Curiosity Week: Product Management Recap
This week, I had an opportunity to attend the Curiosity week, where technology was sparked with learning sessions presented by businesses, networking with entrepreneurs and other people in the tech industry. And professional development for all the attendees.
Although, I would not consider myself a technological person, I found this a great opportunity for future businesses/ventures I hope to start soon. Yesterday, I attended the Product Management: Product/Market Fit. I have been looking forward to this session all week because I have always found the knowledge product management insightful, and a great learning skill that anyone entrepreneur can use for their business.
The speaker for the product management session was Kelly Yanke Deltener. She has been a part of the startup community here in Fargo over twenty years now. She has worked in e-commerce, started one the first web development companies in Fargo, and is now the head of product at CoSchedule. She brought great information and insightful knowledge on finding the market for your product.
First, she started off with telling us how to find your hypotheses. There was a total of eight factors you must do. The first factor was finding Target audience, involving finding the best potential customers, the early adopters and innovators, majority users. Then you have to figure out the problem you are trying to solve. The third factor is finding the value proposition by knowing the value you deliver to customers and the list of promises you give them. After finding to value proposition, you got to find the Strategic differentiation by asking yourself, what makes your product different from other products. Once you know how your product stands out, you got to find your competition, know whose products are similar, and figure out how you can compete with them.
The sixth factor of the hypotheses is acquisition strategy, figuring out the customer lifecycle marketing for your business. How to bring awareness to your product, and hoping to give consideration of your product, then getting them to purchase the product. From there, you want to make sure you have their support on the product, and finally, gaining retention. You also want to figure out what is your approach to attracting potential customers? What cost will you pay for acquiring potential customers? And what does your “funnel” look like? The seventh factor of finding your hypotheses is Monetization Strategy, how will you make money on this product? Is there a secondary market? and what is the market willing to pay for your product?
The final factor of the hypotheses is Key Performance Indicators. What metrics will tell you if you are going on the right path? What stages is your product in? How will you obtain the data for the future use of the product and market? And lastly, what point is there to no return?
After talking about the factors to developing a hypothesis, Kelly also talked about obtaining a market by Email list growth, site traffic on the web, and the leads that are generated for you. She also talked about setting yourself up for success by knowing you cannot pay attention to everything at once. Validating assumptions, conducting customer interviews, figuring out the monetization, engagement, and acquisition look like. She also gave great recommendations to blogs and websites to help with product management.
Overall, I enjoyed sitting in on the product management session of curiosity week, and I look forward to using this information in the future in starting up a business and/or a venture.
