. This understanding helps them assemble a list of new features or processes they need to work on and build the strategy on a solid foundation.
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Carlos González De Villaumbrosia
Updated: August 20, 2024 - 14 min read
Product Vision is a strategic roadmap for a product's future. It fuels team motivation, aligns stakeholders, resonates with customers, and forms the foundation for Product strategy, roadmaps , and measuring success .
In this article, we’ll explore how to create a Product Vision, summarize it with a statement, and write it all up in a document that serves as a single source of inspiration for the entire organization. With free templates and real-world examples, your product vision will be 20/20 by the time you’re done reading!
The higher you go up on the Product career ladder, the more strategic skills matter. This template helps you define the why and how of product development and launch, allowing you to make better decisions for your users, team, and company.
“ It's the thing that you use in a candidate interview. It is the thing that you talk to investors about. It's the thing that wakes you up every morning. ”
-Ebi Atawodi, Director of Product Management , YouTube Studio
Product Vision is a strategic concept that provides a long-term, overarching goal of Product in a company. It’s a high-level framework and serves as a common north star for the entire Product function. Of course, for very large companies like Amazon and Google, different products will have distinct visions.
The Product Vision answers the question: What direction does my product need to take to stay aligned with long-term customer and business needs? Vision does not provide exact next steps, but it will serve as a compass.
A good Product Vision describes what the product should look like and do in the future, in a longer timeline of 2-5 years for software products and 5-10 years for hardware products. It should remain stable. Product strategy and roadmaps can change to address market and business developments, whereas the Product Vision is more stable.
Why do top companies go out of their way to establish a vision for their product? Why is it important?
Product Vision:
I nspires and persuades : Show your team how they will change users’ lives for the better with the products they’re creating. When team members understand the ‘why,’ their performance on the 'what' and 'how' improve dramatically.
Serves as a foundation : The Product Vision is far removed from features and functionality. It’s a guidepost for decision-making and strategic planning throughout the product development process.
Makes your efforts effective : Operating without a vision is dangerous. Without a vision, you have no direction. Working without direction means your team is pouring its energy and resources into initiatives that are not proven or strategic. Vision helps you identify your priorities and make more effective use of your time.
Aligns stakeholders : It brings everyone—Product Management, engineering, marketing, sales, and others—onto the same page about the direction and purpose of the product. This alignment is crucial for the coherent development and successful launch of the product.
Resonates with customers : Above all, the Product Vision must resonate with the customers. It should reflect the customers' needs and aspirations and explain why the product is a must-have for them.
A clear Product Vision has a multi-faceted impact, influencing the team's motivation, strategic decision-making, customer connection, long-term success, and the broader business impact. It's a guiding star that directs the course of the product's journey and influences all strategic and tactical decisions, from the ideation phase through to development, marketing, and post-launch enhancements. Without a clear and compelling Product Vision, organizations can easily lose their way in the market, wasting valuable resources on irrelevant features or misaligned initiatives.
The Product Vision statement is a clear and inspiring sentence that succinctly captures the essence of the Product Vision. They share the “what” and also the “how” of your products. It serves as an at-a-glance reminder of the overall Product Vision.
As a general rule, Product Vision statements address the target customer, what they are trying to accomplish, and how the product differentiates itself from competitors.
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If you’re a Product obsessive like we are at Product School, you may have noticed that Zoom recently changed its Product Vision statement from “Make communications frictionless.” Not everyone is a fan of the new Vision statement, and some have posited that it reflects a decisive change in Product Strategy.
Whatever you think of the change, it’s a clear example of the iceberg effect that these simple statements have. They are part of the Product Vision and strategy that sticks out above the water (they are made publicly available on company websites and are quoted in the press), but the interests of many stakeholders are all there under the surface. Product Vision statements represent a vast structure that incorporates business objectives, market realities, and customer needs.
Product School’s Product Vision statement template (part of the Product Strategy template ) guides you in applying a product vision framework that addresses the who, what, and why of your product in order to help you define its purpose and intended impact on the market and customers.
A Product Vision Document is a strategic document that outlines the long-term vision for a product or service. It provides a clear and compelling description of what the product will achieve and how it will meet the needs of its users or customers. The document captures the essence of the product's purpose, its target market, the problems it aims to solve, and the key differentiators that set it apart from competitors.
The Product School Strategy template is designed to help PMs define every aspect of Product Vision and create one source of truth:
1. Clear and Inspiring Product Vision Statement The Product Vision statement is a clear and inspiring sentence that succinctly captures the essence of the product's future. They share the “what” and also the “how” of your products. It serves as an at-a-glance reminder of the overall Product Vision.
2. Connection to Customer Needs and Market Reality The Product Vision should reflect a deep understanding of customer needs, desires, and pain points. It should also take into account the realities of the market, including competition, regulatory environment, and technological trends. This ensures that your vision is not only aspirational but also grounded in reality and achievable.
3. Alignment with the Company's Values and Goals An effective Product Vision aligns with the company's broader values and goals. It should support and enhance the overall business strategy and resonate with the company's mission and ethos. This alignment helps ensure consistency across different product lines and reinforces the company's brand identity.
4. Envisions Long-term Success and Scalability A strong Product Vision anticipates the product's long-term success and scalability. It sets the stage for future growth and evolution, envisioning how the product can scale, adapt, and remain relevant as it grows and as market conditions change. It considers not just the product's immediate impact but its potential to drive enduring success.
5. Adaptability to Market Changes While a Product Vision provides a long-term direction, it should also allow for flexibility and adaptability in the face of changing market dynamics. It should be resilient enough to stay relevant in changing circumstances and agile enough to pivot when necessary. This adaptability helps ensure the product's survival and success in an ever-evolving market landscape.
6. Success Metrics
Criteria and metrics that will be used to measure the product's success and hold team members accountable. These might include customer satisfaction, usage rates, retention, or other KPIs relevant to the product's objectives.
Product Vision boards showcase the key elements of the Product Vision document at a glance. They usually include:
The Product Vision statement
The target audience
Customer needs
Product details
Relevant business objectives
1. Deep Market Research Before formulating your Product Vision, it's crucial to understand the market you're operating in. This includes analyzing your competition, understanding market trends, and recognizing opportunities and threats in the industry. Deep market research provides insights that help you develop a vision that's not only inspiring but also relevant and feasible.
2. Identifying the Target Customer Every product is created with a specific user in mind. Therefore, identifying your target customer is an essential step in creating a product vision. You should understand your customer's needs, desires, and pain points, as well as their demographic, geographic, and psychographic characteristics. Your Product Vision should ultimately aim to address the needs and wants of this customer group.
