What Are the 4 Major Elements of a Product Strategy?

How does a customer learn about a product, find that product, and make a purchase of it? It comes down to the product strategy of product experience strategy. As a company, it is critical to develop this strategy from the start, creating a strong foundation for how you plan to manage your customer experience.

What Is Considered a Product Strategy?

Product experience strategy is the overarching strategy for all product experiences across the entire customer journey. Customers typically come into contact with a product numerous times before purchasing it. The goal of a product strategy is to ensure the company influences both what that initial touch and experience are as well as what is being communicated.

Setting product strategy typically involves mapping out the entire product experience. That includes every potential interaction a customer will have with the product. Product experience strategy allows the company to map out and define what should happen during each of those interactions. This includes what the customer learns, what they see, and what action they take.

The importance of product strategy is, then, controlling these aspects. That way, there is less risk of the customer gathering inaccurate information or not having the necessary information they need — at that stage of the customer journey to make a decision to either buy or to continue learning about the product.

What Are the 4 Major Elements of a Product Strategy?

A strong product strategy will involve four key elements. Each one of these elements helps to ensure the product strategy is effective. The 4 elements of product strategy include:

• Understanding the overall market

• Defining the ideal customer profile

• Setting a product vision and establishing a product roadmap

• Continually analyzing customer feedback to adjust the roadmap to meet customer and market needs

The initial stage of the product involves understanding what the overall market is. This includes determining all parties that may be interested in the product for some need. Understanding this helps to inform the second step, and therefore, it is a critical first step to take.

The second step is to define the ideal customer. This includes all demographics and details about the most likely customer. It outlines as many details about the customer as possible, including personal demographics and factors such as budget, pain points, and challenges. It aims to fully understand who is most likely to purchase the product.

From that information, the third step is possible: creating a product vision and establishing a product roadmap. With the information about who the product services and who the ideal customer is, it is then possible to formulate digital tools, information, content, and marketing components that can be used to show the customer the product fits their need. In all types of product strategy, the goal is to present the product in a way that encourages the ideal buyer to invest based on what they need to hear, learn, see, and experience to make that decision.

After the product roadmap is designed, the final stage focuses on what’s next: helping to pinpoint if it is working and, if not, enhancing the product strategy to create improved results.

A well-defined product strategy will provide in-depth information for each of these four elements. It should provide clear internal documentation about the overall product direction that can be used by various members of the marketing, sales, and other teams to achieve the desired outcome: making the sale.

What Is an Example of Product Strategy?

The product strategy is typically documented by the product manager. It should clearly outline the four elements of the product strategy. When creating a product strategy example, focus on all four elements individually to create a clear path from initially learning about the product to the purchase. This should include various secondary touchpoints that allow a person to move through a map of experiences with the product.

The product strategy includes all aspects of the product interactions, including:

• The product roadmap

• The product pricing strategy

• A detailed customer segmentation

• Feedback

A product strategy in marketing example allows the product manager to flesh out various opportunities to connect with a customer and community with them. It also should help the company to determine how to build various versions of the product’s marketing to reach various personas as defined by the ideal customer.

What Makes a Good Product Strategy?

A good product strategy creates results. It clearly identifies the market landscape and the key competitors that will, ultimately, play a role in the customers’ ultimate decision of what to purchase.

A good product strategy has a comprehensive ideal customer profile (ICP). The ICP is a comprehensive description of the ideal customer for the product and business. By identifying this information, it is then possible to address differences in the product strategy for various customers. It also enables companies to place marketing assets, dollars, and campaigns in the right manner. It identifies customers who are:

• Most likely to buy the product

• Most likely to stay loyal to the product over time

• Refer the company to others

The profile should identify how the product benefits the customer. When you identify your ICP, you can then use your marketing strategies to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and improve the productivity of staff because they are targeting the customer most likely to benefit your business in the long term. This directly impacts the ROI of any investment.

The ICP helps to set the stage for the overall product vision and the product roadmap as well. With it, internal team members are able to easily understand the product direction based on the information within the ICP. That includes the market landscape, all competitors of the product, and the overall ideal customer themselves.

In addition to this, a good product strategy must also continually evolve over time. By monitoring the success of the product experience strategy, the organization can then make adjustments to where customers may be moving off the roadmap. By continually evolving based on customer feedback and market changes, the product strategy is always relevant and always a clear indication of how the company will meet the needs of the customer.

However, this does not mean that the product strategy will drastically change with every piece of customer feedback provided. Rather, a good product strategy will allow the product managers and other leaders to take the information from the feedback, consider it, and apply it as necessary and beneficial to product marketing. These iterations are always based on the needs of the business and the market itself.

How Lumavate Supports Success

Lumavate’s product experience management platform is designed to support the efforts of marketers in manufacturing, CPG, and medical device companies, allowing them to manage the product data that comes in to inform the product strategy. Take a demo of the product to learn more about how Lumavate could play an essential role in your product experience.