Innovative products and solutions seem to appear on the market out of nowhere, but how did they get to that point?
Behind every successful launch, there is a product strategy development team designing, testing, and perfecting these solutions. Product strategy is the first step to releasing a useful product to the marketplace.
What is product strategy?
Product strategy is the outline of your product development from the initial idea to your first minimum viable product (MVP). Your product development strategy includes every detail about how your product will produce revenue, who your ideal audience is, what problem it will solve, and how it will impact your customers.
From vision to launch, there are some key components of an effective product strategy.
The foundation of a product development strategy
The foundation of your product strategy supports the entire project. This stage showcases what you’re trying to achieve and works on strengthening your product’s roadmap.
1. Product vision
Your vision is one of the most important components of a product strategy; it’s what sets you apart. Product vision helps answer the crucial questions during your product development strategy, like:
- Who is our ideal audience?
- What problems can we solve for that audience?
- How do we solve those problems efficiently
2. Your business model
Your business model is the next function of your product strategy to think about; it helps you understand how to solve the problems of your target audience and find your product-market fit.
Developing a business model for your product development strategy helps you identify:
- The central use of your product
- What needs to happen to get into the market
- How much investment it’ll require
3. Positioning before launch
Positioning your product strategy is essentially how you specify your product’s place in the market and what kind of benefits it will bring to your users. This stage of development supports your overall marketing plan and puts your product into position for a successful launch. Product positioning identifies the details of your product and company, like your mission and problem solutions.
Components of a successful product strategy
The components of your product development strategy build on the foundation and show what you will accomplish. The goals and initiatives laid out in this stage help you realize the vision defined by the foundational work.
1. Product goals
Setting goals for your product strategy is a crucial step to success, but they have to be the right ones. The goals you define should be easily measurable and have specific metrics attached to them. Use these goals as benchmarks for how you want your product to perform over various time periods.
Examples of good goals to set for your product strategy are:
- Increase revenue by X% in a certain timeframe
- Expand into X new markets over the next year
2. Product initiatives
Product initiatives are a conceptual view of the goals you set. These are the efforts that you need to execute to bring your goals to fruition: If your goal is to increase revenue, how are you going to make it happen? It’s time to connect your objectives to your long-term roadmap.
For example, if you set out to increase your revenue from a mobile app, things like custom branding and a simplified UI can help bring in more users, meaning additional revenue from that project.
3. Competitive analysis
No matter how unique your product strategy is, there’s bound to be at least one competitor offering a similar solution. Performing competitive analysis essentially means researching what areas those products outperform your own and where your product excels.
This process doesn’t end with your product development strategy; it should be ongoing to keep an eye on your competitors and search for new problems that you can solve for your users.
Designing and launching an effective product strategy
1. Your product strategy workshop
No matter what you want to develop, utilizing a product strategy workshop is the first step to design and launch a successful product development strategy. What does this mean for you? Here’s a simplified overview of what a workshop with VeryCreatives looks like.
Our team explores your idea in detail and looks at the project’s scope from beginning to end, providing you with:
- A realistic roadmap of your product strategy
- Suggested team setup and technologies
- An estimate of costs and completion time
2. The design sprint
The second stage is when things start to get interesting. During the design sprint, it’s time to map out your product strategy’s workflow. The product scope that was defined in the workshop gets turned into functioning wireframes to see how your product will work.
Working with VeryCreatives, this means turning your product idea into an actual clickable representation with a UI that’s ready for development. The design sprint provides you with the project’s design, wireframes, and style guide.
3. Minimum viable product
The final stage of your product development strategy provides you with a minimum viable product—a fully functioning product with enough features to validate your idea and bring on early users. Your finished MVP includes a fast, responsive UI, optimized backend systems, and lightning-fast mobile apps.
Creating a minimum viable product with VeryCreatives not only gives you a version of your product that will satisfy your early users, but you also get complete access to the project’s source code.
The next step for your product development strategy
Once you release your MVP, it’s time to scale your product. The MVP is a basic foundation, and you’ll likely want to incorporate additional elements and functions into your product over time. VeryCreatives helps you scale by providing ongoing support, maintenance, and development.
Get started with VeryCreatives today and see how we can bring your product strategy to life.