Get to know your users to build the right solution for the right audience.
3. Developing the Value Proposition Once you understand your market and target customers, the next step is to identify the unique value your product will offer. Your value proposition should answer the question: why should customers choose your product over others? It should highlight the unique benefits your product will provide and how it will solve your customers' problems or enhance their lives.
Learn how to take user problems as the foundation of your solution and only build products that matter with our free Value Proposition Canvas!
4. Defining the Unique Selling Points Unique Selling Points (USPs) are the features or characteristics that distinguish your product from the competition. These could be anything from innovative features, superior quality, lower cost, excellent customer service, or anything else that makes your product stand out. These USPs should be prominently reflected in your product vision.
5. Setting the Vision Statement With all the groundwork done, you can now draft your Product Vision Statement. It should be clear, concise, and inspiring, effectively communicating your product's future direction. Remember to ensure it aligns with your company's overall mission and goals.
6. Draw it all up in a Product Vision Document
The Product Vision Document acts as a single source of truth and outlines the product's purpose, its target market, the problems it aims to solve, and the key differentiators that set it apart from competitors.
The Product Vision is front of mind for everyone in Product Management, from Associate PMs to CPOs. Who owns the Product Vision will depend on the company and how the Product function is structured. Generally speaking, the CPO, VP of Product, or someone in Product Leadership is responsible for defining the Product Vision and communicating it. They also socialize the Product Vision across the company, achieve alignment, and advocate for it when the team seems to be losing sight of it.
Here are four steps Product Leadership can take and/or delegate to Product Managers to create and uphold a strong Product Vision:
1. Collaborate with Stakeholders A Product Manager has to work closely with various stakeholders, including the executive team, engineering, marketing, sales, and customer service, to gather input and secure buy-in for the Product Vision. This collaboration ensures a well-rounded perspective and encourages shared ownership of the vision across different teams. It also fosters alignment and a clear understanding of the strategic direction.
2. Lead Market and Customer Research A key role of the Product Manager is to conduct comprehensive market research and deeply understand customers' needs and wants. This includes identifying target customers, understanding their pain points and preferences, and staying updated on market trends and competition. This research helps create a Product Vision that resonates with customers and is relevant in the market.
3. Translate Business Strategy into Product Strategy Involving business strategy in the Product Vision is absolutely essential. However, business targets have to be massaged to fit into a product context, and it’s the product manager’s role to act as a translator between business and product.
Product Vision owners need to understand the overall business goals, such as market positioning and revenue targets, and then formulate a Product Strategy that aligns with these goals. This includes defining the product's value proposition, key features, unique selling points, and roadmap, all of which should be guided by the Product Vision.
4. Communicate the Vision to the Team and the Entire Organization After the Product Vision is defined, the Product Manager plays a crucial role in communicating it to the Product Team and the entire organization. This requires crafting a clear, compelling narrative that conveys the essence of the vision and sharing it widely across the company. Regularly reinforcing the vision helps keep everyone aligned and motivated and ensures that all product decisions are consistent with the vision.
The Product Vision and Product Roadmap are both essential tools in product management, but they serve different purposes and operate at different levels of detail and timeframes.
As explained above, the Product Vision document is a high-level, long-term guiding statement that defines the overarching goal and purpose of the product. It articulates what the product aspires to achieve in the long run, the value it will deliver to customers, and how it will impact the market or solve specific problems.
Key Characteristics:
Long-Term Focus : The vision is typically oriented towards the future, often looking several years ahead.
Inspiration : It is designed to inspire and motivate the team by providing a clear and compelling purpose.
Broad and High-Level : The vision statement is broad and does not go into specifics about features or implementation details.
Strategic : It provides a strategic direction that guides the overall product development and decision-making process.
The Product Roadmap is a more detailed, tactical plan that outlines the specific steps and milestones required to achieve the product vision. There are many types of roadmaps , but all provide a timeline for when key features, improvements, or releases will be delivered, aligning short-term actions with long-term goals.
Download our easy-to-use template to help you create your Product Roadmap.
Medium to Short-Term Focus : Roadmaps typically cover a period of months to a couple of years, depending on the product's development cycle.
Detail-Oriented : The roadmap breaks down the vision into specific, actionable steps, often including feature sets, releases, and timelines.
Time-Bound : It includes dates or timeframes for when certain features or milestones are expected to be delivered.
Flexible and Evolving : While the roadmap provides a plan, it is often subject to change based on new information, market conditions, or shifting priorities.
Vision Guides the Roadmap :
The product vision provides the strategic context for the roadmap. It sets the long-term goals that the roadmap aims to achieve. When creating a roadmap, product managers refer to the vision to ensure that the planned features and releases align with the overall purpose and direction of the product.
Roadmap Realizes the Vision :
The roadmap is the actionable plan that translates the abstract vision into concrete steps. It shows how the team will move from the current state towards the envisioned future, breaking down the vision into manageable, time-bound tasks.
Alignment and Prioritization :
The product vision helps prioritize what should go into the roadmap. If a particular feature or project doesn't contribute to the vision, it might be deprioritized or excluded from the roadmap. This alignment ensures that the team is always working on what matters most for achieving the long-term vision.
Adaptation and Iteration :
While the vision is relatively stable, the roadmap is more fluid. As the product evolves and new insights are gained (e.g., user feedback , market shifts), the roadmap may need to be adjusted. However, these changes should still align with the product vision, ensuring that the product remains on the right path despite tactical shifts.
Communication :
The vision communicates the "why" behind the product, while the roadmap communicates the "how" and "when." Together, they provide a comprehensive view of where the product is headed and how it will get there, which is essential for keeping stakeholders informed and aligned.
A clear Product Vision illuminates the strategy that will lead your product to success. If your strategy is the route you’re taking and the Product Roadmap is the map (what else?) that helps you follow it, then the Product Vision is the final destination. It’s just over the horizon, keeping everyone headed in the same direction. You’ll never get where you’re going if you don’t have a destination!
So before you jump in the car and stock up on gas and junk food, take a moment to remember where you’re going and why. You’ll be glad you did.
The difference between a good and a great product lies in your Product Strategy, answering vital questions like: Who's the product for? What benefits does it offer? How does it further company objectives?
Updated: August 20, 2024
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Even among experienced product professionals, a common misconception in business holds that product strategy and business strategy mean the same thing. They don’t. Product professionals need to understand the distinction between business strategy vs. product strategy. Knowing how these two spheres of strategy differ and how they fit together plays a role in your ability to build successful products and articulate a clear product vision .
