10 Essentials required in a ToolKit of a New Age Digital Product Manager

2020 is the year driven by rapid innovation in Digital for companies across the globe. The role of Digital Products are taking precedence and Product Managers are having to step up to this exciting new challenge.

Here are a few essentials required in an arsenal of a product guy to help him develop a transformational product or ensure sustainable development and growth of existing products

Disclaimer: This is not a promotion of any tool or service, it is purely a description of the tools I have professionally used

1.      Product Ideation, Strategy and Road mapping

This is fundamental for any Product Manager. Defining what challenge will the product solve? Steps involved? How the product will evolve over time.

A key skill of the PM here is to have both a positive and negative vision. Which mean, he/she must be aware when something isn’t working or isn’t worth it. It will help keep your goals clear and save a lot of time & money

Useful tools:

• Google Sheets: While there are lots of softwares available, the most convenient and easy to use/share in my opinion is Google Sheets. Its unstructured format gives you the flexibility to create views of your choice
• Trello: With ability to create Vision boards to manage roadmaps for various levels and products at the same time

2.      Wireframe and Rapid Prototyping

It is the easiest way to present information architecture, broad product/feature layouts and direction of user experience to your team and other stakeholders. It helps save a lot of time since stakeholder onboarding can be done without having to create high fidelity UIs, HTMLs and PSDs.

Useful Tools:

• Balsamiq: A computer whiteboard software to easily create mockups
• Adobe XD: Helps create easy to share interactive prototypes that simulate a user like experience

3.      User Research & Feedback

Every idea needs to be backed by data, either from primary or secondary research. Consumer insights are the best way to gauge customer’s likeliness to accept/reject what has been created. There are quite a lot of offline agencies who do this, these are quick tools which can help

Useful Tools:

• Google Forms: Create simple forms and surveys for free. You can even build forms from Google Drive that record form responses for you.
• Survey Monkey: Quick and easy templates to choose from. Majorly user for Consumer Insights and Research
• User Testing: Quickly test a prototype and test with actual users before going live to actual customer base
• UX Cam: Captures screen recording and physical touch interactions on your screens to understand where the UX bottlenecks are

4.      Content Management Systems (CMS)

The flexibility that a CMS provides in terms of quickness to market, ability make changes on the go and usable plugins to connect to third party systems is unparalleled. It empowers business to make changes quickly. Can be used for both pre and post login environments

Use softwares:

• Drupal: Simple to use with pre-defined templates available. Ability to have custom content types, high level customization and stronger access controls
• Wordpress: Most widely adopted CMS globally. Wordpress contains maximum themes and plugins, extremely easy to use and useful for business users from non-coding background to make and maintain websites
• Adobe Experience Manager: Expensive compared to other options available in the market. I used it for both website and a Hybrid Mobile App. Has an effective digital asset management solution DAM . Complex to use, but has ability to connect with native Adobe systems like Analytics and Target easily. Also, flexible to customize experience basis customer type in post login environment

5.      Analytics

Every pre and post development of a functionality is followed up by analytics. Analytics is the true picture of the hypothesis set before go-live and what exactly is happening after. Understanding customer journey, bottlenecks and new opportunities to improve customer experience and sales

Useful softwares:

• Adobe Analytics: Formerly known as omniture, Adobe Analytics is one of the widely adopted tools of the Adobe Marketing Suite. Relatively difficult to setup then GA, Adobe holds it strengths in advanced web analytics and its ease of integration with other Adobe products from the marketing suite
• Google Analytics: Easy to implement and most widely used, GA’s free version is perfect for small to medium scale enterprises. Its strength lies in real time data feeds and depth of insights its can fetch about customer traffic from search
• Firebase: This is actually Google Analytics for Firebase majorly used for Mobile Applications events tracking and conversion measurements. It also has a free version available which is perfect for small and medium enterprises
• Appsflyer: An alternative to firebase, it is widely used to track performance of digital marketing and provides tools for deeplinking
• Hotjar: Sees how visitors are really using your website, collect user feedback. Its USP lies in collecting Heatmaps and Recordings of user journey. Generally used for newly developed features or experiences

