Understanding strategies and tactics to create growth opportunities is critical to become a differentiator and enable your product to have a long and successful part in your overall company strategy. Paul Morgan & Kamal Tahir presented this deck at the Product Management, Innovation and User Experience Conference in June 2014, Chicago, IL.
1. Growth Strategies Across
the Product Lifecycle
STRATEGIES TO MAXIMIZE THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR
PRODUCT
DISCLAIMER : THIS PRESENTATION, THE VIEWS AND ASSERTIONS MADE ARE THOSE OF THE PRESENTERS AND IN NO WAY REPRESENT THOSE OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYERS. CONFERENCE ATTENDEES ARE
SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR DETERMINING THE VALIDITY, ADEQUACY AND FITNESS OF ANY INFORMATION, MATERIALS, PRODUCTS OR ANYTHING ELSE PRESENTED FOR ANY AND ALL USES
3. Paul Morgan
@paulmorgan | linkedin.com/in/paulmorgan
o Director of Trade Analytics,
Nielsen
o Past: Senior Product Manager,
Global IT Program Leader,
Software Architecture, UX
o Industries: Banking, Finance,
Automotive & Consumer Packaged
Goods
Kamal Tahir
@kamaltahir | linkedin.com/in/kamaltahir
o Senior Strategist
o Past: Senior Product Manager,
Global Product Leader, Global
Marketing Manager, IT Consultant
o Insurance, Finance, Automotive,
Retail & Consumer Packaged
Goods
4. Our actionable outcome for today :
Inspire & enable you to create realistic growth strategies
Agenda
Introduction to
presenters and
the topic
The traditional
Product Lifecycle
growth
opportunities
Hacking the
Product Lifecycle
Q&A
Wrap-up
5. What is Product Growth?
Market Share Revenue
Capacity Diversification
Capability
Users /
Subscription
Human Skill /
Capability
Emotional
Attachment
6. What is a Growth Strategy?
Product Influence and Changes that lead to an increase in growth
Broad Spectrum Coverage
Team Effort – Product, Marketing, Data,
Engineering, etc. are all required to engage
growth strategies
Growth Rate is the Measure
Awareness of the
Product
Acquisition of
users / companies
Activation of
Purchase
Retention of
Customers
Revenue /
Financial
Referral
Usability
Partnerships /
Mergers
Types of Growth Strategy
Usability
8. Traditional Product Lifecycle Stages
1. Product Development
2. Market Introduction
3. Growth
4. Maturity
5. Decline / Retirement
Strategies using a linear trajectory is a self-fulfilling prophesy; each of
these stages can create new opportunities for revisiting prior stages.ProductDev
Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline&
Retirement
Innovators Early
Adopters
Early
Majority
Late
Majority
Laggards
Sales
Time
9. Why You Need A Product Roadmap
Enhances Emotional Attachment
10. It Really Happened!
Written for everyone – Sales, Marketing, Communications, IT, Support
Stated and Answered “Why are we doing this?”
Graphic rich with examples / contextual samples
Future-proofing statement derived from the Product Roadmap
Marketing Requirements Document
Result: Clarity, Enthusiasm, Engagement, Collaboration, Emotional Attachment
11. 1. Product Development
Innovation
Process (Redfin), Product (Wii), Market Research
Growth Strategies (Ansoff’s Matrix)
Market Penetration
Market Development
Product Development
Market Diversification
Low Cost Product Development
12. Low Cost Product Development
(1. Product Development)
