From Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to Product Market Fit to Product User Growth

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a initial stage of the product that may be offered by the business and certain parameters to learn about the utility of the product. It is the product that may be offered to the certain set of clients in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP so that it gives the proof of concept.

However, a Product Market Fit is said to be when the business has discovered the scalable and repetition in pattern adoption of the product. It is that stage in the life of product development when you can say that now the marketing engine may be turned on with full steam. From MVP to Product/ Market Fit, the confidence is built in the Startup and the founding team that now they can build a real business around this in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP.

The journey of Product development that starts with Product design, Prototype or proof of concept, goes through multiple iterations in the conceptual thoughts before coming to final MVP. However, from MVP the focus turns more towards outwards thinking where the broader thoughts and experiences are studied to understand the real market demand and how product is making its space in that. Before, the product gets well accepted, the experiments to identify audience, customer segmentation, pricing and proposition to suit segmentation are drawn. A well accepted product can said to be a Product / Market Fit in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP

Post this stage, the Marketing efforts may be infused with full force involving various Digital Marketing techniques like SEO, SMO, PPC, etc. Influencer marketing to build knowledge of product among the relevant audience in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP can also be used for explaining products.

Product design for a Startup

We offer Product design / concept deliberation for deserving Product led  startups striving to grow in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP. The mechanism of building the concept design of the product or offerings by the Startups involves indepth understanding of business, customer segment, product or service along with its competitor arena and addressable market. This is followed by a brain storming session(s) about the business aspects of the product and key parameter along with key members of business.

Subsequently, relevant information are given as observations and suggestions  to give it a final look of Product concept document for a Product led Startup Startups. The market information and assumed numbers are analysed and presented in a flow easily as such to be easily absorbed by development team.

Growth Marketing of a Product

A Product ready to go, a good GTM or Go to Market Strategy is a must. The right way to position a product in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP using the relevant medium of marketing make it more visible and sellable in the market. We as a Business Consultant, assist startup to build a strong pitch for the customers.

The Right channels among the various Digital Marketing channels could bring a lot more sales and avoid wastage of time and money. The mediums like Organic Search, Organic Social, Paid Campaigns, Influencers marketing, Marketplace, Event Marketing, etc are to be selected in right proportion suiting to the product USPs. Even what to pitch should be placed well among the broader community.

Product Lifecycle Management in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP

In a rapidly advancing globalized world, businesses come with numerous products launched in the market with only a few of them making a mark while others even fail to survive in the relevant market. Generally, there may be two main reasons for such failure i.e. either they are not up to customer expectations or being launched when the market is ready to imbibe. On the other hand, there could be a situation where a start-up can sell its products faster than its ability to handle sales functions. Therefore, situations like this warrant the need to have product lifecycle management to be adopted by the start-up business.

What is the product lifecycle? How does Product Life Cycle work?

A product lifecycle is a period during which a product moves in four stages sooner or later depending upon its costs, risks, and opportunities. Beginning with a business idea, which is developed & nurtured with market research and ultimately gets converted into something which could be manufactured, marketed, and explained to consumers and finally, after a brief period of prosperity meets its decline and is removed from the market. Thus, these different stages of a product lifecycle namely are i.e. introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Holding a deeper understanding of the product lifecycle is deeply valuable for business managers and marketing professionals to make strategic business decisions regarding the manufacturing, production, and marketing functions of a business. Further, it also helps businesses to decide on marketing & advertisement costs, builds product pricing strategies, product redesign, and plan market expansion.

Hence, the strategic methods employed by businesses to support the growth of a product are termed ‘product lifecycle Management’ or Product Lifecycle Management. Implementation of Product Lifecycle Management techniques could assist businesses to know whether the new products are adequate to push older products from the market.

What is product lifecycle management? How does it work?

Product lifecycle management (Product Lifecycle Management) could be defined as the practices & strategies employed to support various data and processes during an entire lifecycle of a product including its supply chain while handling everything from manufacturing to the marketing of products. It is a combination of different segments of product development such as managing, planning, design, manufacturing, marketing, resources, and people, as well as the software that goes along with each phase.

