Foundational Concepts in Product Management

AB Testing

Data driven method of comparing different treatments of a variable, randomly exposing a subset of the audience to each of a number of options, and comparing this to an outcome

Amplification

Methods put in place to reach a wider audience, often by combining several channels

Analytics - marketing

Focus on user actions, converting potential customers

Analytics - product

Focus on user engagement, understanding the customer

Brainstorming

A two phase creative process of generating then selecting new ideas

Competitor response

In the context of launching a new product, the expected moves by your competitors in the market to counter your initial action

Conjoint analysis

A quantitative comparison method to understand customer 'partworth' preferences. We will dive into this later

CORE Approach

A product management approach. Communicate, Organize, Research, Execute

Customer ethnography

Understanding products by watching customers use them

Customer journey

A model of the customer buying process and how they make decisions, with the goal of influencing key steps in the process

Data divide

The start difference in performance between companies that use data drive marketing vs those that do not

Data driven marketing

A focus on extracting and understanding customer data to motivate product and market decisions

Design failure

Incorrect attributes of a product from the customers perspective, so that the product is not optimized to sell in the market.

Funnel

Top: Broad efforts to establish a positive impression; Bottom: Narrow, qualified audience, to persuade to purchase.

Kansei engineering

A system to define the subjective emotional relationships between consumers and products, and to explore properties that products communicate through emotion.

Management

The steps of planning, organizing, motivating (or leading) and controlling.

Marketing mix modelling

An aggregate approach to optimizing marketing spend and impact.

Messaging failure

Making the wrong claims for the target audience.

Mind mapping

A creative process of classifying new ideas.

Multi touch attribution

A per customer impact assessment method - determining the value of each customer touchpoint that leads to a conversion.

New idea evaluation

A process of assessing and qualifying risks and benefits of new products.

New product development process

A set of steps from ideation to tracking used to manage bringing new products to market.

Optimized search engine strategy

Creating a strategy steps - publisher, campaign, KPIs.

Pigs and chickens list - PCL

A quick way to think of stakeholders and how decisions need to be communicated through the organization.

Plan

A set of activities that the company says it's going to do.

Pricing failure

A pricing strategy or a price point that is inappropriate for the market, either placing the product out of reach of most customers or giving the impression that the product is "cheap" so customers will not be willing to pay for it.

Product Management

The business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. The role of the product manager is to prevent product failure. A product manager is the steward of a value exchange between a business and its customers.

Product Manager analytical pyramid

An approach to product management. Steps are Decision, Tools, Data, Analysis, Communication.

Sentiment analysis

Using automated tools to extract affective and subjective information. We will dive into this later. Aspect based or Intent based.

Strategy

An integrated set of choices that positions you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you win.

Two sided market

A market where the intermediary sells something provided by one party (eg: attention) to another party (eg: advertisers). Weird elasticity effects result.

Acquisition cost - AC

(Cost per contact X Number of contacts) / number of accepted offers, or cost per contact / take rate.

Bounce rate

Percentage of customers who leave your web site after spending less than five seconds on your site.

Brand awareness

A fundamental assessment of reach.

Churn

The percentage of existing customers who stop purchasing your product in a specific period (Month/year/etc)

Click through rate - CTR

# Clicks / # Impressions

Clicks

The number of times your ad is clicked

Cost per click - CPC/CPM

Cost per click on an ad / social etc. M: Per thousand

Customer satisfaction - CSAT

How likely would you be to recommend [product / service / company] to a friend or colleague?

The difference between KPIs and Metrics

KPIs measure performance goals bound to a financial period, metrics measure activities to provide context

Impressions

The total number of times your ad is shown to a viewer

Net promoter score

A measure of customer loyalty looking at how likely a customer is to recommend a business to others

Reach

The total number of users exposed to your ad

Return on ad dollars - ROA

Net revenue / cost.

Return on ad spend - ROAS

Return on investment from advertising

Return on marketing investment - ROMI

A framework for understanding marketing investment and returns. Amount you earned - amount you paid to spent to earn it

Take rate

Take rate = CTR x TCR. The percentage of customers who accept the offer given an impression of advertising

Test drive

Number of test drives / number of purchases

Transaction conversion rate - TCR

Percentage of customers who purchase after clicking through to your site