We’ll get into the details about business and product strategy below. For now, though, the critical concept to understand is that the distinction comes down to granularity.
A business strategy sets the company’s approach at the highest levels—the vision, the playbook, the boundaries. The product team must then develop and execute its product strategy within those boundaries.
Imagine a software startup. The founders choose not to take any outside funding: no angel investors, venture capitalists, or business loans. Instead, they fund operations from their bank accounts. The founding team sees long-term value in not having to make decisions based on the demands of outside owners. But in the near term, this aspect of their business strategy will place important limitations on the product strategy. Here’s one example.
Business strategy: Ramp up revenue as quickly as possible.
Product strategy: Roll out an aggressive marketing campaign—and limit the free-trial period.
With limited funding, the startup will need to generate revenue quickly. The company cannot take the patient approach of giving away its app to users for extended periods. Nor can it rely on the product-led growth model—allowing the product to sell itself and counting on users to find it on their own.
Product-led growth can be a great way to build a business. But it works only to the extent that the organization has the time and money to wait for organic customer adoption.
Cloud communications leader J2 Global takes the patient approach with its virtual phone solution, eVoice. The company lets users try eVoice free for six months. J2 can afford to do this because the company’s other products—such as eFax—provide a solid financial foundation.
Our hypothetical startup does not have the payment from other products, or any outside funding, to support the ramp-up in revenue of its new app. In other words, the company’s business strategy of self-funding dictates essential elements of the product strategy.
A closer look at each strategy, business strategy.
What is a business strategy?
Business strategy is about establishing the company’s objectives and setting out a comprehensive plan to achieve them.
Who sets a business strategy?
The senior leadership team is responsible for establishing the business strategy and communicating it across the organization. The product team will need this context, for example, to create a product strategy that supports, rather than conflicts with, the business strategy.
What does a business strategy include?
The details that make up a business strategy will include the answers to questions such as:
What is a product strategy.
Product strategy is a high-level plan outlining what the company hopes to achieve with its product and how.
In a brand-new company, the founding and executive team will set the product strategy. But in a going concern, the product team is responsible for establishing product strategy and communicating it across the company.
Developing a product strategy will involve answering questions such as:
Will we build and release our products using the agile product management framework or the waterfall approach?
A successful company needs both a business strategy and a product strategy—and the business strategy should come first. As Annie Dunham, ProductPlan’s VP of Product wrote in an article for ProductCraft called How to Maintain a Coherent Product Roadmap , “Objectives should always come before strategy.”
The ideal process works like this: The executive team sets a business objective of X. Then, the product team helps to achieve that goal using product strategy Y.
Annie notes that product and business strategies need alignment. As she explains:
“ To me, this means establishing a repeatable, communicable process for very clearly tying product strategy to business strategy, and clearly defining the associated metrics that will indicate success BEFORE creating your product roadmap.”
The need for alignment between business and product strategies becomes more evident when you see what can happen when they are misaligned. Here are two examples of how this can lead to big strategic problems.
Imagine a SaaS company that makes a file-sharing app for individual consumers. The product team wants to create a more sophisticated version of its product for the enterprise market. But also imagine that the company’s existing business strategy is to use only an online buying process. The business has no sales team.
If a SaaS app maker wants to sell subscriptions one at a time using a self-serve model, that can work. Most people are used to signing up for software without having to talk with a sales rep.
But enterprise technology buyers are different. IT decision-makers at large corporations prefer to have deep-dive discussions with technology vendors before making large purchases of those vendors’ products.
Suppose a business spends $100,000, or $5,000,000, buying thousands of app licenses. In that case, that enterprise customer will have many questions about support, functionality, and security before buying.
The misalignment here between business and product strategy creates a real problem for the enterprise-app initiative. In this scenario, one of two things must happen:
Now imagine a tech company whose executives decide not to build an in-house customer support team. Instead, they opt to outsource product support to a third-party company.
If the product team doesn’t consider this support issue when they build their product, this could lead to frustration and terrible product experiences among users. The more complicated the product, the more of a risk this will be.
It won’t matter how much the product team trains the third-party support firm, either. That company’s call center agents will also be taking calls from users of many other clients’ products. They can’t possibly be as well versed on this company’s app as an in-house support team would be.
Knowing their executives’ business strategy established a less-than-ideal customer support operation, the product team will need to develop its app accordingly. That will mean, for example:
As a product manager or product leader, you won’t have control over your company’s business strategy. Moreover, that playbook, those boundaries, will outrank your product strategy and might constrain your team’s ability to do everything you want with the product.
As ProductPlan Co-Founder Jim Semick explains in his article— Help! I’ve Been Handed a Bad Product Strategy —it’s not uncommon for a product organization to find itself stuck with a product strategy they wish they could amend. Sometimes the problem lies with an earlier product team. Consequently, other times the issue is a conflict with the executives’ business strategy.
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Start » strategy, how to build a manufacturing business plan.
A manufacturing business plan can help get your new venture off the ground and running smoothly.
A manufacturing business plan outlines the goals, strategies, and operations of a manufacturing company. Use this article as a road map for your business and to help recruit investors as your operation grows.
Manufacturing business plans vary slightly compared to business plans for other types of companies. Here's what goes into a manufacturing business plan and how to create one for your venture.
Manufacturing business plans are used for the same purpose as other companies' plans. These documents help set clear goals and objectives for internal stakeholders. They provide a framework for making decisions around financing, budgeting, hiring, and procurement. Additionally, investors and lenders often require a business plan to assess the venture's potential.
Business plans are meant to be flexible, living documents that are revisited periodically as the business grows. Writing a manufacturing business plan is a good exercise in understanding what equipment will be needed, evaluating the size of the market your business is based in, and assessing your competition. These things will change over time, so make sure you adjust your plan as your company matures.
[Read more: How to Use AI Tools to Write a Business Plan ]
Manufacturing plans can be very detailed, but at a minimum should include the following sections:
Some manufacturing plans also include sections for marketing, management, and operations. An operations plan can include the details of how you will source materials, your design process, how you will manage production, and ways to coordinate logistics with potential buyers. Marketing sections detail how you will position your product and reach potential buyers, while management identifies the key roles for which you will hire.
[Read more: 6 Product Design Software Programs for Beginners ]
While there's a lot of overlap with a normal business plan, manufacturing companies have unique processes and constraints they need to consider and address in their plan.
