What is Product Management? A Beginner’s Guide

Product management is an organizational role in product ideation, development, marketing, and sales. A Product Manager is in charge of everything related to a product, whether it is the strategy, marketing, profit, or loss. As a result, Product Management is a complex field to work in. With so many factors to consider, how can one be sure of success while also delivering a killer product to customers?

Fret not. We are here to tell you everything you need to know about Product Management. 

What is Product Management?

Product Management is a function that handles various tasks such as market research, user experience design, improving the product backlog, product release, and so on.

In a nutshell, product management involves everything that occurs right from the idea of a product to its launch and after that. It seems simple, right? Well, not quite. It’s not as easy as it appears. 

The product manager handles UI/UX designs by teaming up with the design team to complete the UI/UX section ready. However, it doesn’t end there. They are also required to work along with the marketing team and brainstorm the strategies suitable to launch the product in the market.

Once the manager derives the strategy, it is imperative for them to handle the content and analyze which content type they will be putting in the product, if it’s relevant or not. The last part is to test the product; for that, the product manager aligns with the engineering team working on the product’s technical aspect and to accomplish deployment responsibly.

Once the product has been deployed, project managers only need to redefine the price strategy to give it a final polish before releasing it to the market.

Importance of Product Management in 2022

1. Understanding the Customer’s Needs
2. Creating a Suitable Business Model
3. Skill Development Strategy
4. A Successful Marketing Strategy
5. On-Time Support Service

1. Understanding the Customer’s needs

The most important thing you’ll notice as a project manager is whether you’re able to analyze your client’s expectations in order to fully understand what type of product they desire so that you can create it accordingly.

Delivering the product while keeping your customers’ needs in mind will boost its market value, and as a product manager, you would prefer your product to perform better on any given day.

2. Creating a Suitable Business Model

Since the product must fit the company’s business model, Product Managers must be particular about their products.

They must also take proper measures at various stages of the development process. Focusing on building the right product is not enough; ensuring influential product advertising campaigns is essential to scale the product’s growth.

Once an adequate business model is developed, product managers are required to work along the sales and marketing teams to reach customers and enlighten them on the product’s true value and how they can benefit from using it.

3. Skill Development Strategy

Product managers assist in developing the leading training strategic plan for both product and sales teams to generate public interest in the product. Organizations fine-tune their sales strategy with the help of product managers as customers’ needs change dynamically.

Product managers can sometimes provide critical input on future specific skills that will be in demand in the coming years, allowing management to improve their skilling and hiring plans.

4. A Successful Marketing Strategy

A product manager understands the techniques that must be implemented to get their product to the market. In general, project managers conduct extensive research to collect substantial numbers before developing the products to evaluate all of those data figures to obtain a proficient marketing plan to stay ahead of their competitors and persuade consumers to use their products over other brands.

5. On-Time Support Service

Product managers carefully monitor their product’s performance in the market and take client feedback and submit it to the support and service team to do the needful by evaluating what elements of the product need adjustments to make it more affluent and enticing to clients. Customer support service creates strong customer loyalty and enables the product management team to redeem value from received feedback.

What is Product Information Management (PIM)?

Product information management (PIM) is the practice of monitoring and enhancing product information and related digital assets throughout multiple teams to provide a compelling product experience and sell the product effectively across numerous sales and marketing channels. A PIM solution is a process-driven, master-data-driven application for collaborating on products/ services. It acts as a central hub for collection and processing, managing, governing, and enhancing product information and content before distributing it to marketing, sales promotion, and eCommerce channels.

What is Product Planning?

Product planning encompasses all the internal decisions, steps, and tasks required to create a successful product. In other words, it includes everything you’ll need to do that impacts the product. Go-to-market planning, on the other hand, includes all outward steps. These are all the steps you will take to introduce and market your product to the general public.

Here are a few examples of product planning and the go-to-market plan to understand how it works.

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Product Plans

• What aspects should we highlight as we develop the product?
• How would we decide our product’s price points?
• With whom will we collaborate on manufacturing?
• What are our revenue targets, innovative adoption goals, and other metrics we can track to determine the product’s level of success?

Go-to-market plans 

• What email campaigns will we create to inform potential customers about our new product?
• Which marketing materials must we create for this product launch?
• When and how will we train our sales team to sell the new product?
• Should we run limited-time specials to encourage early purchases?
• What public relations campaigns to launch to raise industry awareness before the launch?

Types of Product Management Roles 

Here are the different types of Product Management Roles:

1. Growth Product Manager
2. Technical Product Manager
3. Product Design Manager
4. Data Product Manager
5. Product Marketing Manager

1. Growth Product Manager

The growth product manager’s primary responsibility is to scale the product and increase its market reach among people.

Growth managers are also in charge of generating leads and conversion. They must constantly monitor how many consumers are using the product and their perspectives so that they can reach out to them and convert them into potential customers.

Growth product managers will use certain tools, such as metrics and analytics to understand market trends and develop appropriate strategies by analyzing those trends.

2. Technical Product Manager

You can tell by the name that a technical product manager is a product manager who works on the technical aspects of the product.

Technical product managers frequently collaborate with product managers and owners to recognize technical issues and provide real-time solutions using product information management and other tools so that the product’s market growth is not adversely affected.

Technical product managers plan and carry out internal and external product training programs allowing the consumer to use the product more effectively. They are also qualified to answer product-related questions and work on algorithms and automated systems to manage technical aspects.

3. Product Design Manager

A Product Design Manager is in charge of the product’s design in order to enhance the user experience.

The product design manager’s biggest challenge is to design the product following the current market situation. A product manager assists the product design manager in obtaining all of the incredible insight trending in the market and providing a brief evaluation of consumer behavior to design the product accordingly.

A product design manager must be knowledgeable in UI/UX design and visual design tools.

4. Data Product Manager

A person with a strong understanding of data management is the true boss, and all data product managers know this. This includes product information management and other tools as well.

Their job is to analyze raw information and derive valuable insights to assist product managers in gathering sufficient relevant information to develop a valuable product.

5. Product Marketing Manager

Product marketing managers are frequently regarded as the consumers’ voice. Product marketing managers work to improve market presence, product growth, and market planning, as well as customer engagement with the business model.

It is sometimes necessary for product marketing managers to have some technical knowledge to make changes depending on the needs of their customers.

Here are some other roles available for you once you pursue product management as a career.

• Associate product manager – collecting product data, including web analytics and evaluating the user trends.
• Chief product officer – deriving valuable strategies for products and their implementation.
• Senior product manager – assisting product manager in developing the product’s framework and guidelines
• Director of product – is crucial in product development. They must lead the product managers’ team and mentor them throughout the development process.
• Vice president of products – charge of defining and driving advanced initiatives to support business objectives.

Conclusion

Rapid commercialization has led to rising demand for Product managers in recent times. With product managers being responsible for driving around 34.2% profits within a company, leveraging the finest talent can work in your favor! From handling the design to the implementation of the product, which is usually the final phase before launching the product, product management plays a vital role in establishing a brand making it one of the most sought-after careers.

Get started with your product management journey at the earliest with one of the top online education portals, upGrad! upGrad offers a Post Graduate Certificate Course in Product Management in collaboration with Duke Corporate Education to equip learners with industry-relevant product management skills. Sign up today to kickstart your career as a product manager!