To be able to do proper product differentiation, you’ll need to perform a thorough

competitive analysis. This way, you can get to know your competition and discover
how to outshine them.

Goals and Initiatives

Lastly, product strategy includes product goals and initiatives. The goals should be
clearly defined, measurable, and time-bound to help you and your team understand
what you want to achieve with the product. We’ll talk more about ways to set
SMART goals later in the guide.

After setting your goals, it’s time to define initiatives, which are high-level efforts
necessary to achieve the goals you’ve set.

Product strategy will be your guide throughout the whole product creation process
and essential for both inbound and outbound product management. That’s why
strategy is important for the whole team and should be visible to the stakeholders.

In this chapter, we’ll define best practices for setting out product strategy and
explain how to create a detailed, transparent strategy that will help the whole team
know where the product is headed and how you’re planning to get there.

How To Define a Product Vision To

Guide Your Team

Your product vision should capture the essence of what you want your product to
accomplish. In one or two sentences, you should be able to explain where your
product is headed and what its ultimate long-term goal is.

In other words, you’ll need to determine the “why” behind your product, the reason
for its existence on the market. You need to ask yourself “why am I creating this
exact product?”

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Once you define your product vision, it will be like a compass for your whole team,
guiding every aspect of the product creation process.

Creating a Product Vision Statement

When creating a product vision statement, you need to have your end user in mind.
So instead of focusing on what the product should accomplish for you and your
company, you need to shift focus to the end user.

What do you want your product to achieve for your users? As cheesy as it sounds —
how are you planning to make the world a better place with your product?

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Having this in mind, the product vision needs to also capture the essence of your
audience — their challenges, problems, and goals — and the way your product is
ultimately going to make their lives better.

Creating a product vision board will help you arrive at your vision statement.

Image from: Roman Pichler

When it comes to the product management process, a product vision is a guiding

light that will help you set up your whole product strategy.

The product vision should help you:

● Create a better product roadmap

● Give your team directions along the way
● Align your whole team while working toward the same goal.

Even though all stakeholders should participate in developing the product vision
statement, the product manager should have the final say and polish the final
version.

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Product Vision Examples
Here are some examples of the product vision statements from the world’s most
successful companies:

Microsoft: A computer on every desk and in every home.

Google: To provide access to the world’s information with one click.

Amazon: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find

and discover anything they might want to buy online.

Samsung: Inspire the world. Create the future.

Instagram: To capture and share the world’s moments.

Infinity: To help companies realize their vision.

How To Set Your Product Vision in Infinity

Everyone on your team should live by your vision. That’s why it’s important to keep it
visible for the whole team. Here's how to add the product vision to your Infinity
framework:

● Step 1: Load the Product Management template into your workspace.

● Step 2: Open the Vision subfolder located in the Product Strategy folder.
● Step 3: Open every item and briefly answer the question in the Description
field.
● Step 4: Use the last column to write your vision statement based on previous
questions. Use the examples from the Description field as inspiration but then
delete them and write your own vision statement.

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If you’re not an Infinity user (yet), you can preview the Product Management
template here. The template is preloaded with demo data that shows real-life
examples of a product vision, sprints, backlogs, and other parts of product
management you can use as a checklist or inspiration.

How To Define Your Target Market and

Customer Persona

Once you’ve created the product vision, you’ll need to determine who you’re
creating this product for.

For this, you’ll have to define your target market and then go a step further to define
your customer persona(s). So what is the difference between the two?

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Defining Your Target Market
Defining your target market will give you the segment of people you’re targeting,
according to their age, location, education, industry, interests, gender, and similar
demographic information. Of course, you don’t have to note down all these details,
only those that are relevant to your product.

Although narrowing down your audience may sound counterintuitive at first, it’s a
crucial step. The fact of the matter is that you can’t sell to everyone, and if your
marketing scope is too wide, you’ll only be wasting your resources.

Marketing to everyone is like shooting darts in the dark — you will probably run out
of darts before you even hit the dartboard once.

Keep in mind that the target market and the target audience are two separate
things. The target market are people who will be using your product, and the target
audience are people you’re selling the product to.

Here’s an example: you’re making software that helps children learn to read. Your
target market are children aged 5-8. But, since kids of that age rarely have money (or
the desire) to invest in software, your target audience are their parents,
grandparents, etc.

So, when making the product, you keep your target market in mind, but when selling
the product, you sell it to the target audience. In most cases, these two are the same
group of people or they greatly overlap, but sometimes they are completely
different.

