The Framework for Growth Products
As product managers, we need to think about growth products as salespeople. There’s a common stereotype that product and sales are at odds with each other. Likewise, we often think that product managers only care about customer delight.
The reality is that product people need to focus on how they can drive revenue for the business. Simply put, it’s in our best interest to “always be shipping.”
To reach this point, I would like to present the “AIDA” framework for growth products that create scale and focuses on four areas:
Attention: You want repeat visits, not one-time transactions. For example, how can I get millions of customers or grow at 10-20 percent every year? This is all about thinking big.
Interest: You have to know your customer and be specific about who you’re trying to reach. In addition, you need to understand the factors that delight them.
Decision: You need to get them to pay for a service or provide access to data. To get them on board, you need to understand the competitive landscape and the options that are affecting their choices.
Action Plan: Based on the three factors, you create a series of steps that are designed to reach your goals. In product terms, this represents your roadmap.
To illustrate how this works in the real world, I’ll use an example from my time working on Yahoo Health. This was a new addition to the home page and no one knew that it even existed. As a result, we were tasked to increase engagement and bring in new users. First, we solved an obvious problem by moving the window from the bottom left to the top of the homepage.
Most importantly, we talked to our users about content that was most relevant to them. While they cared about the content we provided, they cared more about national awareness days. Furthermore, they really liked hearing from celebrities.
As a result, we created quote cards featuring celebrities on national awareness days. The posts included important information and you could share the card with your friends. This small experiment took off like crazy and eventually became a standard template across the Yahoo platform.
This is a perfect example of getting people’s attention with a growth product that combines delight with useful information.
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About the Video:
About the speaker
Mike Grishaver is the SVP of Product at Beachbody, where he manages the Beachbody on Demand streaming service with over one million paying customers. He was SVP of Product at Etsy where he led the team through the IPO process. In addition, Mike worked asVP of Product at Pandora, and a senior Product leader at LinkedIn and Yahoo. Mike also bootstrapped a social media marketing startup with customers including Fox, NBC, and Atlantic Records.
About the host
Randhir Vieira is the VP of Product at Headspace - leading the product team to achieve the organization’s mission of improving health and happiness around the world. Prior to Headspace, Randhir was the Chief Customer Officer at Mindflash, a leading cloud-based Learning Management System. He was also the VP of Product and Customer Care at Eyefi - and Senior Product Director at Yahoo.