Product Development is undoubtedly the most critical operation for all companies. However, it’s a very complex process. There are countless people and teams involved, with a lot of critical decisions made constantly. Thus, it is crucial for companies to do it right, optimize the processes, empower the right people and teams to build the best products and deliver the maximum value.
Before further deep dive, we should acknowledge that different types of products in different industries require different processes. Fundamentally though, there are two types of products:
- Consumer products (aka B2C): the audience is people, and the size of the audience is usually large (unless it is a very niche product, like dating app for the ultra rich). Therefore, the product development, and growth have fundamentally different dynamics compared to B2B.
- Examples: Google, Youtube, Instagram, Amazon, Tiktok, Facebook, Tinder etc
- Business products (aka B2B): The audience is companies, and the size is relatively small (unless it is for Small and Medium Businesses[SMBs]). The product is usually sold by sales or partnership organizations. Therefore, the growth has dependency on these teams to truly understand the product, its value proposition, its positioning in the market and against the competitors, and effectively sell the product to the target audience (decision makers in the companies) and grow the product’s adoption.
- Examples: Meta Advertising solutions, Google Adwords, Amazon Advertising
My personal experience has been exclusively based on B2B products in my career, therefore the following context is more relevant to B2B but could partially be applicable to B2C products.
In product development, there are 6 phases:
- Inbound: In this phase, product team learns more about the space. Segmentations of the industries and/or customers (and which segments to focus on etc), what problems these customers have, how big these problems are, what the growth/revenue opportunity is for the company (e.g opportunity sizing), what competitors do in this space etc. These type of research provides direction to the product team on what to build. More details below
- Decide: At this stage, Product Manager capture all the learnings from the understand phase, prioritizes the problems, proposes a product strategy (long and short term), get feedback from all key product stakeholders and align/finalize the product strategy as well as short term product roadmap.
- Long term product strategy: where the product is envisioned to be in 3-5 years. This is a must-have before executing on short term product roadmaps.
- Short term product roadmap: product development execution per the long term product strategy, tied to a product goal. Usually in 3 or 6 months increments.
- Build: Engineers build the features and capabilities in the roadmap. They work closely with product designers, content designers, UX researchers to ensure the product is easy to use and does what it’s supposed to do.
- Test: Depending on the organization, Product Managers or Product Marketers lead this phase; first, alpha testing for functionality, then beta testing for the value it drives for the customers. The product is tested by a sample of customers in the target audience, and this phase is the only real input for the product team from the market that determines whether the product is ready for the launch or not. More details below.
- If not, product team works on improvements. If so, the product is launched.
- Outbound: GTM & Launch: After product team feels confident that the product is ready to be launched (no major issues, and delivers value), Product Marketers work with different stakeholders to make a Go to Market plan and launch the product. More details below.
- Grow: For B2C products, growth tactics are different and more robust and at scale. On the other hand, for B2B products, key to growth is sales organizations (or partnership, depending on the area or product). Product Marketers work closely with sales organizations to make sure there is alignment on the product’s value and positioning, they understand the product’s key differentiators (through trainings, materials etc), and can sell the product effectively. Product Marketers are the experts for the sales teams to rely on anything related to the product, and get support from, especially when they need support for key customer meetings or events.
Bear in mind that, the process above is applicable to practically all small and large improvements on a particular product and is repeated in each cycle.
