The 7 Strategic Phases of the Product Planning Process

 

Provided by the International Finance Corporation

The strategic phases of the product planning process 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.

Before diving headfirst into any of the strategic phases of the product planning process, 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, there’s a high likelihood 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. Just as importantly, 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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Put It in Writing: Creating a Solid Content Plan

 

By Joe Weller

Business goals drive marketing goals, which drive content goals. In this article, we provide tips, tools, and expert advice for creating a successful content marketing strategy, along with content management templates to help your plan succeed.

Included on this page, you’ll find a downloadable content plan, a content planning SWOT, customer vs. prospect content ideas, and a content measurement dashboard template.

What Is a Content Strategy?

A content strategy defines how and why content will achieve business and marketing goals. You need a strategy that determines content needs and why that content is the best choice.

Reaching your target audience requires an active approach that starts with a content strategy. Consumers want details. They want to learn something of value. They want to be engaged. 

Content marketing, which is the result of a content strategy, focuses on offering the high-level engagement consumers demand. Content marketing goes beyond giving the customers what they want. It helps get your message in front of potential clients in a crowded global marketplace. Most companies rely on some type of content marketing. These businesses use online content that includes informational articles, promotional blog posts, podcasts, infographics, surveys, videos, and social media posts.

For content to be effective, it has to be well thought out and demonstrate how you and your products or services are superior. A content strategy should incorporate a journalistic “who, what, when, where” approach – know who is your audience, gauge what it is they want from companies, provide them with information when they want it, and share content where potential customers are most likely to consume it. 

Your content strategy should include a mission statement that explains why the content strategy exists, the goal of the strategy, and who it benefits. Every piece of content that your team creates should point back to this mission statement. After you define your mission, you can create the content strategy, which should include the following elements:

• Goals: When identifying what you want to accomplish with your content, consider how it might increase brand awareness, generate leads, increase conversion rates, and encourage customer engagement.
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• Success Criteria and Measurements: You’ll need to decide which success criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll use to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. For example, did the content help increase website traffic, improve brand awareness, or generate new sales leads and convert them into new customers? Also consider other measurements such as growth in current customer retention and overall prestige, authority, and recognition within the industry and among the target audience.
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• Target Audience: With an effective content strategy, you can identify the demographic most likely to be interested in your product or service. That requires understanding buyer personas, which you can define through market research and behavior studies that detail the audience's interests, jobs/incomes, spending habits, search tendencies, and the like. You may have multiple target personas that require different content. For example, a content strategy for teenagers will not be the same as one for parents purchasing for their kids. You need to use a variety of content strategies to cover a broader market share. Also, remember that each target persona consumes content differently, so you have to identify the best platform to reach them. While a parent may rely on Facebook and blog posts, the teenager may prefer Instagram and YouTube. 
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• Understand the Problem You Are Solving for Your Audience: Each audience has different needs and challenges. In your content strategy, account for educating the audience on how your product or service can solve their problem. 
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• Research Competitors and Your Industry: Do a thorough analysis of the products your competitors offer and how they approach their content marketing. How do you compare and compete? Download a free competitive analysis template to get started.
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• Perform a Content SWOT Analysis: SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In the strengths quadrant, include content marketing efforts that work well. List any liabilities of your content marketing in the weaknesses quadrant. For the opportunities quadrant, include external content marketing opportunities in your market space. Finally, the threats quadrant should contain external content campaigns from competitors. See the example SWOT analysis below to get ideas on how to do your own
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Strengths E-books perform well Planned editorial calendar that still allows for flexibility when necessary Case studies perform well on social	Weaknesses Midfunnel content is scarce Inability to link content to leads Content does not align with product messaging
Opportunities Guest blogs from subject matter expert could improve traffic Case studies will improve midfunnel engagement	Threats Competitors have more human resources to develop competing content quickly Competitors have better relationships with industry influencers Competitors have more budget to promote content

