How do you balance the trade-offs and risks of having a narrow or broad value proposition and persona?

Try having more than one persona for your users. Start with your *core* users, who may have been your early adopters. Make sure you understand why they adopted your product early on, and what keeps them retained. But then you need to assess growth audiences and do the same work to understand their TAM, their revenue opportunity, and their needs. Build a second or third persona to ensure you and your team understand how those growth segments differ from your core. These audiences are often different from yourself, so the persona helps build empathy. Now that you have multiple personas, you'll want to identify which value propositions are most important for each of them. Prioritize your marketing and onboarding based on that alignment.

Sample template to defining value prop. (For aspiring product manafers) ? [Product Name] is a [product category] that [brief description of product's main purpose or function]. It is designed for [target customer segment] who [customer need or pain point]. Our product provides [unique benefit or value proposition] compared to [competitor or alternative solution].

It is an AGE OLD problem for product managers, (Breath Vs. Narrowness) Leverage STP framework to help to balance both ?? Segmentation: Try to Break down the market into smaller segments based on similar needs, behaviors, or characteristics. ?? Targeting: Choose one/more segments to focus based on their attractiveness with your strengths and goals. ?? Positioning: Develop a unique value proposition and messaging that resonates with your target segments

When assessing trade-offs and risks, it's essential to consider both the impact and probability of the outcomes. By weighing the potential impact against the likelihood of occurrence, you can make informed decisions and prioritize your actions accordingly. Additionally, it's helpful to evaluate decisions based on whether they represent a one-way or two-way door. One-way decisions are irreversible and have long-term implications, while two-way decisions can be reversed or modified. By categorizing decisions in this way, you can determine the level of risk and adjust your approach accordingly.

This is a really great topic and discussion and very important for any manager, especially marketing manager. Let's first talk about the value proposition. The first thing to keep in mind is that a product or service value proposition should be well-aligned with the company's overall mission and objectives. Many companies get into dangerous territory when they allow some project to become a distraction from their core mission and goals. Especially today with hyper-competition, companies need to be hyper-focused on their markets, meaning they're well-defined, they are crystal clear with the value proposition and all of their marketing managers are aligned and well aware of what the company's mission is, defined by top executives.

cont'd: This does not mean one should fear bringing new ideas and concepts to the table, but it just means before these are pursued they need to be assured they have top management support that they can take things in this new direction or open up this new market. Going back to the value proposition, it should be tied into what the company is ultimately aiming to achieve. So let's say your company is XYZ Robotic Surgical Devices, Inc.. They are in the robotic surgical device space and their mission is to provide the most cutting-edge and user friendly robotic surgical device in the world. Most likely they will focus on a few key clinical areas, so let's say it is neuro, abdominal, and vascular surgery.

cont'd: So if you're a bioengineer and a light goes off in their head, they should first assess if it will be an advanced robotic surgical device and fits into one of the currently targeted clinical areas. If it does fall into another clinical area, then they should start building a case why the company should move into this clinical area, how it can be accomplished, how existing internal knowledge/ IP can be leveraged to accomplish this, and ideally show demand and growth in this new clinical area and specific and substantiated reasons why. And then of course the overall value proposition (i.e. it will make the surgery x% more effective, x% safer, x% cheaper, etc.).

cont'd: As we know product positioning (i.e. one of the "4 Ps") is so, so important, so it should literally be mapped out, usually a chart showing where your solution fits into the market on the "x" axis technological advancement and the "y" axis cost. Everyone of course wants the latest and greatest, but sometimes it is cost prohibitive. Of course there are other factors such as willingness to adopt the new technology, how it fits into existing culture or methodologies, and perhaps existing experience and relationship with their current medical equipment vendors (i.e. preference for Philips, GE, Siemens, etc.).

This is when a phased deployment and multiple releases come in handy. ? ? Determine the revenue potential, degree of discomfort with existing solutions, and implementation effort / technical capabilities first. ? The initial release can then target the market with the greatest demand for your USP. Subsequently the range of features for the persona might be broadened. ? It is also crucial to select features that are tough for competitors to replicate! ? ? GTM can include new personas in future rollouts. This approach also benefits from the initial persona's learnings. ?

When we first started out at Ellevate Football, we made the mistake of going too broad, targeting anyone who liked football. We struggled to differentiate ourselves in a crowded market. After conducting research and analysing the market, we found an opportunity to target those playing football without access to professional coaches or facilities. We could allocate our resources more effectively and efficiently. This allowed us to deliver a better product more quickly and at a lower cost. We have now adopted a phased approach to expanding our value proposition and persona. First focusing on delivering value to our target audience before gradually expanding to other groups. This allows us to maintain focus while exploring new opportunities.