Reaching new heights for product

By understanding user needs and carefully considering business opportunities you’re more likely to succeed at digital product growth. Growth should be thought of at the beginning of the product design; it should be considered as part of the core product features. A carefully considered and well-planned product should have user value at the heart of it from the very beginning.

Your product should fulfil an audience’s unmet needs. This way, you’re recognising a need or a problem, and providing a solution which addresses it in a way that’s genuinely useful to the user.
Once you’ve established how your product is going to uniquely address customers’ needs, you’ll need to define some KPIs. It’s the KPIs which will tell you whether your product is succeeding in what it set out to do, or if there are still some features to iron out. The five strategies below have all individually played integral roles in the success of other products.

Growth hacking: As we begin to get more entwined with our smart digital surroundings like our cars, home devices, watches and phones, life starts to get overrun by smart technology like automated notifications, assistants, AR glasses and more. We’re expanding the limits of contextual information that is available to organisations. The key to using all of this information for growth is to detect and define business moments; these allow us to shed some light onto users’ anxieties and quickly act upon them.

Companies should be focused on detecting these business moments and shaping their product to maximise growth. That’s where growth hacking comes in. Acting upon business moments requires a wide range of actions in different business functions. The idea behind growth hacking is that a multi-disciplinary team of stakeholders can decisively shape growth decisions to acquire business moments. This team is usually composed of business functions like marketing, product and data/CRM experts.

‘Gamifying’ growth: Building in a broadly competitive or objective-based strategy during a product rollout is one way to boost brand awareness. By taking inspiration from game design and mechanics, you can introduce features in an effort to incentivise loyalty and engagement from users. If the ‘game’ is strong enough, you can even expect those users to draw in others for their own sense of competition.

Getting on board: The average app in 2017 lost 63% of its users after the first month. In order to reduce churn, a product growth strategy not only needs to focus on ways to grow, but also ways to make that growth sustainable. Onboarding is the critical first step in encouraging users to stay engaged with your app. Well-thought-out UX is a crucial part of this, so ease of use should be front of mind when you’re developing apps.

Organic growth: People sharing something with their friends is an economical (or even free) and fast way to grow interest in your product. Incentivising in-app referrals can be a good way to encourage users to reach out to their network and encourage others to seek out your app. But timing is critical with these kinds of growth tactics, as tentative users can be turned off by overly aggressive marketing. Regular engagers should be your target, as they’re most likely already advocates for your brand.

Make your message matter: The right messaging strategy is crucial for user retention, increased engagement and the longevity of apps. The format, timing and regularity of the message are all things that need to be carefully considered. This can also be extended to wider marketing activities and re-targeting channels that can be used to incentivise product growth and adoption.

Marcus Wareham is the strategy director at Mubaloo where he is building and leading the direction of the digital strategy team. In his previous roles, he was the CEO of Mfuse and a senior strategy consultant for Chelsea Apps Factory.