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• Review or Develop Brand and Product Messaging: Once you know your audience and how you measure up to the competition, ensure your brand and product messaging is up to date. Messaging drives all downstream marketing activities.
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• Create a RACI Matrix: RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. Use a RACI matrix to define team roles and individual responsibilities, so everyone understands their part in the content creation process. Learn more about this tool by reading “Comprehensive Project Management Guide for Everything RACI.” 
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• Define a Content Process: Once you know who you’re targeting and the type of content you need, select a content management system (CMS) to use for your workflow. The tool may be something like WordPress, or it could be a custom program. Get tips for picking the right solution by reading “Content Management 101: Discover the Best Approaches and Techniques.” After selecting a CMS, you can define the content creation workflow, including author assignment, outline creation, the editing process, approval, and publishing. You’ll also want to outline a process for using social media to share content to your target audience. 
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• Identify Resources: As the content plan comes into focus, you need to decide who is going to create the content. Will you outsource it to freelancers, use internal resources, or opt for a combination of both? Look at the skills and experience of existing staff, budget, and workload to see what makes the most sense. Also, evaluate the finances you have for creating content. Your budget may include expenses for a CMS, images, analytics, and freelancers — or maybe just two of those options. If it’s the latter, you may need to scale back your plan. Use this budget template to calculate and monitor your content marketing budget.
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What Is a Content Plan?

The content plan is your blueprint for deciding what content to create. You can refer to the plan when choosing topics and content types, as well as managing content assets. A plan helps ensure content you produce is easy to find, relevant, and engaging, as well as aligns with business objectives.

As you move from strategy to content plan, consider the following questions to guide your process:

• Do your content topics align with your target personas, messaging, and value proposition?
• Is each content asset unique, valuable, and relevant?
• Do you offer a variety of content formats that meet your audiences’ needs: print, interactive, video, downloadable?
• Are there specific events that require specialized content assets?
• What content can you reuse?
• Does your content position your company as a thought leader in the industry?
• Do you have content assets that are relevant to each stage of the buyer’s journey? Your strategy should have two sides: prospective customers vs. current customers. Below is an example of content assets that can help you retain a customer to stay vs. converting a prospect to become a customer.
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Prospects	Customers
Competitive comparisons	Product tips and tricks
Educational white papers	Newsletter
Contributed articles	Knowledge base
Press releases	Templates
Guest blog posts	Education courses
Customer case studies
Podcasts
Templates

Types of Content in a Content Plan

The types of content you can use are limited only by your budget and creators. Many options are available, but here is an example of the most common types of content and where they fit in the buyer’s journey.

Goal	Content Type	Frequency	Metrics
Top of Funnel: Build awareness – content that helps the audience recognize their problems	Blog posts, e-books, white papers, educational content	Consistent activity that’s in line with the goals of a specific type of content and daily social media promotion	Impressions by channel, click-through rate, unique page views, time on site
Middle of Funnel: Consideration – content that helps the audience evaluate options	Videos, podcasts, expert guidance, webinars	As often as necessary to ensure the most accurate and competitive content is available	Referral traffic, social metrics, click-through rate, downloads, webinar participants
Bottom of Funnel: Decision – content that helps the prospect make a purchase	Case studies, product comparison templates, product content, product demo/test drive	As often as necessary to ensure content is fresh and represents the current state of your product/service or industry	Demo requests, sales conversions

Why should you consider creating a content marketing strategy? Because it works. A content marketing strategy is an effective way to attract new customers, engage existing clients, and build relationships that result in future business. Great content lifts your reputation and sets you apart from your competitors. 

In a crowded business world, the competition to rise to the top can be fierce. A well-produced content strategy and plan can drive awareness to your company and have your audience waiting for your next words.

How to Create a Content Plan in 5 Steps

Creating a content plan takes time, but is well worth the effort. By the end of the process, you’ll know what content you already have, what you need, and how to decide if your investment is paying off. Use the following steps to create a comprehensive content plan: 

1. Perform a Content Audit
Your content plan begins with a look at your content. This thorough examination will provide a clear picture of existing content, what needs modification, what to retire, and what you still need to create. You’ll also want to assess content attributes, including the page title, keywords, inbound links, images, page visits, type of content, social shares, last update, author, and owner. During the audit, you’ll want to assign a status to each piece of content: 

• Outdated and should be replaced
• Duplicate and redundant
• Needs an update

Use this content audit template to list all content assets, their status, current location, and other essential details. Use this spreadsheet to gain visibility into what you have, what you need, and new opportunities. 

2. Review Your Ideal Client or Target Audience
Once your audit is complete, the next step is to review your ideal client or target audience defined in your content strategy. The goal is to get a clear picture of who you are writing content for. 

Evaluate whether the audience that reads and engages with your content is your target group. If that’s the case, you need to build on what you’ve been doing right and highlight what makes you unique among your competition. If you’re not reaching the right audience, this is the time to review your messaging and materials to determine what’s not working and why. 

To reach your target audience, create content that shows you are worth their attention. One option is to reach out to that audience with surveys, asking them to identify their top challenges, their desired material, and important topics. Also, follow your competition on social media (while not forgetting to listen to your own social media responses) and see what customers are saying – good and bad – about them. Use those comments to understand the competition’s strengths and weaknesses. With this information in hand, you can create powerful and engaging content for your audience. 

3. Consider Your Brand
While your content plan should focus on reaching your target audience, you also need to pay attention to your brand. The right content will directly contribute to brand recognition. Produce content that represents and promotes your product or service, but also consistently highlights the uniqueness of your brand.

4. Define Content and Attributes
An audit can provide insight into the type of content you have and its effectiveness. That’s the starting point for creating new content. At this stage, determine which formats resonate with your audience. Whether they’re editorial pieces, podcasts, videos, infographics, or something else, you’ll want to establish publication frequency and location, such as blogs, content sharing platforms, and social channels. Now you can brainstorm for content topics. Tools are available to help with this step, such as BlogAbout, Google, BuzzSumo, AnswerthePublic, WordStream, and Moz’s Keyword Explorer. Want to get your team involved? Check out these brainstorming techniques to get the ideas flowing. Finally, assign content based on the workflow established in your strategy. 

5. Publish and Analyze Results
Once content is written and published, it’s time to analyze the results. Read and consider all comments, and be ready to pivot to a new angle if the current one doesn’t resonate. You can measure content effectiveness with SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) criteria. Learn more about SMART goals and download a template to get started. Assign KPIs for your content to evaluate and measure the efficacy of your messaging. You can use tools like Google Analytics and Facebook or Twitter Analytics to analyze performance.

Content Creation Plans

A content creation plan is unique to each organization. You can benefit from using an editorial calendar and social media content calendar to manage, control, and visualize the publication of content. Below are the basic steps to follow:

• Audit existing content
• Discard what does not work
• Build on successful content
• Find a good stable of writers
• Define a regular publishing schedule
• Analyze results

You don’t have to build your plan from scratch. See what has been successful for others and use these examples and templates as a guide. Here are a few to get you started:

Below is a content planning template to organize content throughout the buying cycle. 

  

This content pillar template is useful for content planning based on your most important topic areas. You can identify content types and publication channels that provide the most return for your business. 

Use this content tracking template to gain visibility into content detail, owner, writer, dates, and performance metrics. By monitoring metrics, you can continually improve your content. 

For more free downloadable resources and tips, visit "Free Content Plan Templates and Samples."

Why Do Companies Need to Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

A solid content marketing strategy improves your credibility and builds trust with customers, according to 96 percent of the respondents to MarketingProfs’ 2019 B2B Content Marketing research. More than three-quarters of those surveyed said they rely on educational content to nurture their audience’s needs, and successful content marketers say they use content to prioritize their audience’s informational needs. 

Well-planned content attracts potential customers. While you always want to have appropriate content available (for example, anything related to a global pandemic has been a content driver in 2020), it is equally important to have plenty of evergreen content. “Traditional marketing techniques are no longer as effective as they used to be. Consumer content is increasing exponentially,” says Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group. “Only a content strategy can save marketing and maybe your entire business.”

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