The production plan section should provide a detailed outline of the manufacturing process, equipment, facilities, and supply chain. It should also include operational details that are crucial to the success of the manufacturing business: quality control, inventory management, and supply chain logistics, which should be covered extensively.
Manufacturing business plans also play an outsized role in recruiting funding. Manufacturers often require significant capital investments in equipment, machinery, and facilities. The financial projections included in the plan must accurately reflect these costs to ensure adequate funding for getting off the ground.
Finally, meeting global environmental, safety, and quality regulations is no easy feat. Identifying these requirements early positions the manufacturer to be compliant, as well as to assess which supply chain partners are also able to meet these rules. A manufacturing business plan should detail supply chain management, compliance demands, and steps to streamline both of these key elements.
The easiest way to get started is to use a template. A few outlines are available online, like this one from Katana or this one from MoreBusiness.com . Start by defining your business and answering questions such as:
From there, you can work through section by section to conduct market research, develop your operations plan, prototype your product, and identify supply chain partners. Include financial projections such as your startup costs, operational costs, revenue projections, and the break-even point.
"It's important to be optimistic when starting a new business, but you also need to be realistic. This is especially true when it comes to financial projections. Don't overestimate the amount of revenue you will generate or underestimate the costs of goods sold," wrote Katana .
Breaking your plan down into smaller sections can make it easier to identify areas where you need outside help too. Don't be shy about asking others in the industry for advice.
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Before I even start introducing the subject of this article, I have to get this out of the way first: there is no single right way of doing a product launch.
If you came here looking for a silver bullet, sorry, there isn’t one. And whoever tells you they have the grail is lying. Product launches are usually messy and can be vastly different from each other, even if made by the same team. Easy lift-offs are often a sign that something is wrong — problems are either flying over your head, or everything is “perfect” because you spent too much time on what is now a project rather than a product.
With all that said, there are some best practices you can adopt to make the product launch journey less convoluted. Most importantly, I want to cover tools that will allow you to adapt to a naturally bumpy process.
The less beaten-up professionals who read this question might jump to the conclusion that “successful” here stands for “frictionless,” or “issues free.” Unfortunately, this is not true, as there is usually a lot to gain from a complicated product launch.
An operational team was oblivious to your launch, and the aftermath broke their main KPI? You just discovered an otherwise occult strategic misalignment. There is a feature-breaking bug in production? That sounds like an opportunity to revisit the established QA process. Adoption is below expected? Why is that? Did you target the wrong ideal client? Or perhaps your acquisition pipelines are poorly optimized?
Regardless of the problems you face when launching a new product, rest assured that failing might not look like a “success” at the moment, but it’s up to you to take a win out of it.
A successful product launch enables you to improve the product, even if it is unrelated to the feature release itself. Discovery is not a process — it’s an attitude and behavior, and it doesn’t stop when delivery is done. All the feedback you get, positive and negative, allows you to build on top of it and make a better value proposition for your users and your business.
But I’m not naïve, I know that there are failures and failures . Although not much can be generally applied to every spectrum of the product management rainbow, some considerations will save you some headaches in B2C, B2B, SaaS, hardware, or any other shade of digital product you can think of.
Not everyone in your organization cares if you learned something or not, which might create some “I want them fired” types of situations. Depending on the maturity of your organization, you are more or less exposed to this risk, but regardless, it’s never cool to cause a fire and then need to ask for help to put it out.
Both to increase your chances of learning something productive and to preserve your and your team’s jobs, make a checklist with the following items:
Yes, this item precedes the actual checklist. Your launch plan starts as early as your first refinement session, or maybe even further back when the idea is first discussed with you. To maximize your chances of getting the best possible outcome from a product launch, you must lead the entire process with the right mindset.
Have this checklist with you at all times and use it as a mantra rather than a plan to follow. Just as I’ve mentioned about discovery, putting things into production shouldn’t be an event, but rather a habit. Everything that follows applies at all times.
Don’t be arrogant, and don’t let stakeholders’ or managers’ ego trips lead you astray. You and your team won’t be able to solve everything with a single swing. The more you promise, the more points of potential failure you add to your launch later.
This works at every dimension of a delivery: scope, impact, and cost. Regardless of which of those you overshoot, the higher the chances you get people frustrated. Iterative thinking means solving the right problem at the right time, not all problems at once, that’s how you maximize value per effort.
Left alone, different people might have different conceptions of what success means. This is precisely why the “learning” success criteria won’t stick with everybody. Unless you can align expectations with everybody, there is a high chance that some will see failure as what is objectively a success, even by business standards.
Let your stakeholders, users, and clients know what to expect, what can go wrong, and how you will preserve them from harm in case things get off track. Clarify what is there to gain, both in terms of raw benefits, but also as more intangible ones, such as a better understanding of the marketplace, or forcing the limits of tech innovation.
One of the biggest gaps between junior and senior professionals is that the first thinks everything will be alright, while the second knows the headaches awaiting over the horizon. Being prepared to deal with the worst-case scenario can do no harm, and save you a lot of trouble if things do go south.
This is a more solid concept for designers and engineers: a design or code that thinks only about the happy path is doomed to failure. Preventive corner case identification and mitigation help products to be more reliable and to scale better. Your product launch should be the same — what happens if the team’s QA goes on PTO? What if there is a last-minute scope change? Can some key stakeholders have forgotten about the launch? Try and think of the worst that can happen and take precautions.
Documentation might not be the most exciting thing to work on, but it helps a lot both in preparing all the involved personnel for the launch and in helping you to backtrack in case of issues. Good documentation provides clarity and transparency, two of the things you should be outputting the most as a product manager.
Documentation can be as simple as a text doc or a sophisticated JIRA project full of epics and tasks. The form is not as relevant as comprehensiveness and ease of access. Keep track of decisions made over chat, email, and meetings. Take notes of ideas from informal discussions. Maintain the documentation as up-to-date as possible to avoid memory lapses. Make sure all impacted parties have access to the relevant documentation.
This is not a must for every launch. Some low-stakes deliveries are better released with a blast, but for those that introduce a high degree of change, have a high risk of breaking, or bring a high level of uncertainty to the business, it’s best to phase the rollout and adapt according to user feedback.
Phased rollouts are substantially more work, but they can avoid big crises when you, the team, or the organization feel insecure. Don’t get too attached to it, though. If you feel confident enough at the third step of your five-step rollout plan and you have buy-in from peers and stakeholders, it’s best to move faster than to cling to a slow process that has no more benefit to provide.
