Key Elements for a Winning Product Strategy
Without strategy, your product is deemed to fail. You can collect ideas what to do next. But that rarely works. To win product, you are best advised to come up with a compelling strategy. Today, we will explore the essential elements of such a strategy.
One of the most important aspects of modern product management is creating a product strategy. Bad strategy or the whole absence of any kind of strategy won’t work on the long run.
Meanwhile, a well-crafted product strategy serves as the foundation for your product's success, providing a clear roadmap for your team and ensuring that you're focused on the right goals. Its main purpose is to enable your team to make the right decisions. Decisions that – hopefully – benefit business and customers alike.
Why you need a product strategy
Before diving into the process of creating a product strategy, it's important to understand why it is critical to have one. Why not just go along and build what’s deemed best at the time?
The reason is simple: focus. And focus is about saying no to a hundred good ideas. Your strategy tells everyone involved what you believe are the best and most important opportunities for your product.
It is a high-level plan that outlines the vision, goals and initiatives for your product. Thereby, it serves as a guiding framework for decision making and execution. This includes enabling people to say “no” to a lot of noise.
I repeat: The main – or even sole? – purpose of strategy is to provide the people executing the work with a framework to make the right decisions and focus on what is most valuable at that point in time.
Key components of product strategy
There are plenty of frameworks and ways to build a (product) strategy. You will not find an absolute list of key components. But the following have proven to be valuable:
Kernel: The most critical component of all is the strategic kernel. It includes three main parts: the vision, a diagnosis on key challenges and the high level ideas how to bring the two prior items together.
Product vision: The product vision is the overarching purpose and direction for your product. It sheds light on the question, what your product tries to achieve. What value does it bring to the world? What user needs or desires does it fulfill? It needs to be clear, compelling and inspiring. Make it tell a good story. And remember: pain killers, not vitamins! Fix an immediate issue; not some vague problem on the horizon.
Target audience: Identifying your target audience is critical. Whatever it is, that you intend to build – you must know who is going to see value in it. There are plenty of stories about beautiful products that were simply build without the user in mind. And therefore, became failures. Your target audience should be specific and well defined to ensure that your product resonates with the right users.
Competitive Landscape: Very likely, your product will have competition. Who is it? Understanding the competitive landscape is critical to positioning in the marketplace. Analyse your competitors, their offerings and shortcomings. This information will help you identify your unique selling proposition (USP).
Goals and objectives: Your product strategy should outline the specific goals and objectives you want to achieve. These goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) and must be aligned with your company's overall business objectives. The idea here is to bring focus. It’s better to focus and finish three objectives next quarter, than half-heartedly running behind on ten different goals.
Key initiatives: Working backwards from your vision, how will you tackle the challenges ahead? What will you bet your money on? Key initiatives are the high-level projects or activities you'll undertake to achieve your goals. These initiatives should be prioritised based on their potential impact on the success of your product.
Built on insights and data: The following goes without saying: every component above needs to be based on insights and data. Do your research, go out and talk to your (potential) customers.
The importance of communication
I love the saying of Bob Iger: “Your strategy is only as good as your ability to articulate it”. (To be fair, he is currently selling Masterclasses on strategy with it. But it’s still absolutely to the point.)
Even if you created the most sophisticated strategy document: if the people who need to act on it, do not get it, it is worth nothing. Therefore, choose a format for your strategy which is the most accessible to everyone. I have made good experience with starting with a written narrative that includes the key components mentioned above. From there, you can add more visually appealing and easier to digest communication media (like a PPT presentation).
And remember: the message needs to be repeated several times before it sticks. Therefore, once you are happy with your first draft – start communicating it to the people who need to know.