Voice of the Customer Insights
Outsourcing Development / Engineering to Suppliers
No-frills, Low-cost Engineering – Flexible Development
Process
Agile / XP / Lean Development w/ Open Architecture
Global Marketing template with local market
customization
Emerging Market R&D Office
LowCostProductDevelopmentPrinciples
Strategy
Process
People
13. It Really Happened!
Global need - Environmentally compliant product validation
Approach - disassemble each product down to base material and test and
certify
Complexity - volume by region, speed to market, volume by season by
industry, build labs, hire people
Solution – license labs, partner with BOM software, make it a data and
analytics supported information - Product Best in Class
Lost Cost Product Development
Result: Winning solution for all parties; cost reduction was pervasive
14. 2. Market introduction
Advertising – Message, Channel, Timing
Price, Promotion
Freemium – use judiciously
Value statements
Early Adopter Programs – e.g. Google Glass
“Trade” Buzz – trade articles, social, industry analysts
(e.g. Gartner, Forrester), viral
15. It Really Happened!
AMR rating generated interest from a major networking equipment manufacturer
in US, largest wire and cable manufacturer in Asia
Magazine article generated a call from VP of one of the largest companies in US to
do a pilot ASAP
Outbound sales numbers were sub 50% of revenue from the major clients coming
from analyst endorsements
Industry Analyst Review
Result: Accelerated Organic growth of sales through pull demand
16. It Really Happened!
Global Vehicle Manufacturer (US based) introducing a new model
Prior had used translated English Marketing Messages
Switched to marketing messages contextually to the locale (e.g. Spanish)
Context Leads to Growth
Result: Marketing messages were “stickier” with target markets, creating growth in
brand awareness
17. 3. Growth Phase
Initially rapid sales leading to stabilization
Core Strategies:
Price
Promotion
Place (Distribution)
Product – value through differentiation
People – the 5th “P”
Hacker Strategies
Predictive
Personalized
Permissive
Peer Reviewed
Proactive / Prescriptive
18. 4. Maturity
Price, Promotion efficiency
Create occasion use velocity
Integration – own brand or third party
services
Look for unmet needs
Efficiencies
Diversification
Finer Segmentation
Channels & Geographies
Customers
Usage (e.g. WD40, duct tape),
Reselling programs – e.g. Amazon Cloud,
Credit Reports
“Redefine your market to one in which your current share is no more than 10%.” – Jack Welch
Nike (went from Sports to Leisure Clothes), Coke (Soft Drink to Beverage market), AT&T (Long distance
calling to voice, image, text, data, cellular)
19. It Really Happened!
Competitor was aggressively pricing on contract renewals
Their services were positioned as equal
Professional relationships, Industry knowledge and Quality of Results
revealed that there was a non-monetary cost incurred to client
Value over Pricing
Result: Clients stayed or returned; value was in the quality of service and the
results seen. New clients, previously from competitor, also moved.
20. 5. Retirement
Typical causes : Sales decline over threshold, competition, unsupportable
components, cost of ownership, market/channel shrinkage
Resale e.g. IBM ThinkPad purchased by Levono
Componentize
Create strategic pathways to your other products
Use frameworks, e.g. “Porter’s Five Forces”, to help analyze your exit strategy
Threat of New
Entrants
Bargaining Power
of Suppliers
Threat of
Substitution
Bargaining Power
of Buyers
Rivalry of
Competitors
http://bit.ly/5_forces
22. Brand Development
Youngme Moon : “Idea Brands” – Cirque du Soleil, Dove Soap,
Harley Davidson, Dyson
“Idea brands are not perfect brands…they are polarizing brands… are lopsided… devoted
to the skew …They may not make much sense on paper, but they make perfect sense to
us.”*
Brand Differentiation Hierarchy – e.g. Ford >> Lincoln; VW >> Audi,
Scion << Toyota >> Lexus
Strong Brand Message >> Brand Equity
*Source: Youngme Moon and Why Being Different Makes All the Difference
http://bit.ly/ideabrands
23. Obsess over data
Know Your Customer – measure everything
Web Analytics, Helpdesk Usage, CRM, Contextual Product Access, Heat
Tracking, User profiling, Automated Telephone system
Valuable currency to support change and growth, build context and
segmentation
Create value-models
Maximize the Business Opportunity >> Create measurable ROI
