What is a product strategy?
The product strategy answers a variety of essential questions for the entrepreneur and partners on the journey. Questions such as: Who is the target audience? Is there more than one target audience? What exactly hurts them? How do they do this action today? What is important to them? What do I want to innovate for them? Do I have competitors? If so, what do they do? What are their strengths/weaknesses? A digital product strategy is essential in any product development process.
In most cases, entrepreneurs skip the product strategy, I don't know the reason for this, but I want you to know that a lot of product failure in the post-launch phase depends and is related to a lack of product understanding and understanding your target audience, right, sometimes it also depends on deficiencies in the user experience, but let's assume for a moment that you experienced Your user is perfect, and you still recognize a gap between what you expected and reality - the problem is probably in the planning of the product strategy.
Excellent product, not necessarily easy to succeed!
Did you find a solution to the problem of looking for one? Excellent!, this is definitely a nice start and the right direction in the product creation process. Sometimes I come across products that have an excellent solution with a problem of low intensity activity. In most cases, the reason for this is the lack of understanding of the overall map - the product strategy.
The profit and loss mechanism - the fine line between use and abandonment
When every user today has a wide digital territory, much wider than it was five years ago, the management of time and tasks becomes a significant part of the spontaneous decision made by the brain in the mechanism of profit and loss. Every application or digital asset has a certain perception in the mind of your user.
In this concept, two main forces operate: profit - what do I gain from using this product? Time saving, technological priority, ego, precedence, excellent experience. On the other hand, the loss mechanism - how easy it is, works smoothly, hard to learn, meets my personal needs, reliable, simple.
You must understand that the mechanism of profit and loss is not an absolute mechanism but individual and variable and exists in every potential user to one degree or another. You want to capture the range of this mechanism in your users in order to provide them with a high degree of profit and avoid the loss as much as possible.
One of the mechanisms that enable the understanding of profit and loss mechanisms is a focused survey for your target audience that asks simple questions that allow you, the entrepreneurs, to understand the points at which you will invest in product profit to allow your product the best opportunity to launch. Investigating the target audience allows you to better understand their needs, identify additional points you hadn't thought of and enable a continuous dialogue to refine and enable a more accurate product and a high user experience for your users.
Be an avid user at your competitors
Download all the leading apps that are your competitors, register, be active contributors! It's an important rule to keep your competitors close to your heart. This is the actions that affect the positive value, analyze their user experience. You will probably never be able to know the exact reasons for what you see, but you will have a good idea of what you need to surpass what exists and bring the highest unique value. In most cases, the energy to change existing digital services is slower and more cumbersome than an idea in the making. Keep the advantage.
In conclusion, strategy is an important step at the beginning of your product's life, it answers the questions that start with "why." For those who do it right, a challenging and interesting experience awaits you that will teach you an extra touch beyond what you thought you knew.
