Methods to Effectively Exercise Product Management Role

Here are some more roles in product management.

Market research

Market research is critical not just for early-stage products, it is also an activity that, ideally, should never stop and should continue to inform the product strategy. Market research is the practice of gathering information about our target market and helping to validate the success of a new product, iterating on an existing product, or how people feel about our brand to make sure our team is effectively communicating the value of our company.

Market research can provide answers to a variety of questions about the state of an industry, but it is far from a crystal ball on which we can rely for customer insights. Market researchers look into various aspects of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to develop an accurate picture of the business landscape.

Market research provides insights into a wide range of factors that can inform product strategy, such as:

• How and where do our target audience and current customers go to research products or services?

• Which of our competitors does our target audience seek information, options, or purchases from?

• What are the pricing attitudes for a specific product or service?

• What are the popular products in our industry and among our buyers?

• Who are our competitors and what are their challenges?

• What factors influence our target audience’s purchases and conversions?

• What are the consumer perceptions of a specific topic, ailment, product, or brand?

• Is there is demand for the business initiatives in which we are investing? Unaddressed or underserved customer needs can be converted into a product opportunity.

Market research can be a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, which is crucial for us to be able to create a competitive product strategy that we can present to executives and get buy-in for.

User research

Product managers work with user research teams to develop qualitative insights and user personas. User research is more specific than market research and focuses on developing a deeper understanding of the target audience for our product. User research complements the quantitative data from user analytics with qualitative insights about the customer population. Together, this helps build an in-depth knowledge of the user personas that the product targets. Added to this, we need to have a keen interest in competing products, determine the role of the product in the bigger scheme of a business, and define how it will be marketed to customers.

User research is focused on answering some of these key questions about the customers:

• What do users need?

• What are the most important customer pain points?

• How can we solve customer pain points to drive value?

During the product discovery phase, we can focus user-research efforts on user interviews and contextual inquiries. As the product enters the testing phase, we want to switch focus to dogfooding, concept testing, and usability testing:

• Dogfooding is the practice of having the team use the product to gain the user’s perspective on the experience and find gaps and opportunities for ...