What are the best practices for developing a product vision that resonates with your target audience?

Consumer insights is the critical starting point. If you start with you consumer in mind your chances of success is far greater and helps to create the connection between your product and the users thereof.

(!) Best Practices for Developing a Product Vision: - dive deep into understanding pain points, aspirations, and motivations - use interviews, surveys, and analytics to obtain genuine feedback - determine the main issues your product aims to solve - understand the deeper emotional ties customers might have with your product - as markets and needs evolve, periodically adjust your product vision to stay relevant.

Based on my experience the following are key steps: - Understand your audience through deep market research and create desired buyer personas - Generate UVP/USP that distinguishes your product and emphasizes its benefits - Alignment has to be ensured with your company's mission and values for a coherent brand identity - Utilize storytelling techniques to help your audience visualize the future your product can enable - Prioritize customer benefits and address their pain points - Conduct iterative testing and adjustments based on input received - Communicate your vision - Adaptability to changing market conditions - Monitor success through the use of KPIs - Continuous feedback from customers to refine your vision and product

When you get to know the customer you serve, you're strengthening the strategic product vision that will support users' roles and goals today, and over time as your customers evolve along with economic, social, and other factors. Add a dose of product intuition to this validation, and you have the most important ingredients for creating a strong and inspired product vision.

Start with a great product making great things for customers. When you get it for sure, think about developing a vision and value proposition. Only after. Often we create great words and hype and useless and bad products (experience).

(!) When crafting your value proposition, keep it as succinct as possible. Test it by sharing it with a small group from your target audience. If they can't instantly grasp the core benefit or reason to choose your product, you might need to simplify or rephrase.

There are multiple value proposition templates, but one that has been more contemporary and much more useful is the "Positioning Canvas" from April Dunford, which is part of her full messaging exercise. Not only unique attributes of your product are highlighted, but also different values in comparison to different competitive options. Another very important point, but sometimes quite difficult to achieve, is proof points that confirm the unique attributes, which require benchmark testing and data-based arguments.

1. Live the challenge by being ambitious and pushing ourselves. 2. Spread enthusiasm and positive energy. 3. Walk in your customer’s shoes - understand the customer, be very empathetic and help solve their problems. 4. Think big and be positive. 5. No shenanigans - be truthful with yourself, be honest, transparent, and direct with others. 6. Be frugal – spend wisely, and invest smartly. 7. Be prepared – "The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win" (Vince Lombardi), success is predicated on preparation.

Your product's value proposition should be crafted at the intersection of your distinct capabilities and the unmet needs of specific audience segments. These segments may not have been adequately served by your competitors or may have received insufficient attention. Only through this approach can your value proposition resonate with your target audience. If you excel in a unique manner that addresses needs nobody else is meeting, it's unlikely to drive your success. In our developed tool, Segmentable, you can easily visualize how competitors cover the needs of various consumer segments within a single table. This simplifies the identification of market gaps.

Value proposition is very important and can be risky when we get it wrong. There are many canvases out there to help us get started, but one thing I have practiced professionally is; 1 Write the statement 2 Take it to customers and ask them; "Does this statement somehow speak to you?"

(!) Think of your vision statement as an elevator pitch. If you were in an elevator with a potential customer for just 30 seconds, how would you describe the ultimate impact of your product? That's the clarity and punch you want your vision statement to deliver. Periodically review and refine it to ensure it remains relevant as both market conditions and your product evolve.

In my view, a product vision should be independent of a product roadmap or resources. It's the future goal that you all want to achieve as a company, delivering the inspiring goal to customers and future opportunities. Of course, the vision might change and should be adapted along the way, but it provides the north star to all product-related teams and brings context to everybody's work.

This is a challenging exercise that requires you to formulate a one-sentence statement that succinctly communicates the core understanding of your value to a specific target audience segment. The statement must be brief and concise to be usable in marketing channels with character limits, particularly in targeted advertising campaigns. In the case of Segmentable, it looks like this: "GTM 30 times faster than before," making the value clear for companies managing multiple products.

Product vision stems from the type of your product: is it a Continuous Innovation- a cheaper, nicer, easier, better version of an existing something, or is it a Discontinuous Innovation- a new category-creator, something very different from the competition. If you are building a continuous innovation, just take their problems and base the product vision on how you will solve their problems and cover their needs best. If it is a discontinuous innovation, build product vision not just on their current problems and needs, but on your vision of the world where you not only solve current problems, but create disproportionate value which your target audience maybe isn't even aware of yet. Sell that world!

Your vision statement succinctly encapsulates your value proposition with inspiration and aspiration. In one captivating sentence, convey your grand vision to positively impact people's lives. ?? Balance ambition with relevance. Align your vision with brand values to reinforce strategic consistency. ?? A memorable vision energizes teams, focuses efforts, and attracts customers to your purpose. It's the north star guiding your product to fulfill its potential. ??

(!) A product vision isn't set in stone; it's a living document. Continuously adapting it based on customer feedback and market changes ensures its ongoing relevance and success.