Product Lifecycle Management helps start-ups to handle all the information & processes through each stage of development of either a product or service across globalized supply chains. Such information includes information from various products, documents, requirements, parts, change orders, quality workflows, etc. Every department involved in the process of production or marketing may find it helpful to use product lifecycle management software to analyze data from various perspectives and dashboards tailored to suit various employee or business profiles. Such profiles make it possible to structure information around various criteria to make it more comprehensible and insightful.

Initially used for manufacturing processes, effective product lifecycle management is equally useful for any business involved in either production of goods or offering services and usually faces market pressures to give the best quality at the lowest prices or reduce its time to market. With its proficiency to handle complex situations, Product Lifecycle Management encourages various departments to collaborate and streamline processes for dynamic industries such as Consumer packaged goods that includes food & beverages and personal care.

Implementing a product lifecycle management strategy helps a business to work with the ultimate goal of producing a product that could survive longer with consumer demands & technologies, outperforms its competitors, and achieve profitability in the long run. Start-ups with a good understanding of product lifecycle management and its various stages have a greater ability to overcome challenges faced during the development of a new product. And, when a business has a deep understanding regarding each stage of its product lifecycle, it may also figure out ways to effectively market it. For instance, a product in its early developmental stages and a product that has reached maturity level may have different requirements. Still, a product that has reached maturity could be modified or updated to make it part of the same product lifecycle.

Commonly referred to as one of the four keystones of a business’s corporate information tech structure, product lifecycle management helps organizations handle the increasing complexity and engineering challenges of developing new products while the other three keystones include client communication or the (customer relationship management (CRM), supplier dealings with Supply chain management, and resources within the organization (enterprise resource planning).

Various Stages of Product Lifecycle

Like human beings, the product also follows a certain lifecycle with no definitive timeline to reference as each stage has its costs, risks, and opportunities. As mentioned before, the four accepted stages of the product lifecycle have been explained one by one below-

Introduction Stage of a Product

This is the earliest phase of a product lifecycle where the customers are introduced to a newly launched product for the first time. In this stage, the start-up business has to spend a substantial amount of sum on advertising & marketing functions to spread awareness among consumers regarding the products & their benefits, especially if the product and its features are largely unknown to the public in general.

Further, businesses may either find no or little competitors for products as the competitors also might be getting the first look at the new offering. But, there is also an equal probability for product failure and business to experience negative financial results due to lower sales or insufficient promotional pricing causing lower customer engagement, and the sales strategy to be re-evaluated.

Growth Stage of a Product

However, if the product becomes successful it will move to the next stage, called the growth stage of the product. In this stage, consumer demand rises causing an increase in production leading to expansion of the availability of the product, and the product becoming more popular & well-known. The amount of time involved in the introduction phase before the business shows signs of strong growth might vary from industry or product to product.

A start-up business may continue to heavily invest in advertising campaigns if the product is facing stiff competition. The only difference is, such marketing campaigns will be more focused on indicating its unique features which set it apart from others as compared to marketing activities intended to introduce the product among consumers. Additionally, the start-up may work on improving its products based on the consumer feedback received. Finally, the growth stage of the product lifecycle leads to even higher sales & higher growth for the business.

Maturity Stage of a Product

Slowly a product moves from the growth stage to the maturity stage. During this stage, the business enjoys the maximum profitability causing the production & marketing costs to decline. But, at the same time competitors start to offer rival products with improved features causing an increase in competition potentially forcing the start-up business to reduce their prices at lower profit margins and a decline in the market. Now with the market has reached the saturation stage, the competition has reached the highest causing profit margins to fall lowest. Based on their market position, the start-up may look for ways to improve the product or introduce newer ways to capture a bigger segment in the market such as asking for more suggestions and feedback from customers or studying their preferences or needs.

Also, businesses may find stabilized sales levels and the start-up may start innovating newer products to be introduced while striving for the mature product to be differentiated.

Decline Stage of a Product

After a product gets matured, it may be taking on more competition as its rivals are enjoying better success with their improved products, after some time it may start losing its market share with a massive drop in sales. After this point, the start-up business may also decide not to pursue any additional marketing efforts as they may have also understood the section of consumers loyal to the products. Alternatively, the start-up may decide both to eliminate the product and introduce a next-generation product with better features or decide to re-vamp the product to re-enter the product lifecycle through its introduction in the market.

