Business goal vs product strategy

What is a business goal?

• Business Goal: What a business attempts to accomplish in a set period of time
  • It’s important because it determines the scope of the work and helps create alignment in a company to ensure the efforts of various teams are focused in the same direction
  • Summary: what do we want to do in a certain timeframe
    • What do we measure to determine whether we accomplished it (kpi)

Business goal components

A business goal is typically composed of the high-level goal that the company sets and the objective to achieve

• Goal: Illustrates the direction you want to head towards
• Objectives: The specific, measurable target you intend to achieve.

Business Goal: Good Example

• Business Goal: User Conversion
  • We want to improve our checkout page conversion rate from 30% to 50% over the next 6 months.
  • Goal: improve our checkout page conversion
  • Objective: from 30% to 50% over the next 6 months

Business Goal: Needs Work example

• Business Goal: User Retention
  • Our goal is to increase the % of users signed up with the premium (paid) subscription plan
    • Goal: increase new user sign up
    • Objective: unclear

What is a product strategy?

What customer problems do we need to solve to achieve business goal. We use the product to solve these problems. Product strategy articulates the customers’ problems we’re going to solve to achieve business goal

• Given a business goal, there are multiple potential ways for us to achieve the goal. This is where product strategy comes into play.
• Product Strategy: Articulates how you plan to achieve the goal. A clear product strategy is important because it creates alignment among teams around “the path towards the business goal”

Business Goal vs. Product Strategy

• Business goals focus on creating alignment around the high-level “WHAT”
• Product strategy focuses on creating alignment around the high-level “HOW”

Note: There is usually a product vision that helps paint the picture around the “WHY”

Business Goal vs Product Strategy

Business Goal vs. Product Strategy: Example 1

• “We want to retain more of our users, increasing our user retention rate (% of users active on the platform after 3 months) from 12% to 20%, by making our platform their one-stop-shop for all things related to finance management”
  • Business Goal
    • Goal: retain our users
    • Objective: increasing our user retention rate from 12% to 20%
  • Product Strategy: making our platform their one-stop-shop for all things related to finance management

Business Goal vs. Product Strategy: Example 2

• “We want to attract more new customers to sign up for our product, aiming to increase our new user sign up rate from 2% to 5% in the next quarter. We will achieve this goal by investing in creating paid and organic exposures of our service.”
  • Business Goal:
    • Goal: attract more new customers to sign up for our product
    • Objective: increase our new user sign up rate from 2% to 5% in the next quarter
  • Product Strategy: investing in creating paid and organic exposures of service

Some of the graphics and examples were taken from Udacity’s Growth PM course.