Evaluating product opportunities is an important responsibility of the product manager. The purpose of evaluating product opportunities is to eliminate bad ideas and avoid wasting time and money; select the right product opportunities, unite the team, understand the product, integrate resources, and better create an explosive product. Combining the content of the book “Apocalypse” and thinking about personal project experience, the following 10 major issues have been sorted out.
What problem should the product solve (product value)
What is the purpose of the product? What problems and problems can be solved continuously? The problem-solving of the product must be sustainable, not a one-time fast food product. This is one of the most difficult and most important questions to answer.
For whom to solve this problem (target market)
Who is the target user of the product?
Which social class is involved?
Which age level?
Do we understand the characteristics of the target user group, do the products we envision meet their needs, and can we get their attention in the first place?
What is the chance of success (market size)
The size of the chance of success depends on the prospects of the target market we intend to enter (ie the size of the market)?
The size of the target market includes the number of potential users and their spending power. We can evaluate the size of the target market through industry analysis reports and sample surveys of target users.
For example, if you choose the college student market, you should think carefully. Although this type of user is huge, there are problems with insufficient spending power and high liquidity risk.
How to judge the success of the product (measurement index or profit index)
The success of the product must be measurable, such as the indicators of daily active users, the situation of new users, etc., and the results of the work can be summarized in stages, and problems with the trend of the product can be found in time.
Only fast and not breaking, fast iteration is an indispensable strategy for today’s Internet projects.
What are the similar products (competitive landscape)
Now there are endless levels of entrepreneurial ideas about the Internet. Too many similar products have become a normal phenomenon, reflecting that the competition in our selected target market has been extremely fierce. We have to go back and think about the first two. This question is whether our products can meet the user’s demand pain points that cannot be solved by existing products;
If there are few competing products of the same kind, we have to focus on the next question 3. Why is no one involved in this market field? Are there problems that we haven’t discovered yet?
Why we are most suitable for this product (competitive advantage)
This question is a question that small companies should focus on. Small companies will inevitably be at a disadvantage in the competition with large companies. Small companies must carefully consider whether they have the ability to channel resources related to the project and whether they have accumulated a certain amount of resources. , Such as advanced technology, partnerships with offline suppliers, and so on.
Is the timing right (market timing)
The future market prospects of many projects are bright, such as 3D printing, Google glasses, etc., but it does not mean that the project can be further developed now. The facts have proved that the success rate of products that lead users’ needs too quickly is also Very small.
How to bring products to market (marketing mix strategy)
The traditional marketing strategy is the 4P strategy of product, price, promotion, and channel. Nowadays, with the continuous development of social media, the available marketing strategies are also more diverse. How to use some events and topics to detonate in the initial stage of market launch Pointing or adopting a steady and rapid iterative marketing strategy of accumulating reputation is a question worth thinking about. How to choose must ultimately be attributed to the original, based on the characteristics of our product itself.
What are the necessary conditions for success (conditions that the solution must meet)
The prerequisites for success refer to the special needs found in the process of product demand research. Similarly, the task of determining the necessary conditions is not to describe the solution, but to figure out the factors and constraints of the product. For example, if we want to sell our products through a system integrator, the other party may have requirements for product scalability and cooperation methods.
Based on the above questions, give an evaluation conclusion (continue or give up). The product manager only discusses the problems to be solved during the opportunity assessment, and does not need to involve specific solutions for the time being.
If a product has gone through the above 10 major problems and has not been out of the game, we can start the next stage of product design and development work.