Creating Your Customer Persona

A customer persona (also known as a buyer persona) is the representation of your
ideal customer based on market analysis and data collected from existing customers.
Aside from demographics, a customer persona should give you information about
your ideal customers such as their typical buying behavior, their lifestyle, needs,
problems and challenges, goals, and motivations.

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Once you define your customer persona (or personas), it will help you further
develop your strategy when it comes to the product itself but also marketing and
sales. You’ll be able to know where to find your ideal customers, how to speak their
language, create the features they need, deliver the content they’re interested in,
and even predict their common objections.

How To Create Customer Personas in Infinity

All stakeholders should be able to have a say in approving customer personas you
have created, as this step will influence many future decisions. The easiest way to
share customer personas with everyone is to create a product management board in
Infinity. By using the Columns view, you can create a new column for each persona
so that you have an overview of all personas at a glance. As you create a new
persona, you can add all relevant information about them along with images that will
help you visualize the personas you have created.

Here’s an example of Business Owner, Product Manager, and Project Manager

personas created in Infinity:

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You can easily create your customer persona(s) using the Infinity Product
Management template.

● Step 1: Open the Customer Personas subfolder located in the Product Strategy
folder.
● Step 2: Click the item you want to change and a modal will appear.
● Step 3: Write a brief description of your persona in the Description field.
● Step 4: Add a list of the persona’s goals. What does your ideal customer want
to accomplish that your product can help them with? When it comes to a B2B
company, the ultimate goal will always be to grow their business and increase
revenue, but you should also add some goals specific to your product. If you
have a B2C business, the situation is a bit different. For example, if your
product is a workout app, your persona’s goal can be to lose weight or stay fit.
● Step 5: Add the persona’s challenges. What problems and challenges is your
ideal customer facing daily that your product could solve? For Infinity, a typical
challenge is “the team needs to use several tools, which causes confusion,

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 delays, and misunderstanding”. Knowing your persona’s biggest challenges
will help you build the best solution to these exact problems.
● Step 6: Add the persona’s buying motivation. What motivates this person to
buy your specific product? Out of all other similar products on the market,
what would be their biggest motivation to buy yours? For example: “they feel
limited by the tools they are currently using”. Defining buying motivation will
help you determine what sets your product apart from others on the market
and identify its greatest value.
● Step 7: Add the persona’s buying concerns. What would be the main objection
that could prevent this person from buying your product? Maybe the tool
they’re currently using is free and yours isn’t, or they think that it would take
too much effort to switch to your product if they’re already using something
similar. By defining these objections you’ll be able to prepare
counterarguments and solutions that would remove the persona’s buying
concerns.
● Step 8: Add products similar to yours that your persona may already be using.
This way, you will get a better idea of how your product should outshine and
replace them in the eye of your ideal customer.
● Step 9: Add the persona’s industry to the Industry field.
● Step 10: Add their job to the Job field.
● Step 11: Remove the current image from the template and add one that
represents your customer persona.
● Step 12: Repeat the process to add more customer personas.

Once you’ve defined your customer personas, this will be a strong foundation that
will determine all your decisions. But, you should be ready to learn about your
audience as you go and even adapt your target market and customer personas if you
see the need for it in the future.

Unsure how to start? Preview or download the Product Management template and
check out the examples of 3 customer personas we have created along with their
goals, challenges, buying motivation, buying concerns, and tools they use. You can
use these to build your customer personas off of.
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 Product Positioning - How Your Product
Fits in the Market

The next step in your product strategy is product positioning.

Product positioning means defining where your product fits in the marketplace. So
rather than changing the product itself, positioning represents the messaging — how
you want your audience to perceive your product.

To be able to position your product, you will need to determine your target market
first, which we explained in the previous chapter. Only after you have defined your
target market, you’ll be able to figure out what kind of message you want to send to
them, and the best channels for sending it.

Once you know the group of people you’re creating the product for and once you
have your customer persona(s), you’ll be able to translate their core values and
needs into the product benefits that will sound most appealing to them. And you’ll
be able to create a message that resonates with them.

However, there is one important detail you need to keep in mind. No matter how
you position your product, you need to make sure to deliver on the promise. Because
at the end of the day, positioning is not what you say about your product, it’s how
your audience perceives it.

If you have several audience segments, you will also need to adjust your messaging,
since different audience segments may see different benefits from your product.
Aside from that, you’ll need to adjust your messaging depending on the channel
you’re using. For example, your style will have to be completely different when
sending an email, writing a Facebook post, or creating a banner.

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Creating Your Product Positioning Statement
Ultimately, your positioning statement should define your target audience, the
unique features that set your product apart from the competition, and the benefits
that the users will have from it. According to the famous organizational theorist and
management consultant, Geoffrey Moore, a product positioning statement formula
should look something like this:

For (target customer) who (has a specific problem or a need), our product is a
(product category) that (provides this key benefit/solves this problem/fulfills this
need). Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (provides this unique
value).

For Infinity, this statement could translate to:

For a product manager who has a framework but doesn’t have a tool to support it,
Infinity is a flexible solution that allows them to build their own system and organize
every aspect of the product lifecycle. Unlike other tools on the market that provide a
fixed system, Infinity gives the user the ability to create their own product
management system.

Don't forget that product positioning is all about crafting a compelling message that
resonates with your target audience. Once you do that, it will serve as the
foundation for your product management strategy.

Product Positioning Matrix

To help you visualize your product compared to your competitors, it is a great idea to
create a product positioning matrix. By using this method, you will be able to realize
which product aspects are the most valuable in your product and how this makes
your product stand out from the rest.

The product positioning matrix should have two axes, both representing an
important value in your market. Quality and price are the most common ones, but
you can use any other values that are relevant to your product. In the example of
Infinity, the product positioning matrix looks like this:

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How To Define Product Positioning in Infinity
Just like all other parts of your product strategy, product positioning should also be
visible for you and your team at all times. That's why it's important to include it in
your product management framework.

If you use the Product Management template, it’s pretty simple to add product
positioning to your strategy by following the steps below.

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Here's how to add your product positioning in Infinity:

● Step 1: Open the Product Positioning subfolder located in the Product Strategy
folder.
● Step 2: Replace the product positioning statement from the first column with
your own.
● Step 3: Before you create a visual product positioning matrix (like the one we
mentioned before), you'll need to define the main categories and main
competitors you want to include. So in this step, choose 5-10 main
competitors and pick the two axes. In our example, the values are Structure
(Expansive - Simple) and System (Flexible - Fixed).
● Step 4: Replace the sample product positioning matrix with your own. Click
this item and find the Image attribute to replace the sample image with a new
one.

Even if you don’t use Infinity, you can preview this template directly from the
browser to get samples of product positioning and the product positioning matrix.

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 Product Differentiation - What's Your
Competitive Edge

Although often defined as a marketing process, product differentiation is much more

than that. It is related to every aspect of the product and every part of your team,
which is why it belongs right here, in the chapter about product strategy.

Unless you have an incredibly unique idea for a product that nobody has thought of
before, chances are you’re going to enter a competitive market with lots of similar
products already available. Product differentiation should answer the following
question — what does your product offer that other similar products on the market
don’t? What is the unique value of your product that makes it stand out from the
competition?

This kind of differentiation can be focused on any aspect of your product. Maybe
you’re planning to offer a better, more beautiful design. Maybe you’re going to
develop unique features that your competitors don’t have. Or, you’re simply
planning to offer a lower price and better customer support.

All these aspects are an opportunity for product differentiation, and ultimately
product differentiation should motivate the customer to choose your product over
another one.

Ideally, product differentiation should explain to your target audience how your
product offers everything similar products have and more.

Competitive Analysis
To be able to differentiate your product from the competition, you first need to
know who your competitors are and what they have to offer. This is called
competitive analysis.

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First of all, you’ll need to create a list of your ten biggest competitors. After you
compile that list, it’s time for a thorough analysis. You’ll need to define all relevant
factors in your niche such as:

● Feature segments
● Design
● Company size
● Prices
● Website traffic
● Number of users
● Customer support
● Other

One of the most important things to analyze when it comes to SaaS products are the
feature segments. Feature segments are groups of features that are commonly
found in your niche. Defining them will help you create initiatives and build your
product roadmap.

To define the feature segments in your niche, you’ll need to do the following steps:

1. Find and note down all your major competitors

2. List all the features these tools have
3. Group those features into segments

Setting a Competition Grid in Infinity

Once you have your feature segments and a list of competitors, it’s time to create a
competition grid where you will visually present your analysis. You can do that by
using a table in Infinity.

Here’s a product differentiation example from Infinity.

1. We created feature segments such as Structure, Views, Attributes, Customization,

Usability, Design, Pricing, etc. Each segment is a separate item.
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