Going back to my opening statements, no amount of effort and preparation can eliminate the high risk of having some troubles during a launch. If you are prepared for the worst, as we’ve suggested already, you must have a pretty well-defined support line and escalation list.
Whenever something breaks in your house, you have readily available numbers to call and ask for support. The same should be true for your product, and nothing breaks as much as a new product. The escalation list, alternatively, allows for stakeholders to quickly find support, either by reaching out to someone who is on duty during off-hours or by calling senior management to rally resources around the fix.
The most asked question around product launches is, “What are the changes?” The second most asked question is, “What comes next?” Stakeholders, users, B2B clients, your teammates, other teams, and, well, everybody is full of expectations for your product. If you’ve fallen under the above guidelines up until here, people will be left longing for more.
Small promises, managing the meaning of success, and phased rollouts — all of those send a strong message of “not now,” and that’s the idea, actually. A product shouldn’t be a cannonball thrown at a wall, but a chisel chipping away user issues to reveal art. It’s your job as a product manager to convey this exact image, showing others the full picture, and how this and the next launches tie in together to build the perfect product.
You took all your precautions (or not) and your launch still looks like a bad nightmare. Your checklist failed and you have a hot mess in your hands. Take a deep breath, focus, and take the best out of this poor situation. As we mentioned in the beginning, there is a lot to be taken from painful releases in the format of valuable knowledge.
Postmortems are amazing tools for understanding the root cause of problems and establishing follow-up commitments to avoid the recurrence of said issues. Postmortems can capture technical problems, design shortsights, and even process optimization opportunities.
It’s impressive how data-driven and evidence-based people can be when they are looking for a culprit, and taking advantage of this hunter mentality can help you a lot to bring some hard facts to your product maturity.
Not every root cause is technical or processual, some issues might arise from more intangible complications, such as intra or extra-team relationships, upper-management meddling in the team’s affairs, or self-limitations if you have yourself as a product leader.
Retrospectives are standard scrum meetings that should happen after every sprint release to assess how things went and what could be done differently to improve the process. Even if you’re not managing a scrum team yourself, incorporating some practices specific to this right can help you iron out personal team limitations.
No amount of work can transform a bad idea into a good product. In the words of Peter Drucker, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
A bad product launch might be a hint that the product as it is shouldn’t have been launched at all in the first place. A fatal flaw many organizations fall prey to when trying to innovate is to fall in love with the work done rather than with the expected result. A bad launch might provide all the reasons why you should pivot your value proposition entirely, and that alone is worth more than any consultancy agency or product blogger could tell you. Look at the data and user feedback to identify when a failure is in fact a response to something different.
Product launches are unpredictable all-in plays that put to the test all your team’s worth. There’s no foolproof formula, and that’s what makes our job as product managers so important. Success isn’t necessarily about flawless execution, but rather about moving the business forward in sync with users’ needs.
A “perfect” launch might mean you’ve played it too safe, and the problem with that is that your time to market might have come too late for it to make a dent in user behavior. Take calculated risks, test boundaries, and see everything as a discovery opportunity. It’s often in moments of uncertainty that innovation emerges.
At the end of the day, successful product management isn’t about ticking boxes or following a methodology — it’s about finding and shipping something that caters to actual market needs and moves the business pointer closer to scalable growth. A successful product launch might not lead to any, while a catastrophic one can show you the way toward both.
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Product positioning is a strategy that determines how your product is perceived in the market. It’s about identifying a specific place in the minds of the target audience by highlighting the product’s unique features, benefits, and value propositions. Essentially, product positioning is about carving out a niche for your product so that it stands out from the competition.
A well-positioned product ensures that your target audience recognizes its unique value, leading to enhanced market visibility and brand identity. According to industry experts, effective product positioning strategies can significantly boost customer engagement and foster brand loyalty.
A product positioning strategy is a blueprint that defines how a product is perceived in the market. This strategy encompasses everything from product features, benefits, and use-cases to competitive advantages and pricing models. It’s about carving out a unique place in the market where your product stands out among competitors. Understanding these strategies is crucial for any business looking to establish a distinct brand identity and effectively attract its target audience.
A successful product positioning strategy comprises several key components:
Target Audience Identification: Understanding who your ideal customers are, their preferences, and pain points.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Highlighting what makes your product unique and better than the alternatives.
Positioning Statement: A clear, concise statement that captures the essence of your product’s value to the target market.
Market Research: Gathering and analyzing competitive and customer data to inform your positioning decisions.
Feedback Loops: Regularly collecting and utilizing customer feedback to refine the positioning strategy over time.
Moreover, customer perception plays a pivotal role in product positioning. How customers view your product can significantly influence its success in the market. Perceptions are shaped by various factors, including marketing messages, customer experiences, and word-of-mouth. Therefore, aligning your product positioning with customer expectations and preferences is essential. Utilizing tools like perceptual maps can help visualize and adjust these perceptions, ensuring your strategy remains impactful and relevant.
Shaping the market perception of your product involves creating a specific, memorable image that resonates with your target audience. This image should emphasize the core benefits and address the pain points of your customers. Through strategic messaging and marketing efforts, your product aims to occupy a distinctive space that makes it the preferred choice among consumers.
One widely used tool for visualizing and adjusting product positioning is a perceptual map. This visual framework helps businesses identify their product’s current positioning relative to competitors and understand how different attributes impact consumer perception. By regularly analyzing and updating this map, companies can make data-driven decisions to refine their positioning strategy .
Benefits of effective positioning.
Effective product positioning helps carve out a distinct place in the market, making your product memorable and immediately recognizable. This tailored approach to aligning your product with the right market segments highlights its unique features and benefits, ultimately driving customer interest and increasing sales.
Strategically positioned products enjoy enhanced market visibility. By clearly communicating what sets your product apart, you make it easier for customers to understand its value proposition instantly. Think of brands like Nike, which is synonymous with high quality, or Thrive Market, known for promoting healthy living. These brands have successfully leveraged product positioning to boost their market presence.
Well-executed product positioning fosters stronger customer engagement and loyalty. When customers perceive that your product aligns well with their needs and expectations, they are more likely to become repeat buyers. Consistently delivering on your brand’s promise solidifies trust, making your product the go-to choice in your niche. For example, creating a product positioning map can help visualize and refine these strategies, ensuring they stay aligned with market demands.
Increased market visibility leads to greater brand recognition.
Enhanced customer loyalty by meeting and exceeding expectations.
Improved sales and customer retention through meaningful engagement.
