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Product Differentiation
2 Answers
Kara Gillis
Splunk Sr. Director of Product Management • June 1
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
1014 Views
4 Answers
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 29
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
601 Views
4 Answers
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 29
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
595 Views
3 Answers
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 29
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
655 Views
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
261 Views
3 Answers
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 29
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
576 Views
3 Answers
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 29
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
794 Views
3 Answers
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 29
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
622 Views
1 Answer
Kara Gillis
Splunk Sr. Director of Product Management • June 1
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
728 Views
1 Answer
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product Lead • March 29
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
743 Views