The Straightforward Guide to Product Strategy

你知道吗薯片was invented by thinly slicing French fries? Or, thatPlay-Dohwas designed to be a cleaning product until children started using it for fun?

It's true. These products were lucky to become the household items they are today.

However, not every successful product has to be an accident. Instead, you can ensure a product's success by creating a strong strategy to guide its development.

In this post, we'll discusswhat product strategy is，，，，different typesof strategy, some real worldexamples，然后为您提供templateso you can create one for your next product or feature.

What Is Product Strategy?

Your product strategy is the roadmap that's used to develop your product or feature. It includes all of the tasks that your team needs to complete to achieve your business goals. Your team will use this document as its guide and will refer to it whenever they have questions. In fact,70％of businesses refer to the product strategy whenever they're making major decisions. So, it's important to create a detailed and thorough strategy to ensure every task is completed correctly and on time.

产品战略概述了产品如何benefit the business. It describes the problem that the product will solve and the impact that it will make on customers and the company. Once this strategy is clear, it can be used to create the product definition which explains what you will build and when. The product strategy then acts as a baseline that you'll measure success to before, during, and after production.

The graph below outlines how this relationship plays out.

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产品策略由三个主要组成部分组成。让我们在以下各节中查看每个部分。

Market Vision

市场愿景描述了谁将使用您的产品以及该机会对业务意味着什么。它突出了您的目标客户，您将如何定位产品以及它将如何与其空间中的其他竞争对手面对面。您的市场愿景还应包括一个进入市场计划，该计划解释了您的客户需求以及如何提供竞争优惠。

Product Goals

你不能创建一个没有关键ob产品策略jectives. These are specific goals or metrics that you'll achieve as a result of building your product. They guide your development team and help you measure success once the product is released.

When goal-setting, it's important to make your objectives time-based, so there's urgency for when you'll accomplish them. This adds more importance to your product's development because you've added a time-constraint to its success.

产品计划

Product initiatives are similar to product goals, but they're more conceptual. These are big-picture ideas or trends that you'll influence as a result of your new product.

For example, when HubSpot launched itsCRM，，，，it didn't want to just sell software. It wanted to become a thought-leader in marketing automation and reveal new business opportunities for its users. That bigger picture of the product's impact helped establish a clear vision for how HubSpot would create and develop its tools over time.

现在，我们已经剖析了产品策略的解剖结构，您应该熟悉设计产品设计的核心组件。但是，您如何组织此信息可能会根据您正在创建的产品或管理层提出的期望而有所不同。

Below, let's take a look at some of the different product strategies you can use at your business.

Types of Product Strategies

1. Cost Strategy

A cost strategy focuses on creating the best product for the lowest price. It assesses the resources being used and determines where money can be saved during production.

This is a useful strategy for low-effort purchases like household cleaning items. These are things that most of us don't think too much about when buying because all of the products in this space are essentially the same and we typically don't have any loyalty towards a particular brand. So for these industries, if you can create a product that undercuts your competitors' price point, it'll be a sure favorite for your customer base.

2. Differentiation Strategy

Price isn't the end-all-be-all when it comes to differentiating your product. There are plenty of other ways that you can make it stand out in your industry. Maybe it's a luxury product that uses the best materials. Or, maybe it has ground-breaking features that revolutionize the space altogether. Whichever it may be, this approach focuses on giving your product a personality that makes it memorable and delightful to your customers.

3. Focus Strategy

如果您的公司拥有bob全站app庞大的客户群，也许您想创建一种吸引特定买家角色的产品。这是一个有效的策略，因为它针对精选人群的需求，并为他们创建个性化解决方案。这是获得新客户时获得品牌忠诚度的好方法。

4. Quality Strategy

Sometimes what can set your item apart from competitors could be the make and brand behind it. Quality strategy focuses on the customers who are looking for the highest quality product in the market. The prices are naturally high to compensate for the supplies needed in production, but that does not deter some buyers. If it is recognized as a luxury, a number of customers will go out of their way to pay for it if they believe it’s worth the investment.

5. Service Strategy

许多客户可能正在寻找某种产品，但将基于其购买的客户服务的购买决定。bob全站app使用出色的服务吸引客户的公司了解这种声誉的价值。通过提供快速的响应和更好的售后服务，可以建立任何市场的品牌忠诚度。

产品策略示例

Now that we've covered the five main approaches to product strategy, let's see these put into action with real-world examples.

