What Is Product Management Strategy?

What Is Product Management Strategy?

Product management is the organizational function responsible for developing and bringing a product to market. Most companies will have a branch that handles the product life cycle to ensure a smooth trajectory to market from start to finish.

Product management strategy refers to the approach the product manager adopts in order to make that happen.

There are several factors to bear in mind when developing a new product management strategy, which are as follows:

Customer needs

Few products will launch successfully and send shockwaves through an industry if they fail to factor in customers’ needs.

By addressing common customer pain points, you give yourself a better chance of resonating with the target customer, which will make it an easier sell.

The first step to factoring customer needs into the product life cycle is to find out who your ideal customer is. This is where market research comes into play, since you’ll want to have a good idea of who you’re targeting with your product line. You’ll also want to scope out market competition to see how similar products have performed and what marketing strategy they used.

You need to find a gap in the market with this preliminary research, as this niche will often be where the money is.

Profit generation

On the topic of money, you could come up with the best product in the world, but if the audience isn’t there, the healthy profits likely won’t be either.

When creating a product management strategy, profitability is another factor to keep in mind, since you need to know how to price your product to generate the most revenue for your business. Again, market research is essential, as it will reveal how well competitors’ products have performed and at what price points they’ve been successful. 

From there, you can try and undercut your closest competitors or come in at a higher price point if you feel like you can market your product as being of a higher quality.

Market trends

A successful product management strategy from a few years ago could very well be irrelevant in today’s market.

There are so many factors that influence the market. That’s why it is important to be adaptable. You never know when the global economy might take a hit, or a pandemic might sweep the world and deliver a blow to brick-and-mortar businesses. 

You need to stay on top of economic and technological trends in order to stay ahead of your competition.