Product positioning doesn’t just affect how a product is perceived; it shapes the entire experience customers have with your brand. Tools like Creately can assist in planning and executing these strategies effectively, ensuring your product stands out in a crowded marketplace.
Mastering various product positioning strategies is crucial for creating a unique brand image and standing out in a competitive market. Different strategies cater to different aspects of the product, audience, and competitive landscape. Let’s explore the diverse types of product positioning strategies:
Characteristics-based positioning emphasizes the distinctive features and attributes of a product. For example, Tesla’s positioning leverages its advanced electric vehicle technology, emphasizing innovation and sustainability. It’s a strategy that works well when you can highlight unique product traits that solve specific customer pain points.
Pricing-based positioning targets budget-conscious customers by focusing on competitive pricing. Brands like Walmart use this strategy to offer the best prices in the market, attracting cost-sensitive shoppers. By positioning the product as affordable yet valuable, companies can tap into larger market segments.
Use or application-based positioning connects the product to specific use cases or jobs-to-be-done (JTBD). Monday.com, for instance, positions itself as a versatile project management tool that can be seamlessly integrated into any workflow, enhancing productivity and efficiency. This approach resonates with customers looking for problem-solving solutions.
Quality or prestige-based positioning highlights the product’s superior quality or luxury status. Brands like Rolex focus on exclusivity and high craftsmanship, attracting customers who perceive the product as a status symbol. This strategy is effective in creating an elite brand image and fostering brand loyalty among premium customers.
Competitor-based positioning differentiates the product by emphasizing its advantages over competitors. Coda employs this strategy by positioning itself as a more flexible and powerful alternative to Google Docs and Notion. It’s about showcasing unique features and superior benefits that set the product apart in a crowded market.
Developing a compelling product positioning strategy is essential for standing out in a crowded marketplace. This section will guide you through the critical steps necessary for creating a strategy that resonates with your target audience.
The first step in any successful product positioning strategy is to identify your target market. Define your target customer by understanding their demographics, behaviors, preferences, and pain points. Conducting market research is crucial here and can unveil valuable insights into potential gaps and opportunities in the market.
Effective market research involves gathering data through surveys, interviews, and analyzing market trends. Observing competitors and the industry’s pulse helps you understand where your product can stand out.
Your Unique Selling Point (USP) is what sets your product apart from the competition. Identify what makes your product unique and superior. Focus on unique features, benefits, or overall experiences that are not available elsewhere. This allows you to clearly communicate the value your product offers to customers.
Crafting a clear and concise product positioning statement is the next step. This statement should encapsulate your target audience, the unique value your product provides, and how it stands out from competitors. An effective positioning statement can significantly streamline your marketing communications and resonate with your audience.
Your messaging strategy should reflect your positioning statement and be tailored to your target audience. It should highlight the key benefits and differentiators of your product and be used consistently across all marketing materials.
Implement your positioning strategy across all customer touchpoints. This includes your website, advertising, content marketing, product packaging, and customer service. Ensure that every interaction reinforces your product’s positioning.
The market is dynamic, so it’s important to continually monitor your product’s performance and the competitive landscape. Be prepared to adapt your positioning strategy as needed to maintain its effectiveness.
Collect feedback from customers and analyze key metrics to determine the effectiveness of your positioning. Regularly revisiting and adapting your strategy ensures that it evolves with market trends and customer preferences.
Using tools like Creately for strategy planning and execution can vastly improve the efficiency and clarity of your product positioning efforts. By visualizing different aspects of your strategy, you can ensure alignment across your team and make more informed decisions.
Userpilot’s premium pricing strategy.
Userpilot successfully leverages a premium pricing strategy to position itself as a high-value product for mid-market companies. By emphasizing superior customer experience and advanced features, Userpilot differentiates itself from lower-cost alternatives. This strategy has allowed the SaaS provider to attract a specific audience willing to pay a premium for exceptional product quality and customer support.
Monday.com employs a use-case positioning strategy by offering versatile functionalities that cater to diverse business needs. Whether it’s project management, CRM, or workflow automation, Monday.com showcases its adaptability. This broad range of applications makes it an indispensable tool for various industries, enhancing its market visibility and customer base. Its success can be attributed to effectively communicating how it satisfies multiple job-to-be-done scenarios.
Coda brilliantly adopts a competitor-based positioning approach by highlighting its advantages over popular alternatives like Google Docs and Notion. Through detailed comparison, Coda emphasizes its superior integration capabilities, flexible canvas, and robust performance features. This differentiation is clearly illustrated in marketing campaigns and user testimonials, positioning Coda as the go-to solution for teams seeking powerful and unified document collaboration tools.
To plan and execute strategies like these, use visual frameworks such as a product positioning template . Tools like Creately enable teams to collaborate effectively, visualize their positioning strategies, and make data-informed decisions to achieve market success.
Embarking on the journey of mastering product positioning strategies requires well-structured planning and execution. Visual frameworks are indispensable tools for streamlining this process, offering clarity and precision in crafting your positioning plan. To facilitate this, tools like Creately offer intuitive and collaborative visual interfaces. Let’s explore some key visual frameworks that can significantly enhance your strategy planning.
A product positioning map is a powerful tool for visually representing your product’s place in the market relative to competitors. By plotting attributes such as price, quality, or specific features, you can easily identify market gaps and opportunities. This visual representation aids in making informed strategic decisions.
A product brief template consolidates essential information about your product, target market, and positioning strategy into a single document. This template ensures that your entire team is on the same page, providing a clear roadmap for developing and executing your product positioning strategy. With Creately’s customizable frameworks, you can create comprehensive and interactive product briefs that align with your strategic goals.
The product canvas is a visual tool designed to outline your product vision, strategy, and positioning in a structured format. It breaks down complex ideas into manageable sections such as target audience, unique value proposition, and key benefits. Utilizing a product canvas ensures that all critical elements of your positioning strategy are addressed and coherent.
Incorporating visual frameworks into your product positioning strategy offers several benefits:
Enhanced Clarity: Visual representations make complex data and strategies easier to understand.
Improved Collaboration: Teams can work together more effectively, ensuring all members are aligned with the strategic goals.
Increased Efficiency: Streamlining the planning process saves time and resources, allowing for quicker execution.
Data-Driven Decisions: Integration with real-time data ensures strategies are based on accurate and up-to-date information.
Utilizing visual frameworks such as those provided by Creately can transform your approach to product positioning, making it more structured, collaborative, and effective.
