Product Manager = Customer Acquisition Specialist
Here’s why the term "Product Manager" could be synonymous to a “Customer Acquisition Specialist”…
Having spent enough time (if decade tops qualifies as “enough”) at startups & also talking to Cofounders over my current engagement at TPW (The Product Web) - Facebook where I play a role over formulating the strategy, refining the product offering, improving market fitment, helping build the right product, earmarking & hinging on channels / ways / means towards improving growth I see how there’s a tendency to hire experienced people for a very specific set of functions.
If you notice, there’s also a pattern that emerges amongst these hires. As Cofounders start out to establish their orgs., be it permanent / temporary case-to-case basis, these are the common roles that could be atop their minds & look to hire for over the initial quarters (in that order):
Now, the very fact that so many orgs. suffer in their early days is because they delay the hiring of a product manager, prioritizing it really lower, going ahead to build what they think is a basic version of an App so as to garner interest from their future users. Although that may not be a specific role they look to hire for, they’d still need someone who can play that very role properly, which goes beyond just playing the “devil’s advocate”.
Also, in conventional org. set-ups I have seen the hiring for Design teams get deferred until such time that they see a good amount of traction & establish an interest ensuring that it converts to an acceptance over their basic version, say the MVP. That may be a commendable way to go about it provided one’s confident of hiring for designer within short notice.
But here’s a situation. PMs may be well aware & would also wear multiple hats as & when demanded. But they also ought to play active role over the tactical side of:
consistently acquiring new users
onboarding those new users
getting them to that “A-ha!” moment ASAP
ensuring users have a seamless experience
signing users up for more features / products
pushing users towards referrals
If you look closely these functions they may as well be clubbed under the “Customer Acquisition Expert / Specialist” header, which is what’s expected out of every PM over the growth stages.
Let’s take a closer look at the dimension of this role in more detail.
1. Understand the goals of the users
This is where it all ought to start, always. If you think about it deeply, you realize how a product org. is inexistent sans its users when the converse doesn’t hold because users could still be, are & may be living without the products / the orgs. that make them.
Some very basic questions PMs ought to start off with are:
2. Help users choose products attuned to their goals
The goals that the users consider important may have a huge say in the way they look for, gauge, choose & adopt products into their lives. Also, one can’t ignore how users could talk to each other & then influence each other’s decision of trying / buying a product. In spite of all that, it is very possible that users aren’t quite happy about the choices they made about a given product.
So, a PM ought to factor them in & tie those motivations to the products that help solve problems, which could come down to these questions in order to be absolutely clear:
3. Maintain a good relationship with the users
One of the aspects of “Continuous Discovery” that proves to be an icing on the cake is how it helps PMs take a slice off their busy schedules & mandatorily make enough time to connect with the users over a host of things right from the latest solution patched via a feature release to the ongoing list of problem areas that concern / continue to impede the productivity of the user groups.
When PMs do resort to many online tools to gauge how the users are coping with the product / feature, one could combat it by asking:
4. Understand their blockers & try clearing them out
There NOTHING like a perfect solution to a problem in the real world. It’s just about being right given that time & space while trying our best to land a foot right, at all times & come what may. So, what’s important is to factor the motivations of the users in, have a measure of their goals & map those steps that they ought to complete so as to get them over the line. Not all fingers are the same & not all users have the same level of intelligence / propensity to wade through screens / flows & get to that outcome, which is why it is possible that many may have & also report blockers.
Paying heed to them & putting in all the effort required to clearing them out becomes imperative for PMs, which could be down to gauging the metrics & then hitting them up with questions like:
5. Track market trends constantly & factor them in
Ok, so you built a solution to a problem that you thought resonated largely with the targeted markets, launched it to garner good adoption. But, that’s NEVER the helm of the world. It doesn’t take much time for things to overturn & given today’s market that’s more of a given.
Which is why a PM ought to keep their eyes open to the competition to gauge all these:
6. Realign the roadmap ensuring teams work on things that matter
As you gauge the competition for the feature releases & the exact areas they are targeting, it is possible that you may be led to think that it is the best way to go about things given the current market scenario. When that feeling hits almost every PM, it is important one gets a grip over oneself, gets back to the board, analyzes, earmarks a few alternate areas to hit strategically & builds a roadmap to put them ahead in the race or disrupt the market in the best case.
But for one to have a solid roadmap, one ought to spend some time regressively going over & finding answers to all these questions:
7. Measure product demand & build customer awareness
Yes, there’s no doubt one is constantly tracking those metrics as a PM post release. When that is important alright, it simply isn’t enough. One ought to get their heads down to analyzing & discerning patterns over user adoption to peg it against the expectations one had come up with over the course of their research (for ex: the TAM numbers). In doing so it is also possible one may come across a few GAPS, be it in terms of user awareness or blockers over the usage or even pricing. Remember, good words do spread fast but the bad ones spread much faster. Those gaps could be well worth their weight in gold which ought to be earmarked & individually resolved as quickly as possible, facilitating more users towards adopting the product.
All that provided one pops these questions & quickly taps into the VoM (Voice of the Market) finding the answers:
8. Collaborate with marketing & sales helping take the product to the market
Collaborating with marketing & sales teams towards helping them with enough oversight towards hitting the market via the channels earmarked is obviously a priority for any PM post a feature / product’s release. But, it is very possible that a conceived path / route may not work as much as it should have. Having a few options / action plans (PLAN-A, B, C) could augur pretty well for PMs here but that again could so largely depend on the insights one is pinning on from those very market-fronted teams.
Make sure you ask your marketing / sales teams these questions:
9. Track, report & factor-in major metrics pertaining to user satisfaction
The one way for PMs to know whether the users are absolutely satisfied / beyond satisfied is to gauge their responses over something like an NPS (Net Promoter Score). But one common mistake I’ve seen many PMs make is how they resort to measuring the C-SAT / the NPS survey may be once / twice over the PLC. Remember, it is NEVER meant to be a one-time activity. Nobody has ever been their best over their first release, if anything it is a continuous process, which is why it ought to make total sense to you to hit the market with those performance / satisfaction surveys / micro-surveys time and again.
Here’s a NPS & Micro-survey question that you could ask:
