The 7 Strategic Phases of the Product Development Lifecycle

 

The strategic phases of the product development lifecycle is a sequential set of steps encapsulating a given product’s entire life cycle. The first step is ideation. The last step is plotting how to sunset a product. Many different skills, methods, tools, and stakeholders are involved in various aspects and phases.

The only true consistent figure in this process is product management. Product managers take the reigns as early as product definition and concept vetting. They bring it to life, nurture its growth, and ultimately put it to bed one final time.

The 7 Strategic Phases of the Product Development Lifecycle

Before diving headfirst into any of the strategic phases of the product development lifecycle, it’s essential to understand all the steps. While mostly discrete activities, they do build on each other. A faulty foundation can result in a wobbly, flawed future.

1. Product Concept Development

This initial phase might be the most fun and creative stage in the product lifecycle, and it’s the most critical. Businesses come up with lots of ideas. So only the most promising projects must get the traction and resources they deserve.

So, once there’s an initial idea internal folks are excited about, it’s time to employ some of the available tools and techniques for some quick market validation. These tests give the team confidence they’re onto something with real promise.

A key step in this phase is product discovery. This process gives the product team a much deeper understanding of the problems potential customers face and the user personas the solution can target. Without a solid foundation of who the product is for and which of their pain points it solves, there’s little hope of finding product-market fit.

Armed with a good idea and a solid understanding of the key problem, the concept is then fleshed out while gathering additional information.

2. Competitive Analysis

If a company has stumbled onto a great idea, it’s likely they’re not the only ones to have this epiphany. That’s why the next step is surveying the landscape. You do this to see how the product concept compares to what’s already available or under development.

The goal here is to understand the other options potential customers already have. Sometimes there will be a direct competitor with a relatively similar offering. There may be broader solutions that include similar functionality to the product in question. An effective competitive analysis must include completely unexpected, less-than-elegant workaround solutions potential customers use to solve their pain points.

This includes using spreadsheets for building product roadmaps, authoring code in a plain text editor, or building animations in PowerPoint. People often use the tools they already have at their disposal. Changing those behaviors may be just as important and challenging as taking on direct competitors.

3. Market Research

Still not done with homework! Now that the business has a handle on how its solution fits into the scene, it’s time to see if its differentiated approach to solving user problems holds up.

Market research typically involves both qualitative and quantitative research. Surveys and aggregated data can indicate trends, help calculate the total addressable market, and serve as valuable input to the prioritization process.

Meanwhile, qualitative research can help product teams get to the “why” at the heart of the solution. Using focus groups, interviews, and other in-depth research methods. These methods add both color and a sense of humanity to the research and development process. An added benefit is that they challenge assumptions.

4. Minimum Viable Product Development

The tail end of the market research phase may also entail developing a Minimum Viable Product. An MVP is functional for gauging the reaction and interest of likely buyers. It only includes the most vital features and functionality based on the business’s understanding of which user stories customers need most. It is laser-focused on solving core problems.

During MVP definition and development, the team may begin employing prioritization frameworks. MVPs determine which items would deliver the most “bang for the buck” and must be in place for the initial product offering. Frameworks focused on core functionality versus product line expansion are a good fit at this time. Examples include the jobs-to-be-done framework, which ensures the business is building products customers actually want and use.

By getting something to the market quickly, the company can validate its concept and generate user feedback. This is crucial during these early stages. It serves to inform for adjustments to perform key tasks at launch, and the value proposition and messaging matches the offering.

5. Introduction and Launch

With “Version 1.0” about to become a reality, it’s time to take this idea to market. Even if it still bears a “beta” label. The hard work of generating awareness and demand often starts well before the “download” link goes live.

The product marketing team should be generating demand and building some buzz for the offering in anticipation of the release.

Using A/B testing on different messaging and price points to build up a list of interested parties and validate the value proposition’s efficacy. Press and analysts are briefed in advance and given product demos. This seeds the media market with coverage when the grand unveiling occurs.

A robust mechanism for soliciting, collecting, aggregating, and analyzing user feedback must be in place at launch. Asses the first impressions and the efficacy of different campaign messages and tactics. The results inform plans and how to allocate resources for wider promotion and growth.

Employing product analytics and customer research, product teams can begin measuring product-market fit. If gaps are identified, they can be added to the product backlog in preparation for future prioritization and product roadmapping activities.

6. Product Lifecycle

Mature products enter a new phase of existence. Typically, this is a cycle of iterative improvements and modifications. Interspersed with more significant expansions (or removal) of functionality and capabilities.

At this point, the product roadmap becomes indispensable. As processes mature, release cadences are established, and the focus shifts to enhancements and growth. KPIs, goals, outcomes, and objectives will evolve throughout the product lifecycle. It will shift based on both the success and struggles of the product as well as the organization.

While rarely boring, this is the most predictable and routine phase of the product lifecycle. Suppose the product continues to find traction and adequate growth while establishing profitability. This phase may last for years, if not decades assuming the product remains viable and there’s a persistent market for it.

To synchronize strategic objectives with resource allocation and development priorities, structure a product roadmap using themes. Themes are excellent to ensure efforts remain focused on what matters most. This method still gives the implementation team some latitude in an Agile development framework.

7. Sunset

All things must end. For some lucky product management professionals, this never happens on their watch. However, statistically, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll have to say goodbye to an entire product or major component at some point during their career.

This isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it’s just an inevitable part of the strategic phases of the product planning process. It’s a phase in which you are retiring a product due to a superior offering’s arrival. Another reason is a dwindling need for a particular solution. This is because the problem is no longer acute enough to warrant a product.

But wrapping up a longstanding offering has many implications. Using a checklist can ensure all the aspects are properly addressed during the wind-down period.

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How to create a customer experience strategy across the full lifecycle

 

Discover how a customer experience strategy that enhances digital experiences across all touchpoints can help build brand loyalty and improve ROI

In today’s fast-paced digital world, providing a seamless customer experience strategy is no longer a luxury but a necessity. As consumers have more options than ever on where, when, and how to interact with brands, ensuring a consistent and positive digital experience can significantly impact your business's growth and competitiveness. 

It’s easy to forget just how many touchpoints your business may have. The Smart Insights customer lifecycle visual highlights just some of the many paid, owned, and earned media omnichannel options available today to communicate with prospects and customers. There’s a lot! 

The diverse array of channels highlights the amount of avenues we need to effectively manage to create effective customer experience, no matter where or how a customer interacts with us. 

However, due to the speed at which our industry moves and the amount of changes we have to regularly adapt to, it can be easy to neglect implementing a customer experience strategy. In doing so, you may be losing potential customers to competitors at various stages of the lifecycle, without even knowing.

What do we mean by customer experience?

Customer experience refers to the cumulative impact of all interactions a customer has with a brand throughout their entire journey. This includes every touchpoint, from initial awareness and engagement to post-purchase support and advocacy. A positive customer experience is characterized by ease of use, personalized interactions, and consistent satisfaction across all channels.

Integrating customer experience into your marketing strategy is essential because it not only influences customer retention and loyalty but also enhances brand reputation and drives revenue growth. By prioritizing customer experience strategy, businesses can differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace and create lasting relationships with their customers.

Why does customer experience matter?

Customers form opinions about your brand through various digital touchpoints, whether it’s via social media, your website, or email campaigns. We need to go beyond customer actions here and really consider their emotions and feelings to truly understand sentiment. As TechTarget summarizes:

“Managing customer experience isn't just about how people perceive their experience with a brand or the actions a company takes, but how customers feel when engaging with a brand.”

If these interactions are not optimized, you risk losing customers to competitors who offer a more engaging and satisfying experience. A well-structured customer experience strategy can be the decisive factor between thriving in your market or lagging behind competitors. 

Top Tip: Think ‘consistency’. You want your customers to feel comfortable that they know what to expect when interacting with you at any stage of their journey, at any touchpoint. This is why brand messaging and experience needs to be consistent across all channels, to help build brand trust and reliability.

What does good customer experience look like?

This will vary depending on your business, industry and product/service. However, there are some key fundamentals that apply to any business, which Hojar has succinctly summarized.

"In short, good customer experience can be achieved when you:

• Make listening to customers a top priority across the business
• Use customer feedback to develop an in-depth understanding of your customers
• Implement a system to help you regularly collect, analyze, and act on feedback
• Reduce friction and solve your customers' specific problems and unique challenges"

Benchmarking your customer experience

When diving into any marketing optimization, we first need to consider - where are we now? And what are we basing that on? 

Customer experience of all brand interactions is often based on Voice of Customer (VoC) tools, like customer ratings and surveys of satisfaction that are benchmarked, but often these don’t drill down into satisfaction with online channels which account for a high proportion of interactions. There are also behavioural measures of satisfaction with experience that with digital you can assess directly and aim to improve. 

Top Tip: A great way to better understand your customers’ pyschographic motivators, is to work on your personas and customer journey maps. For more advice on this, read our How to create an actionable customer journey map using RACE blog.

Our Digital Customer Experience review (shown below) enables you to review your capabilities for managing digital experiences too. Where does your business currently sit?

Looking at the benchmarking visual, it’s likely that you can already see areas you can improve to take you to the ‘Optimized’ stage consistently across channels. Now you have identified where you need to improve, it’s important to build these key activities into your customer experience strategy.

Key elements of a robust customer experience strategy using RACE

To effectively manage and improve customer experience, we can split up areas to optimize effectively using Smart Insights RACE Planning Framework. Our newly launched customer experience playbook is built using RACE, providing a detailed roadmap to enhance your digital customer interactions. RACE can support you in delivering an exceptional customer experience strategy by splitting out activities across the full customer lifecycle:

1. Plan: Set clear objectives and measurement criteria. Define the scope of customer experience, focusing on online interactions which often form a high proportion of customer engagements.
2. Reach: Increase your brand's visibility and demand through effective use of digital media. This involves improving your SEO, integrating social media strategies, and ensuring your content reaches the right audience.
3. Act: Encourage digital interactions that lead to increased subscribers and leads. By enhancing your website’s customer journeys and providing relevant, engaging content, you can significantly boost user engagement.
4. Convert: Turn your prospects into customers by optimizing conversion rates through an omnichannel approach. This includes both online and offline tactics to ensure a smooth transition from lead to customer.
5. Engage: Build long-term customer loyalty and advocacy by maintaining consistent communication through email marketing, social media, and other digital channels. Engaging your customers beyond the initial purchase is key to fostering lasting relationships.

Benefits of focusing on customer experience

Although it may never feel ‘top of the list’, optimizing your digital customer experience can really help support your overall business goals by creating:

• Increased Customer Loyalty: Satisfied customers are more likely to return and recommend your brand to others.
• Improved Brand Reputation: Positive experiences lead to positive reviews and word-of-mouth marketing
• Higher Conversion Rates: Optimized customer journeys reduce friction and increase the likelihood of conversions.
• Enhanced Customer Insights: Understanding customer behaviour helps refine marketing strategies and product offerings.

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Marketing Asset Management: Turn Marketing Assets into Powerful Business Tools

 

Source: Brafton

By Joe Weller

This article offers the most useful tips, templates, and worksheets to help you understand the business value of marketing asset management.

Included on this page, you'll find a marketing asset audit template, a marketing asset management template, and marketing asset management tool comparison, and many more helpful resources.

What Are Marketing Assets?

Marketing assets include anything used by an organization to promote its products, services, or brand. Emails, brochures, datasheets, presentations, sales letters, blog articles, website content, videos, and images are some of the most popular assets available to external customers. 

The company’s marketing strategy determines the type of assets that are most valuable to its audience. Inbound marketing focuses on the most modern buyer — one who researches the product before contacting the company. Inbound marketing activities are designed to attract prospects that are in the market for the product or service you offer. 

For example, a blog article that includes tips and best practices on organizing closets will attract people who are likely in the process of decluttering and organizing their homes. If your specialty is building custom closets, this thought leadership blog will help you attract prospects and communicate to the buyer that you are an expert in this industry. On the other hand, outbound marketing markets to people regardless of whether they are looking for a product or service that you offer. Television commercials, online ads, and billboards are some outbound marketing tactics. 

Some marketing assets are used only for the internal purpose of motivating and empowering employees to promote the company and product to customers. For example, an internal brand guide might advise employees on the consistent use of logos, colors, fonts, image style, and language, while a product messaging presentation might train the sales team on product messaging. Below is a list of internal and external marketing assets:

Internal:

• Training materials
• Brand guide
• Cheat sheets
• Emails
• Messaging matrix
• Competitive sell sheets

External:

• Emails
• Brochures/datasheets
• Whitepapers/ebooks
• Case studies
• Blog articles
• Logos
• Videos
• Images
• Audio podcasts
• Website content
• Infographics
• Social media
• Advertisements
• Annual report
• Business cards
• Trade show/event/billboard displays
• Commercials

Commonly stored in a repository for easy access and usage, marketing assets move through a lifecycle, from creation to the point at which they are outdated and no longer useful. Below is an example of the marketing asset management lifecycle.

What Is Marketing Asset Management?

Marketing asset management is the administration of marketing assets in a central location for easy distribution and usage.

Marketing asset management is related to enterprise content management, digital asset management, brand management, and media asset management, but is not to be confused with asset management marketing, which is the marketing of investment assets. Although the terms are similar, they mean vastly different things.

Why Is Marketing Asset Management Important?

The marketing department is responsible for contributing to a business’s bottom line. One of the department’s responsibilities is to produce critical business assets that support global campaigns and empower staff to promote and sell products or services. However, tracking and monitoring all these materials can quickly become overwhelming. Eventually, after your company has developed numerous assets, it becomes impossible to remember every asset you’ve created. It also becomes too time consuming to find assets and too complicated to collaborate without a central repository. 

Imagine a company that distributes a brochure to its entire sales team via email. The team uses the brochure to attract prospects and sell the product. But, what happens when that brochure needs to be updated? Who has the original design? Who is using the brochure and requires the updated version? Decentralized and fragmented marketing asset management degrades the ability to maintain brand consistency and accurate information. Moreover, team members end up wasting time searching for information and performing redundant work to recreate assets.

Globally distributed marketing organizations that interact with print providers, agencies, cross-functional team members, partners, vendors, franchisees, IT staff, HR staff, branch managers, and contractors require a more robust management of marketing assets.

“Managing marketing assets typically doesn’t seem important until people start to have trouble finding previously created resources,” says Jennifer Holtvluwer, Senior Director of Marketing and Inside Sales at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises. “Employees spend countless hours searching for content and are sometimes forced to reinvent the wheel. This frustration is usually the catalyst for a structured marketing asset management solution. I strongly urge all organizations to develop a strategy to manage marketing assets before those assets become unruly. With a well-developed strategy, most companies will net an almost immediate ROI.”

The Benefits of Marketing Asset Management

Fast-changing market demands and competitive conditions put pressure on marketing teams to respond more quickly and with more agility. Marketing asset management helps streamline the tracking and monitoring of essential business materials. The ability to digitally control marketing assets ensures that all assets are accessible, easy to find and share, brand compliant, and available for global campaigns.

The most significant benefit of marketing asset management is quick, uncomplicated accessibility. What good is an asset if no one can find it? If you have ever dealt with the annoyance of trying to find a critical campaign or program asset, you know the frustration and loss of productivity all too well.

Time is money, and marketing asset management provides a fast return on investment. Proper management of your marketing assets means no more digging through file folders, emailing the entire team, or logging into an old server to perform a search.

With the ability to locate a branded, current asset, you’ll reap the following benefits:

1. Increase business performance and revenue growth.
2. Improve communication, productivity, creativity, and collaboration.
3. Create autonomy for local marketers, partners, sales, resellers, and third parties.
4. Reduce time searching for assets.
5. Reduce redundant recreation work.
6. Maintain brand consistency.
7. Repurpose assets for improved ROI.

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How to Organize Marketing Assets So They Are Easy to Find

The number one goal of organizing marketing assets is to get them all in one centralized repository or marketing asset library. Ideally, you’ll have an online system that supports a variety of file types and is easy for users to access from any location. Below are tips for organizing marketing assets, so they are simple for any user to locate:

1. Standardize file names and include a date and version.
2. Implement a marketing asset repository or marketing asset management system.
3. Categorize assets. 
4. Apply a status to each asset, such as current, needs update, or archive.
5. Archive outdated assets.

Simply starting with standard file naming conventions can help you get more organized. For example, you could name your files according to asset type, asset name, and creation date, respectively so that the result would look something like this: blog_5tipsforbettermarketing_12172019.docx.

Tips and Best Practices for Marketing Asset Managers

An abundance of marketing assets can quickly make the most seasoned digital marketing asset manager or content manager’s head spin. Below are some tips to help you take control of marketing assets:  

Audit All Marketing Assets: An examination will help paint a clear picture of the assets you have on hand. Assign each asset a status of current, outdated, or requires update. 

Gather Marketing Asset Management System Requirements: Identify the features and functionality that are essential for managing marketing assets. Look at your current system and establish a list of what works for your business, what is unnecessary, and what is missing. For example, do you need asset usage reports and sharing through email? 

Decide on the Solution Delivery Model: Cloud, hybrid, or on-premises options are available based on budget needs and your organization’s infrastructure.

Provide Training and Guidance: Establish usage guidelines that span the creation of content, version control, and proper use of assets. These guidelines include how to identify relevant assets and share them securely. Consider tagging assets as approved to ensure they are fully compliant with business requirements.

Monitor Usage: Use integrated reporting and monitoring tools to understand asset usage and interactions.

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This marketing asset audit template will help you audit your existing marketing assets. List all your assets, assign each one a status, link to its current location, and include notes. Use this spreadsheet not only to gain visibility into what you have, but also to identify gaps and spot opportunities for new, valuable assets.

Marketing Asset Management Technology and Tools

The audit information is beneficial for both streamlining the organization of assets and finding a suitable system. For example, have you ever worked in a company that organizes its files, but has an unclear file directory structure? Where would you look if you needed an advertisement that was part of a marketing campaign? It could be in the images folder, marketing assets folder, or campaign assets folder. 

A marketing asset management tool will help you in all the areas of managing marketing assets that can be challenging — organization, naming conventions, searching, sharing, and much more. Let’s look at some of the most popular marketing asset management solutions on the market:

Company	Category	Founded	Target Audience	Customers
Bynder	Digital asset management	2013	Brand managers, marketers, and creatives	Puma, Icelandair, Five Guys
Canto	Digital asset management	1990	Marketing teams	NASA, Harvard University, United Airlines
HubSpot	Content management	2005	Professional marketers	Atlassian, DoorDash, VMware
MarcomCentral	Marketing asset management	2000	Modern marketers	Subway, Chevron, Volvo
Widen	Digital asset management	1948	Marketing, sales, and technical teams	Yeti, Brooks, Indiana University
Smartsheet	Work management and automation	2006	Managers, teams, information workers	Office Depot, PayPal, Cisco

Marketing Asset Management Solution Features and Infrastructure

Deciding which solution is the best fit for your organization depends on your business model, infrastructure, and business requirements. A large enterprise may find a digital asset management solution that extends beyond marketing to provide the most ROI, whereas a small firm may only need basic functionality that supports the management of marketing assets and is easy to implement. As you evaluate solutions, consider the following features:

• File Management: Use a central collection hub that stores a variety of file types, enabling easy search, share, distribution, and collaboration.
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• Workflow Automation: Streamline the creation, proofing, and approval of assets.
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• Configuration: Possess the flexibility to use predefined templates and personalize system configurations in order to meet your unique business requirements.  
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• Security: Ensure secure authentication with the ability to designate user roles with predefined permissions.
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• Brand Management: Brand management is a byproduct of marketing asset management. The ability to manage assets in a single repository provides control over brand consistency.
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• Publishing: Publishing gives you the ability to deliver assets across platforms, including social media, websites, and email.
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• Integrations: Integrate with creative tools, social media solutions, email systems, and other software solutions.
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• Metadata: Title, category, creation date, keywords, and author are a few examples of metadata that make searching for assets much more efficient.
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• Reporting and Analytics: Usage measurements, printing trends, and other shared data provide insight that is useful for continual improvement.
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• Mobility: This feature allows on-the-road workers to access, create, edit/customize, and share assets via a mobile device.

Do You Need a Marketing Asset Management System?

We have looked at the benefits of marketing asset management, so we know why it is essential. We have also included a list of some of the most popular marketing asset management products, but you may still be on the fence about whether this kind of management is right for you. Use this “Do I Need a Marketing Asset Management System?” template to help determine if you need marketing asset management.

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