特尔法

Telfar是一个黑色拥有的奢侈品牌，在2014年开始卖袋子，由时装设计师Telfar Clemens出售。特尔法（Telfar）因其亲密，毫无歉意且超越的品牌形象而在2020年迅速受到欢迎。Telfar经过深思熟虑的产品策略使这成为可能。该公司违bob全站app反了期望，并创建了一个成功引起其客户群共鸣的产品和营销活动。

Let's take a look at the strategy Telfar created to ensure the success of theSignature Telfar Shopping Bag。

特尔法Market Vision

When defining the market vision, Telfar focused their efforts on making a bag "Not For You — For Everyone”. They wanted to create a bag that was sleek in design and innovative for its glamourization of average everyday people, as opposed to other luxury brands that highlight their product with celebrity endorsements. Clemens identified their target market to be a wide range of people looking for an affordable luxury accessory.

特尔法Product Goal

一旦发现了愿景和市场拟合，克莱门斯就建立了将其产品传递给所有人的目标。他们的主要目标是出售对每个人看起来都不错的行李，并确保每个想要一个袋子的人都得到一个。

When the Telfar brand grew, customers became unable to attain the products due to high demand and bots taking most of their inventory every new product release. Telfar then came up with an innovative strategy to overcome this nuisance with theirBag Security Program。When new bags were released, customers could order the exact bag model and color of their choosing, and have it shipped in a specified time window. This was a different form of product development as mainstream brands would make limited products until they sold out. Telfar both meets their goal and provides a unique service to give customers their desired product without the fear of scarcity.

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特尔法产品计划

Telfar的包包并没有仅仅从他们的愿景和产品目标中提高，而是一个营销团队将自己定位为时尚的下一个大事。

特尔法's marketing team understood the importance of inclusiveness and affordability from their early beginnings, and their message resonated with the public and their call for equity and fairness last year. Not only that, but they took to the most popular social media channels like TikTok and Instagram to showcase unique individuals and crazy campaign advertisements with skydivers and freestyle dancers to convey the energy of the brand. They turned your average sales pitch into a celebration of individuality and better communicated what made Telfar different from their competitors.

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耐克

耐克has been known for its innovative products since the first shoe it released in 1971. Recently, the company has taken more experimental approaches when releasing a new shoe concept, the Nike Air Zoom Mercurial. A unique football cleat that combined computational design with air bag technology.

While the model is strikingly different from the company’s other cleats, Nike created a product and marketing campaign that surprisingly resonated with its customer base.

Let's take a look at the strategy Nike created to ensure the success of the耐克Air Zoom Mercurial。

耐克Market Vision

When defining the market vision, Nike focused its research in 3D-printed Flyprint textiles and automobile safety features. They wanted to create a shoe that was innovative but seemed familiar to the user. So, the research team tested the efficiency of the Air Zoom Mercurial on actual football players.

This led them to see air bag technology for its unique underfoot sensation and energy return, creating a shoe like no other. While it went against Nike's conventional vision, this was exactly the type of innovation that the product team needed to develop a ground-breaking product.

耐克Product Goal

耐克对空气变焦的愿景已建立，他们的产品目标也同样清楚。空气变焦Mercurial将有一个与众不同的因素可以脱颖而出 - 每一步都需要提供更多的能量回报。

耐克’s customers could benefit from the airbag technology because of the amount of dynamic movement that takes place in football games. Using pressure sensors on the athletes' feet, the research team captured exactly how the foot bounces off different sections of the shoe, and how to position the internal Zoom Air bag chassis in the sole. Using this data, the product development team's goal became creating a shoe that almost gives customers an extra boost with each step.

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耐克产品计划

耐克’s product initiative for this new Mercurial was a more informational approach than their other cleats. Since this release was built differently from their traditional cleat, they needed to justify that athletes would still buy the product.

耐克（Nike）的营销团队决定，虽然鞋子会使运动员表现更好，但依靠客户无法从他们已经忠于的鞋子中切换出来的风险。取而代之的是，他们选择向客户教育新发现的技术如何帮助他们实践，并将产品定位为培训工具。这样一来，耐克就增加了销量的压力，并可以更好地传达产品的不同。

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现在，您可以看到如何形成产品策略，您可能想与团队一起开始。如果是这样，请查看下面的部分以获取可以帮助您开始的模板。

产品策略模板

1.下载模板here。

Having a visual tool to map out your product strategy helps you to organize your ideas and learn how to put them into action. Use这些自由模板计划您的流程和围绕产品策略的沟通。

2. Create your market vision.

This second slide can help you create your market vision with our provided idea web graphic organizer. Determine where you want to position your product in the market place and figure out what you’re up against.

3. Establish product goals.

Once your vision is complete, you can use the third slide to establish your product goals. Use each column to make a definitive plan with actionable steps.

4. Make product initiatives.

Finally, once you lay out your goals, you can use a similar table to list your product initiatives. Think beyond the numbers and determine what your product is trying to accomplish in the long haul.

Forming a thorough product strategy is key to reaching your target audience. When you position it correctly, you’re setting yourself up to become a real competitor in the marketplace. This is only part of the journey, but having somewhere to start can be the difference between being a market follower, or market leader.

编者注：该帖子最初于2019年12月发表，并已更新以进行全面性。