Advantages of Product Lifecycle Management

Shorter product delivery time

With a single centralized database that has updated information during each stage of the product lifecycle, it becomes easier for business managers to handle any intersecting timelines with shorter product delivery time to market.

Through the adoption of Product Lifecycle Management & other advanced manufacturing technologies, start-ups can virtually design a product, produce it, and then review & analyze them which significantly reduces the product development period.

Improved project delivery

Digital Product Lifecycle Management solutions support advanced workflow management, allowing a team to calculate precise costs and handle manufacturing designs. Through a centralized database system, it becomes easier for the design teams to come together and collaborate through the early stages of development.

Lowers risks of non-compliances

Not only with the product manufacture & designs, but Product Lifecycle Management processes also help start-ups to ensure the product meets all the compliance standards, requirements, and regulations through a single Product Lifecycle Management Platform assisting the business organization to know the things which have been achieved already or what needs to be completed.

Reduced business costs

With the help of Product Lifecycle Management, start-ups could build a central repository that maintains all engineering & design related data which means that while developing a new product, most of the work may be already completed with no scope to repeat any mistakes committed in the previous projects saving costs.

Encourage creativity & innovation

With all the members of the start-up connected on a single unified platform encourages people to share feedback and suggestions from the internal department from the sales department to customer support, encouraging engineering and design teams to enhance product quality and innovate.

Enhanced Product Quality

By allowing the entire organization access to the Product Lifecycle Management Platform, the design and development teams can get useful information about existing products from the Sales, Marketing, and Customer Services teams. This information is vital to the continued development and improvement of products to ensure ever-increasing product quality. Business teams could access the data in real-time & relate it with planned or proposed product innovations and development, through a centralized repository.

Better Customer Loyalty

Since customer feedback is critical to every business, the Product Lifecycle Management platform adopted by any business organization the customer service team could deliver customer feedback for the products allowing the data to be reviewed or analyzed by the manufacturing, engineering, or operations team to adjust or modify their products

How to build a Product led Growth Startup in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP

Product Led Growth or Product Led Growth is a growth model under which product usage is primarily driven by user acquisition, initiation, retention, conversion, and expansion. It helps businesses to align all their teams from manufacturing to sales departments around the product considering it to be the foundation to create a highly productive and sustainable business in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP.

Generally, product-led growth is associated with viral, freemium, or bottom–up distribution methods, however, start-ups in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP selling to large enterprises or operating in niche vertical markets can adopt Product Led Growth principles to improve user experiences and increase their go-to-market efficiency. When all the business functions such as marketing, product, customer success, etc. are built keeping in mind product-led growth, the start-up can offer a more enriched personalized experience to its customers and get more consumer loyalty & retention in return.

Unlike in the case of sales-led start-ups where the whole process involves around shifting customer leads from Point A to Point B in the sales cycle, product-led businesses in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP make this possible by giving customers a way to experience the product for free, either through a freemium product or some kind of free trial which is opposite of the former approach. And, in case the customer has a humbling experience from the use of the product, availing of the fully paid product comes easily. Read further to find out about Product Led Growth strategies, their relevance for start-ups, and the steps to implement Product Led Growth strategies.

How do Product-led Growth strategies work in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP?

Starting a business of your own could be easy but growing them could be a tough job to handle. Though there are low entry barriers for entry, due to the same reason there is fierce business competition in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP. Customers, too are spurred for choices due to hundreds of similar products available in the market, and thus it has become more expensive for businesses to acquire consumers and a reduction in the consumer willingness to pay for the products.

Thus, higher product-led growth is achieved by optimizing the experience of the user, convincing the user to sign up, quickly receiving value from the product, accomplishing their jobs-to-be-done (JTBD), and sharing their positive reviews with others leading to word-of-mouth promotion. Adoption of the product-led growth strategies doesn’t mean that you cannot use other customer acquisition methods like direct sales or marketing campaigns. The use of Product led growth simply indicates that these approaches could be more appealing to consumers and could result in higher user engagement. Thus, businesses in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP should consider creating a Product Led Growth mechanism for the product to get aligned with their overall corporate strategy.

For instance, business organizations in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP can offer a clear way for their customers to experience their product value before they finally purchase the product. This way, the product will become as effective as a sales function as those performed by the outbound sales team, and instead of putting money on every sales or marketing tactic, the start-up will be able to make a dedicated investment into your product. Prioritizing the best product experience not only brings new customers but also gives a way to customer growth.

