The success of any business depends on how well it sells its ideas or services to the consumers. However, before the ideas, services, or products take off, there is a whole process involved from seed to the germination stage, which in business terms is called product management.
Product management involves visions or ideas, developing products, setting strategies to put a product into the market, and finally reaching the target audience. Product management is the strategy that brings together product development, marketing, and sales.
It is the road map to achieving business goals, including product development, timeline, impact it will have on consumers will be the company’s bottom line.
Studies have shown that effective product management can increase profits by 34.2 percent. Suppose one wants to become an expert at taking a product from the strategizing stage right up to the execution; in that case, the best possible answer is to acquire a relevant certification in product management.
There are five major strategies involved in product management. They are:
⦁ Development of business idea
⦁ Market research
⦁ Strategy and Execution
⦁ Marketing and Sales
⦁ Tracking the product metrics
The development of a business idea
Developing a business idea involves the essence of your product and how you visualize it reaching the market.
It should address why the product comes into the market, the gap that it addresses, and who is the target audience. Once you address these core questions, your business’s vision and mission statement develop.
The next step is developing the business model, including how you want to go about realizing the vision, the market potential, the solution it is offering, and how you will go about actual manufacturing, investment, etc.? The business model can be product-led, revenue-driven, network, or segmentation-based.
Product-led business models: are the new innovative businesses such as the Electric Vehicles (Tesla is a prime example, or the crypto and blockchain businesses).
Revenue-driven models are those that price their products up or down according to market winds. Uber is a prime example of this kind of model.
Networking model: Businesses like Netflix and Zoom rely on their networking models to offer segmentation and price differentiation to drive their businesses.
These examples are just the broad basics of the business models; many companies come up with their models driven by their unique needs.
Market Research
Includes the market size, the competition, and the customer profile the product is meant for.
A thorough competitive analysis gives you the market situation and where you fall in this landscape. Market research should be ongoing.
Customer profiling helps build customer persona, customer likes and dislikes, aspirations and challenges. Keeping this persona in mind, you constantly build features around the product or series, furthermore, adding value as you gather more knowledge.
Strategy and execution in product management
Execution is about taking the developed product to the market. You need a team aligned to the vision, to rally the resources, assign tasks and timelines, and track the same.
The manager needs to communicate plans and strategies with key stakeholders, the product development team, company executives, and the C-suite.
This means anticipating problems and the risks involved and being prepared for them. Supply chain delays, manufacturing or designing glitches, or other crises can occur. It is here that the role of the product manager becomes essential. He or she is the task manager who has to always be ready with alternatives and coordinates a product’s progress with relevant teams.
Product managers need to interpret feedback, analyze data, and relay the findings to relevant teams.
Strategy execution involves decision-making and leadership roles where you decide to go with Plan A and not B, stand by that decision and rally forces around it.
Communication plays an important role here – you communicate with the teams as to why a specific decision is being taken, the rationale behind it, and the risk and result. A product management certification from India is essential to hone all these skills.
Marketing and Sales
After the product is off the shop floor, the next step is to take it to the market. Here the nitty-gritty of positioning, sales strategies, and customer value propositions are solved. Once a product has passed through this stage, it is ready for public release.
Branding, pricing, distribution sales, and feedback are the customer-facing aspects of product management strategy. This means upselling the product, building customer loyalty and company reputation, and working on customer retention and customer solutions.
Tracking the product metrics
Once the product is in the market, the task is not over for managers. It is essential to track the product metrics. Its performance and interaction with the target audience need to be observed and preserved as data. Ongoing data analysis helps services evolve, add value and new features, and build further strategies around the product.
If one wants to become an expert at taking a product from the strategy to the execution stage, the best solution is to acquire a relevant product management certification
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