This is part 2 of our five part series exploring the product lifecycle where we delve into the introduction stage. If you haven’t yet, check out part 1 of the series for an overview of the product lifecycle and product value metric.
The introduction stage of the product lifecycle starts immediately after launching your product. Even if you are doing a beta or limited release, you are still introducing your product to the market. The introduction stage is characterised by slow, linear growth of your product value metric, with most of your customers being early adopters, and ends when the value metric reaches exponential growth for at least a few months (which characterises the growth stage). Below we discuss some of the most important elements to consider in the introduction stage.
What You Launch Matters
Getting to the pointy end of a launch, it can be tempting to just add one more feature! In reality, the success or failure of a launch starts well before these last minute decisions. This is because not all features are created equally. What you launch (and how you launch it) matters.
The introduction stage is all about testing your product value proposition in the market and not doing a proper assessment of what needs to be in your product to test this is essential. Broadly, there are three types of features that you may choose to include in your launch candidate:
- Baseline or Quality of life (QoL) features: These features are baseline functionality that people need to use your product. For instance, you may need a log in or purchase flow. It can be tempting to add more of these features than you actually need. But by adding more, you can blow out your launch timeline without significant benefit.
- Differentiation features: These are the features that will distinctively build the value proposition of your product. They are actually the most important to get clear on as early as possible in product creation but frequently may not even be clear at launch. Leaving out elements of your value proposition means you cannot test it. On the other hand, having too many features with different value propositions can be confusing.
- Expected features: These are features that are a requirement to meet market expectations in comparison to incumbent competitors. If your product doesn’t have clear direct competitors there may not be clear expectations. However, looking at indirect competitors will also be important as customers may judge your product based on more general expectations (e.g., quality, speed, uptime etc). Again these should be limited to the absolute necessary functionality to avoid generating customer backlash.
If you have the wrong set of features at launch, this can be disastrous for the introduction stage. In this stage you may only have one chance to make an impression on the key customer base that will be trying your product first – early adopters. Poor reviews may hamper your product advocacy and continue to haunt you when you are starting to go after early majority customers.
Generally, early adopter customers will forgive some clunkiness in the experience or a few missing QoL features if they see the value and potential of the product. This is why ensuring you are delivering on a strong and clear value proposition is key.
One way to potentially reduce the scope of what is needed for launch is by changing your launch strategy. You may be able to launch to a narrower subset of customers within your target market that will see more immediate or stronger value. Or you may look to launch first to ‘friendly’ or ‘beta’ customers. This can give you time and feedback to improve your offering before going wider. Be careful though, launching only to ‘friendlies’ (people that you know etc) may skew feedback to be more positive than it actually is.
Getting Your First Customers
Your first customer sign-up is exciting! You finally have some traction! Now what do you do with the feedback (or perhaps lack of feedback) that you are getting?
Customer feedback is the lifeblood of the introduction stage. It is what helps you better understand the market expectations for your product. While ideally you would already have been accessing customer & market research during development, you now have the real world ability to observe and hear what customers think about the product ‘in the wild’.
The difference between what customers ‘say’ and ‘do’ can be like night and day – so it is important to look not just at product analytics but also support requests, reviews and feedback. You should also reach out directly to customers to get more perspective in interviews, surveys or other direct commentary (e.g., in-app chat or a discord / slack channel).
You want to invite as much feedback as you can, but it is important to note that not all feedback is created equal. Below we describe a few types of customer feedback you will encounter and some considerations for each.
Feature Feedback
Every product manager knows this feedback – ‘When will you have [this functionality]?’. Feature feedback is highly valuable in the introduction stage to refining your value proposition, but it needs to be treated carefully.
Check first if the customer is coming from your expected target segment and that they are facing the problem you are looking to solve. One thing about early adopters is they will frequently try anything, even if they don’t really have the problem or see the benefit. They just like to try things. This is unique behaviour that you usually won’t encounter in other segments.
You will need to consider carefully the value of feature feedback particularly from early adopters outside your cohort. It may not be as relevant as other feedback. But you shouldn’t rule it out completely as it may indicate you have tapped into an adjacent customer market worth exploring. Just be careful to not go down a rabbit hole.
Experience Feedback
This type of feedback usually comes across as customer confusion or frustration. There is something about your experience that does not make sense or that makes it harder for your customers to achieve what they need to. The big difference between this and feature feedback is that customers should be able to achieve it within the current functionality.
Experience feedback is great to aggregate over as many customers as possible and best to couple with observational research. By directly observing customers interacting with your product (and not just telling them how to do it) you can identify if their confusion comes from a poor experience, a lack of signposting or if you need more product education. All of these need different solutions.
Service / Support Feedback
This is your general ‘something is not working’ or ‘I am happy / unhappy with your service’ type of feedback. Generally the amount of this will relate to the overall quality and complexity of your product. More complex products with greater functionality should expect a higher baseline of this feedback – even if they are of high quality.
Service feedback is also important to aggregate and may hide feature or experience feedback covertly. If you are facing quality issues, it is important to prioritise fixing things in your core experience first. Not every issue will be of equal value.
If there are parts of your offering that receive a lot of support feedback but are not core to your value proposition, you may actually want to consider removing rather than fixing them depending on the effort.
Generating Advocacy
A great (and cheap) way to generate exponential growth is through word of mouth. The goal of introduction should be to generate this customer advocacy. To get effective recommendations through word of mouth your customer cohort needs to (i) get exceptional value from your product and (ii) know more people like them that will also get value.
Consider early how you will look to generate advocacy and how you will leverage customer advocates to access broader customer bases. An NPS rater and a request for product reviews generally won’t cut it to generate advocacy.
Pay particular attention to customers that have broader access to an audience that trusts their referrals. In B2B this may be trusted professionals (e.g., accountants) that advise other businesses. In B2C this may be respected reviewers or content creators. While you may be able to achieve similar results with paid influencer marketing or partnerships, these channels are much more expensive and less trusted than real customers spruiking the product.
Focus Areas To Remember For The Introduction Stage
Products may be in the introduction stage for as little as a few months, or it may take decades to achieve growth. The key is in finding the right value proposition for the right customer cohort that is large enough to achieve sustained growth. It is essential that the focus of the introduction stage continues to be:
- Value proposition & positioning: The value proposition will be based on the customers you choose, the problem you solve, the benefits you deliver and how / what you compare yourself to (competitors, manual process etc). One useful tool to help you work on your value proposition is the Brainmates Idea Pad.
- Research & Iteration: Continuing to refine your value proposition during introduction is key. Getting it right is what will achieve growth. Engaging, observing and listening to customers is key, but this comes with the realisation that not every piece of feedback is created equal. Iterating based on the wrong feedback can be a waste of precious time.
- Ruthless Prioritisation: While prioritisation is always important, it is never more so than when introducing a new product. You will have more feedback than you know what to do with, but very limited resources. Now – Next – Later – Never – will never serve you better than when introducing a new product.
What problems you choose to solve, what customers you choose to listen to and what you choose to focus on every day as a product manager is what may make the difference between a product introduction that lasts for a few months and one that never achieves growth!
In the next article of our five part series, we go in depth into the growth stage. We discuss how your customer base and expectations change in this stage as well as the most important elements of keeping ahead of new competitors!