Stakeholder Map Across Product Development and Marketing/Sales Organizations
Now, lets talk more about the stakeholders. We should start with Product Managers first. They are at the center of the product organizations, and the decision makers. There have two critical responsibilities: 1) Long time vision and product strategy 2) Short term product roadmap and execution. They understand the space really well, think critically, build a vision and inspire others to join the journey to achieve that vision. In the entire process, they get input from all cross-functional teams, and ensure there is alignment across the board. After drafting the aligned long term vision/strategy and short term product roadmap (and product goals), they hold discussions with product and engineering leaders, raise any concerns/risks with mitigation plan, resourcing needs with them, and finally have full upwards alignment before kicking off the execution. As part of this process, they also ensure there is broader, macro level connection between the product’s and the company’s long time vision and strategy. Product Managers work with the following functions to execute well on these plans:
- Engineers: Co-owns the strategy and builds the product
- Product & Content Designers: Designs delightful experiences for users
- UX Researchers: Analyzes users for their needs, challenges they experience on the interface
- Data Scientists: Analyzes data to bring valuable insights to product managers and product marketers
- Product Marketers: Understands needs, and markets the end product
Engineers are the builders, no surprise, but they are also the closest ally to the Product Managers on both strategic decisions, as well as tactical execution on the strategy itself. Their job is to both understand the area, product strategy well, provide constant feedback, as well as find the best way to build the solution. “The best way” consists of which technology to use, the most efficient way to make it work without any issues or bugs, and the most optimal experience to deliver to users. They work closely with Product Designers, who design the full end to end flow for the users who will ‘consume’ the product. Product Designers provide the best design to the engineers to ensure it is a delightful experience for the users. As part of this, they get close support from two partner teams:
- UX Researchers, regularly get feedback from the users on the experience to understand blockers / issues against the optimal experience. They provide inputs to Product Designers to help them rethink their design, improve and optimize the experience for the users over time.
- Differences between ‘users’ vs ‘customers’: Users are the employees of the ‘customers’ who use the actual interface to complete a task. For example, a digital marketing specialist at Procter & Gamble using Google Adwords interface is a user, while Product & Gamble is the ‘customer’ for Google.
- Content Designers, work on naming of the product (in partnership with Product Marketers) and owns the terminology for the wording on the interface, so the users easily understand what they see.
Data Scientists are another critical stakeholder for product managers and for the broader product organization. They constantly analyze data to understand patterns, issues, opportunities and informs the relevant teams to take action. For example, they provide inputs to product managers on how the product is performing against the goals, what the trends are, and what they mean for product strategy (should product manager consider revisiting the short term plans or long term strategy?). They also work with product marketers to provide them growth opportunities.
And finally, Product Marketers, my favorite topic 🙂 Usually, it is not well-known what Product Marketers do, so I would like to discuss Product Marketers’ role more in detail below.
There are three core responsibilities product marketers have:
Inbound
After the alignment with Product Managers, Product Marketers (aka Product Marketing Managers) do qualitative and quantitative understanding of a particular area. This area could be ‘a new use case for the same product’, ‘enhancement of the product for the same target audience’, ‘analyzing blockers against scaling the product’ etc. Product Marketers commit to bringing back a thorough analysis of this area in terms of
- Opportunity sizing: If product addresses these problems, how much of a value would it deliver to the customers, and to the product/company? How big is the industry and what is the untapped opportunity? They often partner with Data Scientists on this closely
- Segmentation: What are different segments of customers/companies/industries in this area? What are their common characteristics? Do they have different problems? How to prioritize these segments and which ones to focus on?
- Competitor analysis: What are the competitors doing in this area? What do they offer? Are there any differentiators they have that the product team should be aware?
- Problem statements per Customer Feedback: What problems are customers experiencing or what needs they have which are unmet currently that product team needs to look into? How big is each problem? How to prioritize these problems across different dimensions?
- Risks: Are there any legal or other strategic or organizational risks the product team would be exposed to if they would build any solutions for any of these problems?
- Recommendation: What does the product marketer think are the most important problems product team should focus on? What solutions should product team build to address these problems?
This list of inbound areas is key for B2B product decisions, however for B2C products, as there is no ‘customer’ per se, but more of a large group of users or consumers, thus inbound methods differ. B2C product teams prefer to rely more on internal data, UX research, focus groups, market research companies to make decisions, and usually do not rely on Product Marketers for inbound.