6.      User Experience Testing & Personalization (Product Marketing)

Build-Measure-Learn is a continue cycle any product manager goes through and a lot of it is achieved by user testing like A/B tests or mutlivariant testing or the elements of personalization. These tools can help

• Clevertap: Easy to Integrate & use mobile marketing platform for user engagement, retention and generate conversions. Additionally also has analytics capabilities
• Adobe Target: Used for website personalization, creating offers and conducting A/B or mutlivariant testing. Works on the principles of segments imported from Analytics or Audience Manager. Extremely useful for business users with limited HTML knowledge
• Webengage: One of the very first product marketing tools used by me. Simple to integrate with quick and effective results. Now have capabilities across web, app and social platforms
• Poptin: Perfect for SMEs looking for engagement via pop-ups and in page forms. Cost effective and can be integrated with any CMS via plugins
• Adobe Audience Manager: Though this is not a marketing tool but this an effective channel to segment users/data and push it to product and digital marketing channels for targeted and timely communications

7.      Email/SMS Marketing

Those who say email & SMS marketing is dead, have not been using it the right way. If used judiciously and in a targeted manner these channels are effective for lead/business generation and also useful for customer engagement.

Below are few tools available:

• Adobe Campaign: End to end Marketing Automation can be achieved using ACM. Capabilities like campaign scheduling, personalization and targeting with integration with CRMs, Analytics and DMPs makes it a powerful tool. Its effectiveness lies in the capability to maintain individual IP and domain reputation which can help achieve superior open and click rates. It also has cross channel marketing capabilities
• Netcore’s Martech: An effective and easy to use email marketing tool when I had used it last. The platform has now evolved to a much powerful cross channel marketing automation solution powered by AI/ML capabilities
• MailChimp: Perfect for SMEs which are looking for cost effecting marketing automation solutions

8.      Project Management & Collaborate

The success of a product manager is not only defined by how well he analyses and plan product roadmaps, but also his ability to drive concepts to life. Effective project management skills are imperative

These tools can help:

• Jira: Have used JIRA in all companies I have work with. Used to Plan, track and manage multiple projects simultaneous. Perfect tool if you follow agile methodology
• Microsoft Project: Used for large scale project implementation. Might be more useful for project/program managers
• Trello: Repeat feature in our list. Its fluid capabilities make it effective to be used for project management. Simple to use and free for smaller enterprises

9.      Presentations

Senior Management stakeholder onboarding to what you are working on is as important as the results you are driving. Alignment of cross functional stakeholders, further expansion of product/offering and alignment of vision all can be achieved from effective presentation. Presentation decks can be invaluable for communicating your high-level strategies, visions, and plans across your organization and to external audiences like customers. While tools listed below are just a medium, more important skill is knowing what to present and how, which can be garnered from deep insights on analytics, external knowledge and clarity of goals.

Quick tools:

• Microsoft Powerpoint: Needs no introduction :)
• Keynote: Part of the iwork productivity suite, it is a powerful presentation software by Apple Inc

10.      Knowledge about parallel functions

These are not tools but absolute essential inorder to become an awesome product manager. It is important to understand what other functions are doing and how it affects you and the product that you are managing. This will help you understand your audience better and collaborate for faster growth. Functions to understand and not limiting to:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
3. Display and Affiliate Advertising
4. Social Media Marketing
5. Consumer Insights

While what I have listed is nowhere exhaustive to what the essentials are. The most important in my opinion is the drive to success and inquisitiveness to learn something new every time.

Hope to hear back from readers on their take and learn something new :)

#productmanagement #productguy #digitallife #digitaltransformation #productmarketing

My Co-ordinates:

Meet Merchant | [email protected] | +91 9870893191