To master product positioning strategy and achieve maximum impact in your market, it’s crucial to understand the various strategies, their benefits, and how to execute them effectively. From defining the key components of your positioning strategy to conducting thorough market research and crafting a compelling product positioning statement, every step plays a critical role in ensuring your product stands out amidst competition.
Effective product positioning not only enhances market visibility but also strengthens your brand identity and fosters deeper customer engagement and loyalty. Examples like Userpilot’s premium pricing strategy, Monday.com’s versatile use-case positioning, and Coda’s competitor-based approach demonstrate the real-world success of well-executed positioning strategies.
Visual frameworks, such as a Product Positioning Map, Product Brief Template, and Product Canvas, can significantly enhance your strategy planning and execution. These tools enable you to visually organize and analyze different aspects of your product positioning, ensuring a more streamlined and effective process.
Using platforms like Creately, which offers data-linked visual tools and AI-powered visual intelligence, can further elevate your product positioning efforts. Creately not only aids in collaborative planning and visualization but also enhances productivity, making it an invaluable asset for product managers, marketing professionals, and startup founders.
In conclusion, mastering product positioning strategy is an ongoing journey that requires continual refinement and adaptation to market shifts and customer preferences. By leveraging the right strategies, tools, and methodologies, you can secure a prominent place in your market and achieve long-term business success. So start now, and let tools like Creately guide your path to optimal product positioning.
Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.
How do you develop a product positioning strategy.
Here are the steps you need for follow to create an effective product positioning strategy:
Identify your target audience and understand their needs.
Analyze your competitors to find a gap or an unmet need in the market.
Determine the unique features and benefits of your product that meet these needs.
Craft a positioning statement that communicates the unique value of your product to your target audience.
Integrate this positioning across all marketing channels and customer touchpoints.
Yes, product positioning can evolve due to changes in the market, consumer preferences, or the competitive landscape. It’s important for businesses to regularly review and adjust their positioning to ensure it remains relevant and effective. Continuous market research and customer feedback are essential for adapting positioning strategies to changing conditions.
Remember, the key to successful product positioning is consistency, clarity, and a deep understanding of your market and customers.
Hansani has a background in journalism and marketing communications. She loves reading and writing about tech innovations. She enjoys writing poetry, travelling and photography.
Implementing a product recall procedure with precision requires a proactive and meticulous approach that integrates robust crisis management, supplier audit, and quality control measures to minimize the risk of product safety issues and guarantee swift communication with stakeholders. A thorough recall plan should outline clear procedures for identifying, containing, and resolving product safety issues, while a robust crisis management strategy enables swift communication with stakeholders. Logistical arrangements for product retrieval, storage, and disposal must also be established. By adopting a meticulous and structured approach, companies can minimize the impact of a product recall and protect their reputation. There's more to explore in crafting a recall procedure that stands the test of time.
Table of Contents
Preparing for the Unexpected
What measures can a company take to guarantee business continuity and minimize reputational damage in the event of a product recall, a scenario that is often unpredictable and unavoidable? To mitigate the risks associated with product recalls, companies must adopt a proactive approach to crisis management and contingency planning. This involves developing a thorough recall plan that outlines clear procedures for identifying, containing, and resolving product safety issues. A robust crisis management strategy should be integrated into the plan, ensuring that communication protocols are established to swiftly inform stakeholders, including customers, regulatory agencies, and the media. Contingency planning should also include logistical arrangements for product retrieval, storage, and disposal, as well as strategies for managing inventory, supply chain disruptions, and potential financial losses. By having a well-rehearsed plan in place, companies can respond promptly and effectively to a product recall, minimizing the likelihood of reputational damage and ensuring business continuity.
Identifying recall triggers early is essential in mitigating the severity of a product recall. This involves monitoring for early warning signs, such as customer complaints or returns, that may indicate a potential issue. By detecting supply chain disruptions, quality control issues, and other red flags, manufacturers can proactively address problems before they escalate into full-blown recalls.
Early detection of potential product defects or hazards is critical to mitigating the risk of widespread harm, and manufacturers can benefit from recognizing subtle early warning signs that may indicate the need for a product recall. Identifying recall triggers early enables proactive measures to prevent harm, reduce liability, and minimize reputational damage. Manufacturers should monitor and analyze risk indicators, such as customer complaints, warranty claims, and repair data, to detect potential issues before they escalate. Failure patterns, such as recurring faults or defects, can also serve as early warning signs. By recognizing these patterns, manufacturers can identify potential problems and take corrective action before they lead to widespread harm. Effective early warning systems enable manufacturers to respond promptly to emerging issues, reducing the likelihood of a recall and its associated costs. By prioritizing early detection and swift response, manufacturers can protect consumers, maintain brand integrity, and guarantee compliance with regulatory requirements.
Manufacturers should also be vigilant about supply chain disruptions, which can serve as a harbinger of potential product defects or hazards, as component shortages, supplier insolvency, or logistics failures can introduce unforeseen variables that compromise product integrity. These disruptions can have a ripple effect throughout the entire supply chain, making it essential to identify recall triggers early.
Component Shortage | Implement dual-sourcing or inventory buffering |
Supplier Insolvency | Conduct regular supplier audits and assessments |
Logistics Failures | Invest in real-time supply chain visibility tools |
Natural Disasters | Develop contingency plans for emergency situations |
Proactive risk mitigation strategies can help minimize the impact of supply chain disruptions. By implementing dual-sourcing, conducting regular supplier audits, and investing in real-time supply chain visibility tools, manufacturers can reduce the likelihood of product defects or hazards. Moreover, developing contingency plans for emergency situations can help ensure business continuity. By prioritizing supply chain visibility, manufacturers can identify potential recall triggers early, reducing the risk of product recalls and protecting their brand reputation.
Implementing rigorous quality control measures is vital for detecting anomalies in the production process that could precipitate product recalls. These measures enable manufacturers to identify potential issues early, thereby mitigating the risk of defective products reaching consumers. Effective quality control involves a thorough examination of the production process to pinpoint vulnerabilities and take corrective action. This includes monitoring equipment performance, inspecting raw materials, and verifying product specifications. Additionally, implementing a robust testing and inspection regime can help detect defects or irregularities that could trigger a recall. Identifying the root cause of quality control issues is critical in preventing future occurrences. Human error, for instance, can be a significant contributor to quality control lapses. By addressing the underlying causes of human error, such as inadequate training or fatigue, manufacturers can reduce the likelihood of defects and guarantee a higher level of product quality. Proactive quality control measures can help manufacturers avoid costly recalls, protect their brand reputation, and safeguard consumer safety.
