Product Management and Product Promotion Tips

It is widely known that the product model means significantly more risks than outsourcing one. In outsourcing, we have a request for a project, we develop some software and deliver it. Simple model. In the product model, we have the added factor of market demand and in general, a 50% chance of success that depends mainly on the market demand. Surely, there are also multiple factors, but basically, any startup or product always has 2 possible results: successful and unsuccessful.

Obviously, it is easier to develop a product than to sell it nowadays. This is thanks to the existence of multiple prototyping services, teamwork tools, availability of freelancers and outsourcing companies, design tools, etc. Software development itself is not a problem anymore.

Product Management tips

First, we would like to draw your attention to the so-called, low customer acquisition cost competition. This is for live products mostly, the lower the customer acquisition cost the startup has — the more competitive it is.

Survival bias in startup and product development often takes place. This is the situation when a startup has a base of initial users and collects user feedback in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a product. And without regard to what questions they ask users, the result of the research will be incomplete because a startup forgets about the users who don’t use their product or service. It would be more useful to ask non-users why they don’t use the product and get their feedback. Potentially the segment of non-users research can provide a startup with more insights. But usually, a startup doesn’t know why people do not use a product because it gets feedback only from existing users.

Working on any product or startup it is important to apply so-called product thinking. Product thinking is a complete, complex understanding of multiple aspects of the product, such as what pain or problem the product addresses, what is the audience the product is aimed at, how should this audience be reached, what value the product provides with; why we will do it, or what is the vision of a product, and strategy — how we are going to do this.

In what niche is it not recommended to create a product?

Marketplaces. Marketplaces, or any kind of platform where a seller meets a client, is considered to be a very risky niche because customer acquisition cost is really high: marketplace means that we sell (base of) clients, but to get clients we need sellers and vice versa. This is really difficult, especially at launch.

However, launching a marketplace platform on a market where there is no marketplace seems a constructive step.

What is MOST important at a product launch?

A working product. It is a problem when you launch a service and registration doesn’t work properly.

Be prepared for a large number of users. There were a lot of cases when many users came to use a service thanks to word of mouth and downed a server.

It is also necessary to understand that product launch is not a single action. Product launch is a project activity itself in fact and so it requires a project-oriented approach.

What is the cheapest customer acquisition channel? The one we do not pay for. An example of such channel could be partner relations of a free piece of service. Let’s pretend that the product is a digital marketing education center that operates both online and offline. One of our customer acquisition channels could be free webinars every 1-2 weeks where a coach presents a piece of content that will be in upcoming course. At the end of webinar every participants may be provided with a discount for the course. Surely, running webinars requires some efforts, however, in comparison to running a complex advertisement campaign, these efforts are really little.

Example of partner relations: startups make an “Uber” for fitness coaches. Managers can discuss cooperation with fitness clubs to place their coaches’ offers for free or at a discount on the app.

IT products promotion tips

Let’s talk also about some tips for product promotion. Obviously, a product’s promotion is a complex activity, and we will today touch on some tips that may be added to your existing marketing campaign.

Product marketing strategy is about the following aspects:

The task of any startup is to analyze the market and define basics such as market demand, trends, and market size. What the target audience is and what the ideal customer looks like.

Do not forget about basic 4P — Marketing Mix framework.

Focus your efforts on empowering your brand. Try to earn trust and reputation. The best advice here is to publish case studies (if you work in B2B) or clients’ reviews (if you work in B2C).

Ideally, your simple, clear unique selling proposition (with a description of plans and buttons “Order now” and “Contact us”) should be placed on your website. This provides you with a basic lead generation channel.

If you use influencer marketing, do not forget to define what the blogger/influencer’s target audience is and if it is necessary for you. What’s more, ask for influencer metrics regardless of the platform the influencer works on. Be it Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or any other, an influencer has to provide you with metrics so that you can understand is it worth paying to this or that influencer for promotion.

SMM is also a good tool to get traffic to your website. The situation is that the traffic you need really exists in social, however, this is a great challenge to manage it.

Summary

That’s all for today, and we really hope these tips based on our experience will somehow help to improve your product. If you have a project idea or a live product do not hesitate to contact us and we will discuss how we can contribute. Code Inspiration’s team wishes you every success with your projects!