How to Build a Product Strategy That Fits Your Company’s Focus

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PUBLISHED

Oct 4, 2024

READING TIME

3 min & 14 sec

Dear Reader,

Besides being decisive, another attribute that can determine the value of your Product Strategy is how layered it is.

The best way to think of the interplay between the Company and Product layers is the magnitude of overlap between each of them:

Is the audience you chose for your Product part of the prioritized audience by the company?

Is the distribution channel you want to leverage mastered by the company?

How can you make your offering stand out using the company's existing differentiators?

So, a critical attribute of a useful Product Strategy is its ability to fit into the Company Strategy and make coherent choices that inform the intentional delivery of Features.

Here's how our exemplary b2b SaaS company, Analytico, can make use of this:

As a company, Analytico had established the route of doing one thing really, really well ( web eCommerce tracking) through a fully integrated solution (as opposed to catering to more use cases through integrations). For the new predictive checkout optimization features, this meant not getting lost in all the possibilities of other checkouts: No tiered pricing or subscriptions.

While stakeholders suggested other checkouts that could be optimized, the product team could use the established company focus to narrow its perspective on audiences and problems worth solving. Among others, they prioritized GDPR compliance and the ease of use for integrating with web technologies like Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).

This way, they could reinforce the company's established strengths and increase the chances of succeeding for

Next week, we'll wrap up this miniseries by looking at how Analytico can ensure its Product Strategy is Executable.

HOW TO PUT THIS THEORY INTO PRACTICE

Which choices did your company make? Look for decisive choices around users, offerings, and differentiators.
Can you play within the boundaries? Think about the decisions these choices help you skip. Can you target a more narrow segment or problem space to help the company succeed in the broader market they go after?
Which elements help you succeed? Where can you reuse or leverage hard (e.g., technology) or soft (e.g., branding, positioning) choices for your product?

Did you enjoy this one or have feedback? Let me know and reply. Hearing from you is what motivates me whenever I sit down to write this newsletter. If this newsletter isn't for you anymore, you can unsubscribe here.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

Tim

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