When an organization comes up with an idea for a product, it’s almost always followed with a strong urge to build, build, build. And no wonder! This allows you to give your creativity free reign. And leads to an explosion of progress. Until you hit a wall. Or have a disagreement about methods or approaches. It might fall apart when you realize your competition has the same product already on the market … Only their version is better. Rushing into a product inevitably ends up in wasted time and money. When problems arise, you’ll have no clear-set plan about how to respond. You may even find you don’t have any properly defined ideas about what you want to achieve with your product. Or the inevitable problem when someone waits until you’re almost ready to launch to object to what you’ve done. All of this opens the door to false starts, arguments, and the possibility you’ll miss your opportunity. There is another approach. It’s called a Digital Product Strategy.
What is Digital Product Strategy?
Digital Product Strategy lays out the foundations for your digital solution. It does this by aligning your business goals, your user needs, and your stakeholders. In other words? You create a shared vision where everyone involved in creating the product agrees, that by meeting specific user needs, you’ll also fulfill your own business goals. You might call this a win-win situation. Perhaps you call it mutual added value. We call it the first step.
How is Digital Product Strategy different from other strategies?
At icapps, we generally think of Digital Product Strategy as being one of three parts that make up a Business Strategy:
Brand strategy: What your organization stands for, how you differ from your competitors and why customers would buy from you.
Marketing strategy: Making your product irresistible to the right customer in the right way at the right time.
(Digital) Product strategy: The structured solutions and road maps that help you go from idea to product as efficiently as possible.
There’s definitely overlap between these three elements. But neither Brand Strategy nor Marketing Strategy puts the focus on the product you’re creating. Your Digital Product Strategy does.
Future-proof
Your Digital Product Strategy is not just based on your goals, your user needs, or your plans for today. Your Digital Product Strategy looks at the long term. There’s no problem establishing what your Minimum Valuable Product will be. You should definitely do this! But you also need to know how you’ll expand and improve further. And how your product will keep fulfilling your business goals and satisfying user needs for as long as possible. The key word in planning ahead like this? Context. Recognize what your competitors are doing and what the benchmarks are today or will be tomorrow. And go beyond them. Perform quantitative and qualitative research, collect the opinions and insights of users and other relevant experts, and gauge trends relevant to your project. And then interpret them to understand what your product needs to do and be. Involve all stakeholders from early on and you’ll soon understand what they need from a product. Or which trends they’re comfortable with. You’ll even be able to anticipate future expectations.
A shared vision and roadmap
You want to develop a product vision that reflects the ambitions and goals of every stakeholder. This maximizes their buy-in. How do you accomplish this? By listening to each other. Especially when one stakeholder is an expert in a specific area. By performing one-on-one interviews. Workshops, shuttle diplomacy, and staying open-minded all have their place. Make the most of them and you’ll avoid wasting time in arguments or heading down what will prove to be the wrong path. Instead, you’ll have a clear road map drawn up. It will ensure everyone knows what they need to do and when they need to do it. You’ll always know what your responsibilities are. And you’ll know what everyone else is working on and how you and your tasks fit in with theirs.
Do you have questions about Digital Product Strategy? Maybe you’re wondering whether it will help you with an idea your organization is uncertain about pursuing. Drop in for a chat, a cup of coffee, and an obligation-free opportunity to look at the options together.
