Slightly like an interim between the marketing teams and digital product management, product managers are always responsible for marketing, planning, or forecasting of a product at every stage within the life cycle of the product. Products which can be produced, disseminated, and stored in a digital form are referred to as the digital products. These products normally involve some combination of images, video, text, and even computer programs.
When it comes to digital product management, instead of physical products, which you can touch and hold, things such as apps and websites are usually the main focus. In addition, it is generally about developing, managing and them evolving sets of platform product, managing each aspect of the product introduction and offering the main commercial interface to all technology partners. In essence, managing systems, sites and services are usually the main terminology.
Product Managers and Their Responsibilities
Product managers play a very important role, especially when it comes to introducing a new product into the market. For instance, product managers are responsible for researching and analyzing any market conditions and also defining the specifications and features of a new product. Additionally, these managers help in formulating the launch’s marketing strategy. Generally, they are responsible for anything, which is related to the strategy part of things when dealing with new product launches and development.
When it’s the right time for launching a new product, managers and their team of professionals should research the market conditions and target audience and make their suggestions according to their findings. Therefore, it’s their responsibility to find business opportunities and gaps in the market.
In most cases, product managers are also responsible for feeding information into the development team of the product. Once the product has been fully developed, both parties will feed back to the marketing professionals to brief them on certain things such as product restrictions, selling points, and functionality. Products managers are really involved in all aspects of the life cycle of their product, including branding, positioning, monitoring the competition, and customer feedback.
These days, product management is increasingly being applied to various digital goods such as websites, mobile apps, and e-books. The key to a successful product is to make the right changes particularly for the right reasons. To manage product change in ways, which help organizations and customers is also vital to successful products.
A product can be made better – Unless your product is something like butter, soda or milk, the product that you are working on should be something which can be easily improved. This means that, products always change and if a product don’t change, it’s more likely to lose a lot of customers. So, any successful products have to change regardless of very few exceptions.
For example, think about the apps or websites, which you work on and perhaps you are hired to develop or design something, then it means that it is not just a static thing. Functionality and content change, the interface and branding need occasional updating, or something can change in an OS or on any other hardware which affects accessibility. In this digital world, the changing contexts of your products simply mean that any product has to change swiftly to hold your ground and also leading to overall improvement. Lastly, the most crucial reasons to change a product are always driven by its customers.
Key Features of Digital Product Management
1. Product Lifecycle Management
To successfully manage a product involves more than just getting it created or designed and then released to the market. Therefore, it is important to understand the entire lifecycle of the product with its stage as well as the main events in the process, including product launch, its market fit and the end of sales. Understanding the digital product lifecycle can help you improve the benefits your product brings throughout its entire life. Usually this includes the product goals, the marketing and pricing strategy, the lifecycle’s effect on your product performance (profits and revenue), and the process suitable for every lifecycle stage of the product.
2. Vision and Leadership
Working as a successful and effective product owner or manager requires proper leadership and vision skills. As the owner of the product, try to establish a well shared vision, set some realistic goals, and then describe the benefits you are expecting the product to offer. It’s important to listen to others actively and negotiate to come into an agreement before getting buy-in. don’t shy away from making some tough decisions if they will help in the development of the product. You should also be capable of managing your stakeholders, including senior management, customers and users, sales, development, support, marketing and any other business groups that should contribute to the success of the product. Additionally, you should be able to communicate with these people and try to influence them towards the product development.
3. Business Model and Financials
To offer an investment incentive for your business and also developing and providing the sustainability of your product and this means that you have to be capable of determining the value your product creates for your company. Try formulating and prioritizing business goals, for example, join a new market, save cost, meet a profit or revenue goal, or even develop the bran and many more.
4. Market Research and Product Strategy
Digital product management is also all about good market research and product strategy. Your digital product only exists to serve a certain market segment or an entire market, especially a group of individuals whose needs and wants are addressed by your product. Therefore, you should be capable of identifying your target customers and users and then segment the market. You should also capable of clearly stating the value proposition of the product, why someone else would like to use it and why it does an excellent work at creating value for your users and customers. It’s necessary to conduct a competitor analysis in order to know their respective weaknesses and strengths.
5. Product Roadmap
Several people should contribute to any success of a digital product. In order to help you do your work and to offer visibility on how your digital product is more likely to evolve, it’s necessary and important to create and use your own product roadmap. Creating a roadmap usually includes formulating realistic product goals, key performance indicators and metrics, key features (results or deliverables) and timeframes or release dates. Clearly distinguish between the product roadmap and product strategy and always remember that your roadmap should be occasionally reviewed and changed.
Conclusively, digital product management is basically a demanding and complex discipline, which isn’t easy to master and execute; it takes a lot of time and extra effort to become a competent product owner or manager.