Key metrics to measure Product Led growth

Businesses using Product Led Growth use certain metrics & indicators to measure performances and align their teams on the business goals.  Having accurate analytics to measure their processes area key to kick-starting and refining their product-led growth plan. Further, metrics should be regularly reported and studied by cross-functional teams who could leverage the data to make better informed and apply synchronized changes across your business in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP. Though most of the standards applied are used across sales & marketing functions, product-led businesses may look at and use these metrics for different purposes than those models due to product variations. However, here are some of the key metrics to start a product-led growth journey in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP-

Acquisition

In the acquisition phase, indicators such as sign-ups and qualified leads are used to identify the quality prospects to be converted into users, and to look for opportunities and challenges with lead generation. While sales & marketing teams in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP put large efforts to keep the acquisition costs at a minimum, however, product-led businesses reach more by design.

Free trial conversion rate

Free trial conversion rate is an indicator that measures the number of users who used free products and then purchase products during their trial period. It is calculated by dividing the number of successfully paid users by the overall free trial users during the period. As the adoption of a Product Led Growth strategy shapes a positive user experience, businesses should try to maintain a higher value of free trial conversion rate for Product Led Growth companies.

Time to Value (TTV)

Time to value (TTV) could be defined as the time taken to realize the value of the product by the business in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP. Product-led businesses should consider keeping TTV as lower as possible by focusing on the optimization of their customer experience around the main functions within your product that are associated with the activation such as inviting co-workers to your business platform, import of customer data, etc.

Product-qualified leads

Product-qualified leads (PQLs) are generally those activated users who have either completed key activities such as taking a free trial and experienced its efficacy. To measure the product-qualified leads for your business in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP, you will be required to find out the events that led to the product activation and the actions taken by the users to conclude that they are ready to go to the next stage by availing of the full product. Some of the methods to do it are holding user interviews, session recordings, or taking A/B tests to identify the user actions associated with their conversion and retention.

Expansion Revenue

Usually it is much easier for a business in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP to churn out more money from their existing happy consumers as compared to acquiring newer ones. Likewise, it is also economical for businesses to upsell to an existing customer than to acquire newer ones and even easier to generate expansion revenue than acquisition costs from a new customer. Also referred to as the monthly recurring revenue (MRR), expansion revenue is one of the key measures for sustainable business growth.

Net Revenue Churn

It is obvious that not everybody is satisfied with the products and some are going to leave the products offered. Thus, revenue churn is a more useful metric for the growth of the business in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP as compared to the gross churn rate as it gives a complete picture of the financial health of your business.

Net revenue retention

With net revenue churn, it is also important to measure the overall retention rate measuring the total number of customers retained by your business and keeping track of how much money each one is spending on the product. After all, not all consumers spend equally on the products while some retained customers may have upgraded and adopted the latest features or services, other existing customers may have either demoted their plans or reverted to the free version again. Net revenue retention measures the amount of revenue generated after taking into account the expansion revenue rate and the average churn rate.

How to become a product-led company in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP?

Since it is not always possible for every team to undertake disparate long goals, businesses in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP should employ their resources & efforts toward the development of a world-class product. More than the development part, they should be focused on designing the entire customer journey around a seamless experience. But, none of this could happen unless there is close coordination and collaboration among people, teams, and across departments in the organization. However, the adoption of a Product Led Growth strategy could help them to align their business functions along various teams from sales, design, customer support, etc.

Determine your product’s appealing attributes

It is not possible for any business to develop interesting products for customers without developing an understanding of your end users. However, identification & communication of the unique features of the product would help you to correlate the customer values with your business goals. Hence, you should have a good product that could deliver the value as promised to customers. The product should be developed in a way to resolve existing consumer problems resulting in an effective boarding of the users around their goals while also offering regular personalized communications for the latest updates, new features, etc.

Using behavioral analytics to improve

Lastly, it is also crucial for businesses in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP to make product development & improvement-related decisions based on measurable analysis of customer data. Behavioral analytics could measure the product-customers interaction, and in turn, find ways to personalize and improve their experiences with the product. Alternatively, businesses should develop a deeper knowledge of customer experiences and answers to problems they are looking to resolve. If your start-up in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP is passionate about product-led growth, it should consider investing in an event-based analytics platform.

