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Product Differentiation

What are the most important inputs to take into consideration when thinking through product differentiation?

2 Answers

Splunk Sr. Director of Product Management, Observability • June 2

There are several inputs I think about when considering product differentiation: 1. Specific target customer - There are many types of customers in a market. Who are you serving? Try to narrow your focus as far as you can to understand the specific problems faced by this customer to be as tail......Read More

1723 Views

Building real differentiation can take time. How do you get your exec team onboard with investing in more strategic product investments?

4 Answers

Lizzy Masotta

Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 30

A common mistake exec teams make is focusing on output and forgetting about outcomes. Product teams present roadmaps to execs and once they’ve shipped a thing, they tell them it’s complete and move onto the next. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what’s on your roadmap or what you’ve su......Read More

845 Views

What are areas of product differentiation that most product managers overlook, but are really important?

4 Answers

Lizzy Masotta

Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 30

Don’t forget about marketing, positioning and acquisition of customers as a key part in your differentiation strategy. It’s easy for Product Managers to solely focus on the bits and bytes of how the product works once someone’s in it, but if you cannot acquire or entice new customers - you ne......Read More

834 Views

What do product managers get wrong about product differentiation?

3 Answers

Lizzy Masotta

Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 30

The most common mistake is to not think about it at all. It can be so challenging to get a product built and shipped at your company that Product Managers naturally become very internally focused. They have dependencies to manage across other teams, they have timeline pressure from leadership,......Read More

906 Views

We have a competitor that copies our features, and often says they can do the same thing as us, even if they cannot. How do you approach this?

3 Answers

Milena Krasteva

Walmart Sr Director II, Product Management - Marketing Technology • March 31

While it may be tempting to get sucked into feature by feature wars and spar through marketing communications it will not yield much for whoever (you or the competito) lacks sources of Sustainable Competitive Advantage. see related answer on what those are, not to be confused with Competitive Adv......Read More

264 Views

How do you think about your roadmap and overcoming a competitor’s differentiation when they are just so much further ahead?

3 Answers

Lizzy Masotta

Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 30

It’s important to know your competition, but it’s equally important not to obsess over what they’re doing at a feature level. You should never aim for a feature vs. feature battle with competitors. The focus, instead, should be on the problems you’re solving for your users and what’s most importa......Read More

844 Views

What framework(s) do you use to evaluate how to differentiate your product?

3 Answers

Lizzy Masotta

Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 30

There are 2 exercises I use to evaluate bringing differentiation into the products I'm building. 1. What sucks? 2. User value mapping Where they originated I came up with these frameworks in collaboration with Paul Pedrazzi (SVP, Salesforce) while we were working on a 0 → 1 product for small......Read More

1100 Views

Our product does something completely different than another product in the market, but we often get grouped together? Is this a product problem? Marketing problem?

3 Answers

Lizzy Masotta

Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 30

Start by analyzing why this might be happening. It’s a key signal that shouldn’t be ignored, and needs further digging to understand what’s behind it. Is there a misperception of your brand? Is there a misunderstanding of the product offering? Are you missing features? Is there a lack of aware......Read More

871 Views

What's your ideal working model between product management and product marketing?

1 Answer

Kara Gillis

Splunk Sr. Director of Product Management, Observability • June 2

I used to be a product marketer. My ideal working relationship is to view product marketing as my key partner in product development, launch, and iteration. We are both stewards of the product success. I try to involve product marketing into the very beginning stages of product development - t......Read More

990 Views

As we expand our product portfolio, when does it make sense to start building functionality that products that we partner with offer?

1 Answer

Lizzy Masotta

Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 30

I love this question. Through my work at both Salesforce and Shopify this is something that comes up regularly because of our platform and healthy partner ecosystem. 1. Do the majority of my users need this? 2. Are there problems with the partner meeting the needs of users today? 3. Do we ha......Read More

996 Views

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