Pattern Beauty set out to fill a gap in haircare products for people with curly, coily, textured hair. Their target market was clear and the owner, Tracy Ellis Ross, was a testament to her own product, creating immediate trust and loyalty with her audience and customers. Her product line is successful because it fills a need in the marketplace since not many haircare brands had products specifically for curly, coily, textured hair. So many times, brands try to fit into too many shoes and either fail or become mass market which in my opinion waters down the audience pool and you get less authentic interactions with consumers.

Testing and refining is a must! 1. Think about different use cases and jobs to be done that your product covers 2. Based on the previous point, gather a group of the same use case or JTBD to test the product vision on. Test the same message on all use cases and JTBD to understand who does it work best for 3. Deliver the product vision and ask them questions to learn what they heard vs what you wanted to communicate and how that product vision made the feel and think. 4. Iterate- try to get as close as possible to the version that works best for all use cases and JTBD

????Absolutely, once you've crafted your product vision and a set of concise statements that communicate it, it's crucial to test these with your consumer audience. This helps gauge how effectively your audience interprets the message you're guiding through the entire user journey. An important indicator of a well-chosen and well-expressed vision is an uptick in conversion to meaningful actions, ideally resulting in a sale. This indicates that users have grasped the product's purpose within the message and see its value for themselves.

Vet your vision with target users to ensure it aligns with reality. ?? Surveys, interviews and prototypes test assumptions and collect feedback. ? Adapt your vision based on insights into changing market dynamics and customer needs. ?? An inaccurate vision misleads teams and hampers adoption. Iterative refinement results in an ambitious yet achievable vision grounded in customer demand. ??

In my experience, every cross functional team needs to be engaged with the vision early to create a good “gospel” and to craft it to the right audience. Product communication needs to be simple and tailored to the right channels to reach the target. Also, an external communication strategy that involves brand and PR teams early will have an impact on the product journey.

(!) Consistent repetition and storytelling around your product vision can turn it from a mere statement into a shared belief, fostering alignment and driving collective action towards its realization.

Think about your vision statement (and roadmap) as a campaign - put in enablement effort, make it a sales motion, and definitely make it part of the marketing playbook!

Context is everything. Most of the times, when providing context, the outcome of the work is much more valuable and useful. Broadcasting the product's vision helps in bringing more context on why we're all invested on that topic. It also helps other stakeholders understand that, despite some changes on the course of action, as a company, we're still working to reach that common target.

????To ensure that a single vision is embraced by all team members and departments interacting with users, mere evangelism is insufficient. Within the team, particularly in larger teams with over 10 members, a transparent and comprehensible knowledge-sharing mechanism must exist. This is often achieved through the establishment of a dedicated infrastructure capable of gathering and integrating user insights from various company departments. Such insights can then be used to adapt GTM strategies and even specific visions and messaging.

Want it to last? Look BEYOND the Product. ?? Why? Ecosystems are shifting, vertical integration means your Partner today can push you out tomorrow. Example: Shopify X Stripe, used to go hand-in-hand, until the former launched ShopPay, raised fees for everyone else, and thus kicked Stripe out. ?? Your vision has to be BIG enough to withstand that - don’t look a year ahead, imagine broader scenarios. ?? How? Once you’ve understood customer pain points related to your Product, put that list down and go hang with them, at least online. What is ACTUALLY keeping them awake at night? What is their LIFESTYLE like? What INSECURITIES do they have? Line up your Product (and organisational) vision with that, and you’re GOLDEN for years to come. ??

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Your product vision should be dynamic and responsive to the ever-changing landscape of your market, your customers' needs, and the evolution of your product. Regularly revisiting and updating your vision, ideally on an annual basis, ensures that it remains aligned with current realities and continues to inspire your team. Monitoring and measuring progress towards your vision is essential for staying on track, and celebrating milestones and lessons learned is key to maintaining motivation and momentum. Vision is not a one-time creation; it's a continuous journey.

A static vision stagnates. Review your vision annually to keep pace with market and customer changes. ?? Assess if your vision still inspires given new innovations, technologies and trends. ?? Measure progress made towards realizing your vision. ?? Update wording and scope as needed while retaining the core essence and ambition. ?? A refreshed vision realigns teams to new realities and sustained excellence. It prevents great products from becoming irrelevant. ?

Interesting that the Wright Brothers thought that airplanes would only be used for leisure, somewhat as an amusement park ride. They did not focus on any product development including marketing studies. Their product revolutionized transportation and warfare, definitely a far cry from an amusement park ride. Oddly enough compare this to the Pop Tart, originally targeted as a breakfast product that changed snacking. Stay flexible and keep an eye on your customers and definitely how they use your product(s). Your whole target market may have shifted and all your customers are not who you originally thought they were. To use some boxing vernacular: stick and move, bob and weave, stay on your toes. Stay frosty out there.

And contineous monitoring through genuine feedbacks that customer is really happy with their buying decision. And proactive thinking of next level upgrading of product and service levels.