Create Value-centric Products >> Benefits Customer & Stakeholders
Deep Relationships >> Retention / Loyalty
24. Data Drives Context – Which Drives Growth
Strategies
http://bit.ly/marketingbrain
Data Driven Approach
Strategy – Data improves Marketing
Performance
Application – Data helps improve ROI
Analysis – Enables understanding & fine tuning
Context Driven Approach
Alignment – Content <> Persona
mapping creates better response to
Marketing
Distribution – Using multiple channels of
communication
Data + Context creates actionable strategies related to growth activities
25. User Experience
Goals
Ease of Use
Meets Expectations
Aligns to Business Objectives
Creates
Longevity of Value
Key to Retention
ROI
26. User Experience Should be Pervasive
Throughout the Product Lifecycle
Every year US$1 Trillion+ Worldwide IT
Project Spend
15% (~US$150BN) Projects failed
Cost of IT re-work is 100 X cost vs. cost
before production
Estimated 50% of developers time is spent
fixing issues
Source: IEEE - http://bit.ly/whysoftwarefails | also see http://bit.ly/ROIofUX
Top Reasons for Failure:
Failed to meet requirements
Poor communication end-to-end
Stakeholder Politics
27. Voice of the customer
Focuses attention on real needs
Great forum to socialize concepts
Creates Emotional Attachment to the Product with your customers
Important to get variety of input – different groups within your user
base (current or potential/future)
Direct – through interviews, feedback mechanisms, online surveys
Indirect – Sales team, Customer Services, Helpdesk, Training
28. It Really Happened!
Onboarding clients required a standard industry reports
Conducted “VOC” sessions to understand business purpose / need
Created a collaborative concept model with enhanced analytics
Delivered high impact visualizations w/ ease of use; sold itself within the
clients
From How? To Wow!
Result: High impact capability driven through client collaboration created strong
emotional attachment leading to “what else can you do?” conversations
29. White Label
Build out Product Capability Portfolio
Increase Distribution
Examples:
Firestone Walker produces Trader Joe’s Mission St. Beer
Major Brand Coffee is white labeled in Grocery Stores
“Private Label” Grocery items made by mainstream
manufacturers
Software companies create SDKs for others to re-label and
sell as their own solution
30. Prototyping
Think outside the box – blue sky
Create “what if” scenarios
Get Buy-In – both internally and externally (as part of
“Voice of the Customer”)
Potential pre-sales, pre-launch tool to generate lead
growth
Avoids making expensive mistakes
31. Beta / Pilot - “Start small build fast”
Don’t boil the ocean
Iterate / Agile Sprints
Still an opportunity to correct mistakes
Rapid deployment
Listen to your supporters
Have a roadmap to go beyond launch
“Google first showcased the
product … 80-minute video on
YouTube…watched more than
4m times... The buzz about the
collaboration tool soon became
deafening. Some have claimed
that Google Wave is just an
"email and instant messaging on
steroids", but it could change the
way web users collaborate.” –
The Guardian Online
http://www.theguardian.com/media/pda
/2009/sep/30/google-wave-beta-testing
32. Viral Marketing
Requires Emotional Response
Incentivize your market
Dropbox – every referral = 250mb additional free storage – went
from 100k to 4M users in 15 months (35% from referrals)*
Uber – refer a friend = $20 credit to you
Not for every product – needs value to be obvious to new
and/or existing clients/users
Caution – Consumers are more than willing to “out” a
brand based off their personal & emotional experiences…
*Dropbox growth numbers: http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/dropbox-customer-referral-program-by-the-numbers/
34. Recapping Today’s Discussion
The traditional
Product Lifecycle
growth
opportunities
Hacking the
Product Lifecycle
Q&A
Wrap-up
• Define Strategy
Types
• Define Product
Growth
• 5 Stages of the
Product Lifecycle
• Brand Development
• Obsess over Data
• User Experience
• Voice of the
Customer
• White Label
• Prototyping / Beta
• Viral
35. Q&A / THANK YOU
Paul Morgan
@paulmorgan | linkedin.com/in/paulmorgan
Kamal Tahir
@kamaltahir | linkedin.com/in/kamaltahir
Editor's Notes
Paul Morgan
Twitter - @paulmorgan
Linkedin – linkedin.com/in/paulmorgan
Kamal Tahir
Twitter - @kamaltahir
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/kamaltahir