Knowing why your product exists and how it contributes value to the business is critical for its success. Without this, product managers risk wasting time and resources on products that lack value and struggle to make a lasting impact in the marketplace.
The best products are founded on a company's experience base and the inherent competitive advantage that gives it a rightful claim to build that specific product. Successful product managers recognize the importance of clearly defining their product's purpose – its core mission, vision, and value to customers – as the foundation for product creation, growth, and success. By rallying your team and stakeholders around the opportunity and alternatives on the market, you can work together to build a product that solves the customer’s need while providing differentiation in the marketplace.
Defining your product purpose will also:
- Identify why customers need your product
- Why your product is better than other market alternatives
- Define how customers will find your product
- Provide the advantages you have over your competitors
- Map the market, segments, or demographics you serve
Your product's purpose should guide decisions about its development and customer-centricity. By aligning your purpose-driven goals and strategies, you can make better-informed decisions to steer your product to greater success.
Understanding your product’s users and their needs is critical to successful product management
Successful product managers build the right products for the right groups of people – which relies on understanding who those people are. Building persona maps is how product people rally around their target audiences and uncover complex user behavior, needs, and motivations, in order to create products that will resonate with these customers.
Persona mapping helps product managers to:
- Define user archetypes
- Understand user needs and how to meet them
- Align the product team around the target users
- Ensure all teams are working toward shared goals
- Tailor product market efforts to the target audience
Know your market
Crafting personas to reflect your target user groups' characteristics, goals, and behaviors gives you a clear picture of your audience that cultivates a user-centric approach for your teams. Tools to identify pain points, desires, and motivations allow you to tailor to specific needs early in the development process and refine personas over time.
Align your team
Persona mapping also fosters alignment within your product team and enhances the overall efficiency of collaborative work. With a shared understanding of your product’s target audience, it’s easier to ensure that development teams are working toward the same solutions and are on the same page about who the product is being built for.
Inform marketing
Beyond product development, this process of knowing your purpose and your customers helps strengthens product marketing efforts. Use your deeper-level understanding of target users to refine and tailor messaging and marketing strategies to effectively communicate your product’s value proposition and resonate with the right audiences.