Testing
After the product is ready for testing, Product Marketer (or Product Manager in some companies or teams) puts together a plan on how to conduct the test effectively with a select group of target customers. In this plan, Product Marketer determines how long the testing should last, what type of commitments are required from the candidates to participate, how the product team should measure whether the product is doing what it is supposed do before moving to the next phase of testing etc. This phase is usually called “Alpha”. After Alpha test is completed successfully, and the product team concludes that the product is functioning as expected with no/little issues, the product moves to “Beta” phase, where the product is now tested for the value it is supposed to deliver to the customers. This value should reflect the purpose of the product addressing the particular problem such as ;
- Decrease the time spend to complete a particular task
- Drive more business outcomes (more sales, more leads, more app installs etc)
- A new metric that brings additional insight for the customer to make a more informed decision etc
There must be a goal metric to measure the value, and Product Marketer should propose what metric to measure, what the goal should be for that metric and eventually align with the rest of the product team. Only when this goal is hit, Beta test is successfully completed, and the product can now move to launch phase and preparations can start.
Go to Market (GTM) & Launch
There are several tasks to complete for a successful execution of GTM on any product. As part of this process, the product is ready to be introduced to the target audience. At this point, depending on the product’s target audience, the GTM can be wide (more noisy) or narrow (quieter but targeted). For example, if a product is targeting a very specific set of auto manufacturers, GTM must focus on this narrow audience and address how to reach these relatively small number of companies through different channels to create awareness of this product. Or, if the product is for a mass audience such as all SMBs in a particular country, then mass communication channels might need to be utilized for maximum GTM impact (e.g TV ads, outdoor, reach campaigns in digital platforms etc).
Product Marketer does several things as part of the GTM strategy, and focuses on the items including but not limited to:
- Naming: What to name the product? Should it be a trademark brand, or a generic name?
- Positioning: How to position this product in the market?
- Messaging: What should the marketing communication say about the product?
- Case Studies: Are there proof points from the testers that can be utilized as part of communication?
- Channels: Which channels to utilize to create desired awareness among the target audience? (digital channels, blog posts, emailing, events etc)
- Trainings: Is there a need to train the sales organization (if exists)? If so, how to train the sales teams, what materials to use, who to conduct the trainings?
- Partnerships (e.g Agencies): Are there any companies out there who can help drive the adoption of the product? Should there be an API endpoint to support these companies?
Product Marketer works with several teams, some of which are in the stakeholder map above, and finalizes the GTM Strategy. This GTM strategy must be tied to some sort of a goal (and ideally fully aligned with the product goal). After capturing feedback from the product team, senior leadership (ideally from senior product, sales and marketing leaders), and establishing full alignment, Product Marketer executes the plan, keeps track of the progress and ensures the team is hitting the goal, increasing the usage of the product and delivering the maximum value.
Important to note that Product Marketing Manager role has different scope in different companies. For the most tech industry, Product Marketing Managers are responsibly primarily for the Outbound efforts. In these companies, inbound and testing are usually owned by Product Managers.(However, in some, Inbound is owned by a different team/role within the company, e.g Business Development. For example, in Google, inbound work is owned by Global Product Leads.)
I personally do not think that Product Managers should also do inbound on top of their core duties, especially in B2B space. Product Marketers should be well-positioned (and empowered) to bring high quality inbound to inform the Product Managers and Engineers on product strategy, as Product Marketers eventually bring the final product to the market, being part of the journey of the product from ideation to growth. However, Product Managers must be proactively involved in determining which inbound areas are critical for Product Marketers to focus on, per the long term product strategy. Without Product Manager’s active and effective involvement, inbound that is executed by Product Marketers will be hit or miss, which will not be the best outcome for the team, risking the product’s future and success.
This was an intentionally long post to draw a clear picture on all dimensions of development and marketing&sales of new products. These are my personal observations on how these organizations should operate for maximum effectiveness. I plan to do further deep dives on some of the key topics in this post in the future(as most of the sections deserve a deep dive on their own). Feel free to email me your feedback and suggestions at contact@mertcanli.com.