When developing a recall communications plan, it is vital to establish a clear and efficient framework for disseminating critical information to stakeholders. This involves assembling a recall team that can respond swiftly and effectively, crafting messages that are accurate and concise, and selecting communication channels that guarantee timely and widespread reach. By focusing on these key elements, organizations can confirm that their recall communications plan is thorough, reliable, and effective in mitigating potential risks.
Establishing a dedicated recall team is imperative to ensuring a swift and effective response to product safety issues, and its assembly should be a top priority in developing a thorough recall communications plan. A well-structured recall team enables efficient decision-making, clear communication, and prompt action, all of which are pivotal in mitigating the impact of a product recall.
Effective team dynamics are fundamental in a recall team, as they facilitate collaboration, trust, and open communication among team members. A clear understanding of each team member's role and responsibilities is necessary in avoiding confusion and ensuring that all tasks are completed efficiently. Role definition should be precise, with each member aware of their specific duties and the expectations associated with them. This clarity enables team members to focus on their tasks, ensuring that all aspects of the recall process are addressed promptly and effectively. By establishing a cohesive recall team with well-defined roles, organizations can respond quickly and decisively to product safety issues, minimizing the risk of reputational damage and financial loss.
Crafting recall messages that convey critical information with clarity and precision is vital to mitigating reputational damage and maintaining consumer safety during a product recall. A well-crafted message can help to alleviate consumer concerns, provide clear instructions, and demonstrate a commitment to safety. To achieve this, it is key to establish Tone Consistency throughout all recall communications. This involves adopting a tone that is apologetic, empathetic, and transparent, conveying Crisis Empathy to affected consumers.
Message Crafting Guidelines should prioritize clarity, concision, and accuracy, avoiding ambiguity and making certain that critical information is easily accessible. Recall messages should clearly state the reason for the recall, the affected products, and the necessary actions for consumers to take. In addition, messages should be free from technical jargon and complex terminology, using plain language that is easily understood by the target audience. By adhering to these guidelines, organizations can certify that their recall communications are effective, reassuring, and empathetic, ultimately protecting their reputation and maintaining consumer trust.
In developing a thorough recall communications plan, organizations must carefully select the most effective channels to reach their target audience, guaranteeing that critical recall information is conveyed promptly and efficiently to mitigate potential harm. The chosen channels should be able to reach the target audience quickly, reliably, and consistently.
Channel Type | Reach | Response Time |
---|---|---|
Social Media | High | Real-time |
Medium | 1-2 hours | |
In-Store Announcements | Low | 1-2 days |
A multi-channel approach is often the most effective, as it allows organizations to leverage the strengths of each channel. For example, social media can be used for real-time updates, while email can be used for more detailed information. Retail partnerships can also play a vital role in disseminating recall information to customers, particularly in-store announcements. Digital hubs, such as company websites or online portals, can serve as a central location for recall information, providing customers with a single source of truth. By carefully selecting and leveraging these channels, organizations can verify that critical recall information reaches their target audience quickly and efficiently.
Six critical steps must be taken to efficiently execute a product recall, facilitating timely and effective removal of defective or hazardous items from the market. The first step involves establishing a clear recall objective, defining the scope, and identifying the responsible parties. Next, a recall strategy must be developed, taking into account factors such as Recall Velocity and Recall Cadence, to guarantee a swift and coordinated response. The third step involves notifying regulatory authorities and stakeholders, providing them with detailed information on the recall. A thorough communication plan must then be implemented, targeting customers, distributors, and retailers. The fifth step involves executing the recall, employing a structured approach to retrieve and quarantine affected products. Finally, a post-recall evaluation must be conducted to assess the effectiveness of the recall and identify areas for improvement. By following these critical steps, companies can efficiently execute a product recall, minimizing the risk of harm to consumers and reputational damage.
Effective execution of a product recall relies heavily on the swift and efficient management of inventory and logistics, as timely retrieval and quarantine of affected products are vital to minimizing the risk of harm to consumers and reputational damage. During a recall, it is essential to quickly identify and isolate the affected products, which requires a well-organized inventory management system.
To facilitate seamless inventory management, the following strategies can be employed:
Accurate and thorough documentation is essential in a product recall, as it facilitates transparency, accountability, and compliance with regulatory requirements. This includes maintaining detailed records of the recall process, from initial notification to final resolution. Documentation should include product identification, batch numbers, and serial numbers, as well as the reason for the recall, the scope of the recall, and the corrective actions taken.
It is also crucial to establish and maintain audit trails, which provide a chronological record of all actions taken during the recall process. This includes documentation of compliance checks, such as verification of product returns, destruction, or repair. Audit trails serve as a valuable resource in the event of an audit or investigation, providing evidence of due diligence and regulatory compliance.
Effective documentation and reporting enable companies to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements, mitigate potential legal liabilities, and maintain trust with customers and stakeholders. By implementing robust documentation and reporting procedures, companies can ensure a swift and efficient recall process, minimizing the risk of reputational damage and financial loss.
Conducting a thorough post-recall analysis is crucial to identifying root causes, evaluating the effectiveness of the recall strategy, and informing process improvements to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. This analysis enables organizations to distill valuable insights from the recall experience, facilitating the implementation of corrective actions and preventive measures.
The post-recall analysis should focus on the following key aspects:
The post-recall analysis is vital to identifying root causes, evaluating the effectiveness of the recall strategy, and informing process improvements to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.
How do i determine the root cause of a product defect?.
To determine the root cause of a product defect, conduct a thorough Failure Analysis, examining manufacturing processes, material quality, and design specifications to identify potential Design Flaws, and employ tools like fishbone diagrams and fault tree analysis to pinpoint the primary cause.
Before considering reuse or refurbishment, assess recalled products' viability through rigorous testing, ensuring Product Reliability standards are met. Implementing targeted Refurbishment Strategies can restore products to original quality, but only if root causes are fully addressed and mitigated.
Non-compliance with recall regulations can result in severe penalties, including criminal liability, fines, and imprisonment, as well as financial consequences such as reputational damage, legal fees, and loss of customer trust, ultimately affecting a company's bottom line and longevity.
"Regulatory bodies typically require businesses to retain recall-related documentation for a minimum of 3-5 years, ensuring accessibility via secure Document Storage and maintaining transparent Audit Trails to facilitate compliance and potential investigations."
In general, recalls are typically reserved for safety issues, but brands may choose to initiate a voluntary recall for cosmetic issues to protect brand image and maintain positive customer perception, ensuring long-term loyalty and trust.
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