How to make Successful Products
So let me start by saying that I am a Growth Hacker
I constantly look for new ways to grow and launch different digital products. Over the years i have honed in my skills and have created a model that enables me to launch successful products.
I have tested this model by looking at other successful digital products and have validated it.
I call it the Product Success Framework
The Product
Firstly there needs to be demand for your your product, it must address a need or exploit an opportunity. That is a prerequisite so it doesn't form part of the model.
A product must have Features, Functionality, UX and UI (FFUU) that separates it from the competition and gives it an advantage. The FFUU needs to be constantly updated to match the competitive environment and changing market conditions. You must always think “what new FFUU must i implement” to improve my products performance and drive up customer acquisition or retention.
This is where the Analytics comes into play, the FFUU utilization must be measurable, the easiest way to do this is integrate with Google Analytics. The champions in this space are Spotify.
Spotify are a truly Agile company, new Features are shipped in every release cycle
Here is video that shows Spotify’s engineering culture
It is no Surprise that Spotify has over 159 million active users, including over 71 million Spotify Premium subscribers.
Another powerful feature is a recommendations engine, this is where Spotify is leading the pack and every two weeks they release new tweeks to the platform that allows this engine to become better and better.
If a feature or functionality is not being used ditch it, if it is improve it.
Content
Content needs to be relevant, refreshed and of the right quality. This applies to all entertainment products (Music, Video, Gaming)
The OTT’s
Content is said to be king and if the OTT players are anything to go by spend on Local original is reaching record highs.
Netflix is working toward a library that’s half originals, half licensed shows and movies — making more original stuff available for viewers to watch. It’s spending $7–8 billion, up from $6 billion this year, to do so. It even plans to release more original movies next year than most major movie studios combined. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime and Hulu spent an estimated $4.5 billion and $2.5 billion on content in 2017, respectively — and those budgets are expected to increase next year.
Content performance needs to be closely monitored,all content related data needs to be tracked and measured.
Netflix are leading in this space and this is brilliant article on how Netflix uses analytics, some of the data Neflix uses to make content decisions is :
“Where was the common cut off point for users? What did the other 30% of users do? How big of a ‘time gap’ was there between when consumers watched one episode and when they watched the next? We need to get a good idea of the overall engagement of this show.”
Marketing
Marketing is vital to products success, from Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing, email marketing, referrals and word of mouth
Your product needs to be marketed. Plain and simple
Below is a legendary video on how to sell a product by Simon Sinek
There are numerous other touch-points between Product and Marketing and Marketing and Content and the outputs are Content Marketing and Product Marketing Plans.
These are the building blocks of a Building a successful product.
