Someone asked:
in the next ten years, Product Manager will you be unemployed?
This kind of professional anxiety is not groundless, it even poke in a lot of product people's heart pain point. Task heavy, demanding, less-than-expected revenue and a growing number of newcomers to the industry, which has doubled the pressure on product managers!
in fact, more than a product manager! The entire Internet industry is facing enormous pressures and challenges. In the last five years, the growth rate of new internet users in China has fallen from 40% to 5% . The total number of users has begun to close to the ceiling, next is the product of the fight between the time!
inAPPas an example, the user presents a significant"Matthew Effect": Pre-ranking -of theAPPoccupy the time of use of the people79%, where the head of theAPPall belong toBAT; While the other millions ofAPPthen you have to compete for the rest.21%user's use time. This is not difficult to explain the product manager's professional anxiety, the product has become more and more difficult to do!
The first is the demographic dividend, the flow of the dividend, the second is the market competition intensifies, the end users more and more picky, user experience is referred to the unprecedented height. So, what should the product manager do?
What is the next direction of the product manager?
In the last two years we have found a special emerging occupation calledthe head of growth (growth), while in fact the person responsible for the growth is often the person responsible for the product. So what's the difference between a product manager and a growth leader?
1. Change of field of view
I used to contact the product manager, the first is to do with research, rationale for the needs, write PRD, painting the prototype, and finally to do a good project, promote the implementation of the project. And the people responsible for growth tend to have a broader vision, not only to consider the product itself, but also to consider the entire life cycle of the product and the user.
2, the upgrading of the ability to work
Compared to the product manager's use of research, prototype, project and other capabilities, growth leaders need a more complex ability: first, marketing or operational capacity, the second is the ability of product development, and the third is the ability of data analysis.
3. Promotion of salary and treatment
In the past few years, the product manager's salary range has been fluctuating, the overall increase but not much, but the growth of the head of the salary rise is very fast! According to the recent market of several U.S. core recruitment sites, growth leaders pay far more than product managers.
Figure 1: Growth leaders pay far more than product managers
Product refinement operations today, from the traditional product manager to upgrade to the head of growth, we have great opportunities!
Second, how to cultivate the thinking of growth?
Since growth is so important, how can product managers grow? As mentioned above, do the growth need to have a broader vision, product theory products are not!
1. Think like a growth hacker
the growth hacker that swept Silicon Valley ( Growth Hacker) theory presents the famous pirate Law –––aarrr, which introduces a new growth framework from five perspectives: User acquisition, activation, retention, monetization and dissemination.
Figure 2: The Pirate Law of growing hackers
Therefore, product managers should think about products from the user life cycle and the whole process of enterprise business, and find every growth point of the product. The growth system has been reused by Silicon Valley giants like Facebook,LinkedIn,andAirbnb , suggesting that all product managers have a good learning And look at the product from a macro point of view.
2. Practice MVP in collaboration
the implementation of AARRR requires collaboration across departments, and product managers need to work well with teams such as market operations, engineering and data analysis.
Figure 3: The organizational structure of the LinkedIn growth team
The world's largest workplace social platform , –––linkedin–––, has two major organizations, namely the growth (growth) team andthe monetization (monetization ) team. The growth team is responsible for user growth, led by the product owner and supported by the product, engineering, analysis, marketing and design departments. Through this organizational structure,LinkedIn Management has achieved the management of each line of business, but also accelerated the growth of products and users.
this also and MVP(the simplest feasible product) concept coincides, from the initial product demand, to the product landing on the line, and then to the late user behavior data analysis. Product managers need to use data to validate our assumptions or requirements, and iterate or revise them to achieve the goal of product and user growth.
Third, from zero to one to do product growth
whether it's intuitive or data-driven: both of which I think are indispensable! Early in the product, more intuitive judgment is needed, and lean analysis is needed later on. This is like "a big country like cooking ", product managers need to be based on the data to iterate the product, step to promote growth!
1. Who is the user?
Different types of users, their value requirements and behavioral laws are very different, these factors directly affect product planning and engineering implementation. So the product manager first has to figure out: Who are your users and where do they come from?
Figure 4: analyze user's different attributes with Growingio diagram
with a To B(for enterprise customers) For example, the user's own attributes (industry, position, region, access source, etc.) determine the user's value requirements, and the user's device attributes (operating system, browser, device model, screen size, etc.) directly affect their operating experience. A product manager who is not sure who the user is is qualified and can only make good products through data.
2, the user's experience
The market competition is more and more intense, the product user experience also has been mentioned unprecedented height, the key path transformation efficiency, the user behavior detail trajectory, these data are the measurement product user experience the important index, the product manager needs the special attention.
Figure 5:thegrowingio conversion Funnel records the loss of the user
For example, an e-commerce product's order from " start payment " to " payment success " conversion rate is very low, only 25% Why the conversion rate is so low, the product manager needs to think about the rest 75% What's wrong with the user during the payment process. We sample payment of failed users by observing the details of their behavior to explore the causes:
Figure 6: user Access path for Growingio user logging
through the user search path, the product manager found that the user in the payment link clicked 4 times " Get Verification code ", and finally left the payment page. Product Manager is very strange, went to personally experience a payment process, only found that after a few clicks to obtain the verification code after a long time to receive the verification SMS. This is called the user " anger Point ", if a product inside a lot of similar situations, the user experience imaginable.
as our products become more complex and more users, Product Managers must learn to use data to monitor and measure the user experience and continually improve the user experience in product iteration optimization.
3, the user's use preference
In the process of product analysis, the product manager needs to split up the visual, interactive, content and function of the product, and analyze the user's preference with the data hierarchically. In this process, product managers should be proficient in using charts or corresponding data visualization tools to assist themselves.
Figure 7:growingio Thermal Map showing user preferences for content
The Product Manager can use the heat map to visualize and analyze the visual and content levels of the product. In the above blog page heat map, users click on the most preferred category " online Open class " and navigation " product features ", The right column has few clicks: So the Product manager can target page optimization.
Figure 8:growingio different function users using time stack chart
In addition to vision and content, the product manager also focuses on user preferences for different product features. In addition to horizontal preference comparisons, it is also interesting to focus on vertical trend changes. With these visual data, the product manager needs to analyze the value of the product and verify that the user agrees with our product features.
4, how to let users willing to stay
Figure 9:growingio Retention graph shows the retention of two different users
Creating an excellent product is the dream of all product managers. The core of excellent products is to meet the needs of users, to provide users with value, and the important measure is the degree of retention.
Our Product managers have done a lot of retention analysis and found The Group of Users (Orange) who successfully created Kanbans within the Growingio product is significantly more retained than the entire user (green line). So we made a product detail improvement by adding the new button in the top left corner of the product .
Figure :growingio add new button in prominent position
This new button is a good guide for new users to build their own data kanban, to attract these users to visit, analysis of their own data, which greatly facilitated the overall user activity and retention growth.
Whether it is the growth of products, or the growth of product managers, can not be achieved overnight! In the increasingly competitive today, product people should use a more open vision to look at the product, with more lean thinking to analyze users, with more efficient tools to promote growth!
The next ten years, it must be 10 years of lean. Grow, may become your next exit!
Article Source: Everyone is a product manager
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