A Simple Guide To Digital Product Management. Get your free copy of this 18-page guide to get you started or as a reference! Free Download. A simple guide to digital product management that will help you start, create and develop a successful digital product. When starting a new company or project it’s important to have a clear plan. When it comes down to development and scale. This is where digital product management becomes an integral part of all stages of planning, maintaining, and developing your product’s online presence! In this article, we want to outline what goes into digital product management. By explaining the process from conceiving an idea all the way through launch and marketing. If you have any questions or input please let us know in the comment section below!
Launching a digital product can be broken down into 5 steps: define, design, develop, deploy, and maintain. In this article, we will look at each step in more detail and discuss how they fit together to create a successful online business or project that is scalable from start to finish.
Define – Definition Phase
In this phase, it’s important for entrepreneurs and managers to work closely with the creative team. The creative team should be responsible for ideating new ideas or concepts. While managers and entrepreneurs define the product itself from a more functional point of view. Brand-consistent messaging is established in this phase, along with functionality. At this point, financials will only be based on estimates. Because detailed research has not been conducted yet that could determine. Whether or not a certain idea can generate revenue at all or how much it might cost to develop an MVP (minimum viable product).
Defining a new digital product encompasses several aspects: Determining what problem the digital product solves Determining. The target group and if they even need it Researching similar products.And how your product differs from them Researching market size and potential revenue/cost Evaluation. Whether the proposed solution will help address an identified need Determining competitive advantages of a proposed solution
First, find out if there is even a problem a digital product can solve. This research must come from interviews with the target group in order to understand what pains they have. And which problems could potentially be solved through a digital product. Creating personas based on the research helps to create empathy with your target group.
Once you know what pain you’re solving, define for whom this pain is most significant. Who will benefit the most from having this problem?
This research can come in many different forms, for example:
The next step is building a product that addresses the problem and satisfies the needs of the target group. And builds on its strengths and positive emotions (the ‘why’ behind buying). The only thing that counts at this point is whether it solves the pain and helps to achieve goals. Or makes an existing process more efficient. You can do this by either creating personas with user stories or through scenarios. By clearly defining not only what your product will look like. But also how it works (scenarios), you will get important insights into “what” problems it solves.
If it solves a problem, why would someone want to buy the product? In other words: What emotions are connected to this pain? How does somebody feel about the problem and how will he/she feel once they’ve solved it? The ‘why’ behind buying becomes a lot clearer if you focus on positive emotions. Negative emotions such as fear, disgust or anger might stop somebody from buying your product. Whereas feelings of hope, optimism or relief make them prioritize solving the problem over everything else. Then use those positive feelings as part of your messaging and marketing materials.
Question
A popular marketing question is why somebody wants to buy. How does somebody determine what to buy and how do they make choices? These questions describe a person who we call the ‘rational customer’. But as behavioral economist Dan Ariely once said: “When we say someone is rational, it means he’s like me.” Most people aren’t like you or me. Because they don’t think like us or act as we would do.
A more accurate question is why somebody wants to solve a specific problem. Spend time thinking about the emotions that come with wanting to solve it. Then use those positive feelings as part of your messaging and marketing materials (see example below).
The same goes for software engineers, who are often seen as rational customers. A perfect example is Dropbox’s referral program. Where users can get 500MB extra storage space for every friend they invite (max 16GB per household). This approach brought Dropbox over 60M signups instead of the 400K they expected. But they ignored this success because it wasn’t planned for in advance.