Advantages of Product-Led Growth

Today most people are aware and self –educated, thus they do not want to buy any product just on a sales pitch, they want to try the product understand its effectiveness, and then make the final decision. This is where Product Led Growth helps start-ups to identify their potential consumers through a self-service model allowing them to explore the product.  Product Led Growth strategies could be hugely beneficial for businesses empowering them to invest their time & efforts toward building a great product rather than working on various long-term projects. Other than this, here are some of the benefits of the product led growth-

Achieve higher scalability

Being primarily driven through free trials /freemium tools without any time-based dependency or availability of sales personnel, it becomes easier to build and scale a business. The only thing to be focused on is building an ideal customer profile and then formulating strategies to attract him. Thus, when the rival businesses are focusing on improving their sales team, your start-up could be using that time to expand its resources towards expansion.

Reduces costs of consumer acquisition

Employing Product Led Growth strategies helps business organizations in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP to spend lesser funds on marketing and promotional activities since the product itself results in word-of-mouth referencing, and thus an effective tool for the acquisition of newer customers. Alternatively, start-ups do not require a large team of sales professionals & staff, which further reduces customer acquisition costs.

Higher Customer Retention

Start-ups who fail to communicate the unique features of their products face a higher churn rate. Since customers who purchase the full product know the value of the effectiveness of the products, the business can enjoy customer retention.  Not only this, but product-led growth also allows businesses in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP to focus more on product development helping them to improve or evolve with changes in consumer preferences which leads to a significant increase in the number of satisfied customers and a lower churn rate.

Increased Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

Businesses employing Product Led Growth strategies consider the product itself to be the key tool for acquiring customers. Since there are a high number of happy & content users, this directly leads to increased word-of-mouth referencing.

Focused Product Development

With product-led growth, businesses in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP have abundant time on their plates to focus on the improvement of the products rather than building sales & marketing strategies to boost their sales numbers. Thus, start-ups can focus entirely on user feedback & suggestions or market trends to offer more personalized & thoughtful products.

Access to First-Party User Data

Change of privacy policies allows businesses access to customer data that could be used to get a better understanding of the user and market their products accordingly.

Regardless of whether you are a start-up or an established business, product-led growth could help your business in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh MP to disrupt the existing saturated markets. It motivates your business to dedicate its prime focus to offering the best quality products and consistently improving them to boost business growth. Further, it also helps your business to save money from being used for sales or promotional activities and invest it in ways to generate a better return enhancing financial productivity.

Fundraising for Product based Startup business

Does it require for a successful product for raising funds???

Well the answer is “Yes” and “No”. Actually product development needs to be aligned as per your customer needs and not as per the investor whom you are pitching. However, Angel Investors, VC funds and Private Equity Funds behave in the different fashion, So let us look at points which they might consider for each type of Investor.

Seed Fund Raising for a Product led Startup Business

Seed fund are generally raised before the actual start of Product led Startup business. Being the Pre revenue, it is just having the idea that can be pitched. Sometime POC (Proof of Concept) is also there. As such the Pitch deck for a Product led Startup needs to be very precise and focus on the problem and solution more than any thing else.

Angel Investment for Product led Startup business

In general, Angel Investors invest very small amount of fund. Talking about Indian context, the money may range from few lacs to few crores. The investors look very deep into the MVP or the product idea/concept and profile of the founder and invest thereon. generally, the Corporate structure and other such things can be less managed while raising such funds.

Venture Capital (VC) Funds for Product led Startup business

VC Funds come into picture when the product market fit is already running and looking for funds for proper development of product or scale the Product led Startup business to next level. Here the funding round may vary from 1 cr to 30-40 crore. i.e USD 100,000 to USD 5 mn. These fund look at past MIS and scalability apart from the idea itself.

Private Equity Funds for Product led Startup business

Such Funds offer investments any where between 25 cr. to couple of 100 crores i,e. USD 2-3 mn to USD 200-300 mn. These funds definitely look forward to the past trackk record, the growth rate of business and time to IPO or exit possibilities. Such investments, generally brings Product led Startup businesses in Unicon status therefore the due diligence is much more at these rounds.