Neil Grasso — November 27, 2019 Product discovery is the process of analyzing segments of your target audience in an effort to develop products or services that would best suite their needs.
No your industry or budget, the product discovery process is one that every business should consider when looking to become a disruptor in the industry.
To provide a clear example of the process, I want to shift the focus to ourselves – the Newswire team. We recently developed a new service based on the high demand for a specific need in our industry.
Let’s jump into Newswire’s Product Discovery process to find out how the Earned Media Advantage Guided Tour came to be.
Empathize
The first step of an organized product discovery process is to emphasize with the pain points of your customers.
For our team, we recognized that many customers felt lost when it came to using PR software. Whether it was our press release distribution software, or our Media Database, or our Media Watch service, there always seemed to be a steady stream of customers that would reach out to us with either technical or strategic questions regarding the platform.
We knew we needed to take action to resolve these questions, the majority of which stemmed from users feeling lost or confused.
Analyze
This step calls for a deeper look into the specific issues that customers are experiencing in the industry. What kinds of questions are they asking? What are the technical and strategic questions that they have?
For us at Newswire, we found that there was a lot of confusion among customers when it came to operating PR software by themselves. There is a certain learning curve that comes to learning how to operate any software – but this process can be time-consuming. Additionally, we found that many of our customers were a bit lost when it came to leveraging the power of our platforms to maximize their company’s reach.
Brainstorm
Take a look at the pain points. What kind of product or service will resolve the vast majority of them?
The main issue our team faced was guiding customers through both the learning curve of our software and through the PR campaign process. We needed to create a new product or service that would reduce the overall confusion that was overwhelmingly present in the industry among users.
Produce
Develop a product that allows your audience to overcome the challenges they outlined during the initial stages.
The Earned Media Advantage Guided Tour program was exactly what the industry needed. We needed to have the opportunity to work closely with our customers to get a feel for their brand and help them develop and implement comprehensive media and marketing communications utilities.
With this new service, we were able to help our customers with the technical side of the software as we would run their campaigns in-house. If they are to use any of the software on their own, our Earned Media Advantage Strategists are there to help guide them through the process of a campaign.
These same team members are there to help with the strategic aspects of campaigns, including story ideation, geo-targeted distribution, beat tracking, media monitoring, and more.
Continuous Discovery
Within your new product or service, repeat the process! New products like these will draw attention to your brand as they begin to resolve pain points across the industry. This is a great opportunity to gain new customers as well as inquire about new pain points that can restart the cycle.
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