3 tips on how to make Product Manager’s job easier (with examples)

Product managers are responsible for the product planning and execution throughout the Product Lifecycle. They gather and prioritize product and user requirements, define the product vision, and work closely with engineering, sales, marketing, and support… The Product Manager’s job also includes ensuring that the product supports the company’s overall strategy and goals.

In other words, Product Managers have lots of different responsibilities that often vary from company to company. Here are some tips that can make the Product Managers’ job a bit less complex.

1) Know your users:

Users are what make your product livable and without understanding the way they think, half of your efforts are meaningless…As much as we would like to think that the users think exactly the way we do, they actually don’t. That’s why getting to know your users is crucial.

Get Actionable Feedback:

Want to know what your users actually think about your products? It’s pretty simple, ask them! You may think that surveys are kind of useless nowadays because they are long, boring and nobody has time to waste answering them. You’re not entirely wrong, but surveys are not your only option here.

The best alternative to boring surveys is Feedback Forms. They are dynamic, interactive, and come with engaging and attractive designs. They are also easily customizable which makes it possible for you to adapt them so they can perfectly match your branding.

The number of Feedback Forms platforms is increasing every day and they all have pretty much the same features and offer the same advantages.

The one that stands out from the crowd is Feedier as it makes it possible for you to create gamified Feedback Forms that your users will actually enjoy filling out. It is extremely important to engage the respondent and get them to answer all your questions because otherwise, you wouldn’t get the data that you need to make the right decisions about your product.

Feedier also comes with Feedback Forms templates which will make your life way easier. You can try the Product Feedback Form template for free here.

Create users persona:

One of the most important parts of building products is identifying who you are building the product for. This will help you focus on the groups of users that matter the most, and ensure that the product meets their expectations.

Defining Personas will save your day. Personas are defined in the early stages of the design process and they guide the project team throughout the product development process.

They are essential as well for any consumer research involving the product. Identifying the profile of future users helps in the recruitment of a representative sample of the population for an effective and realistic product testing session.

Xtensio makes defining user personas super easy by offering multiple editable templates. The tool makes it possible for you to create visual and fun personas that you can print out and hang in your office for a daily inspiration.

2) Use automation

When we hear the word automation we often think about the industrial production process and all the technical and mechanical operations. In fact, its scope of application is quite wide and it has even reached the field of marketing other the past few years.

Marketing automation is all about using software to automate different activities. The goal is to automate repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and even ad campaigns — not just for the sake of efficiency, but to also provide a more personalized experience for every user.

If you think that marketing automation has nothing to do with you as a product manager you’re not entirely right.

In the first part of the article, we talked about the importance of knowing your users and how Feedback Forms can totally save your day. Automation will make it possible for you to send pulse feedback forms at the right time without having to repeat the same tasks over and over again.

With Feedier you can easily schedule campaigns and send customized emails directly through the platform to reach your user’s inbox. You can edit the content and add dynamic fields to quickly pull in contact details into your messages instead of typing them out every time. This will help you get a higher response rate which also means more valuable and actionable insights.

3) Build a product roadmap

Roadmaps are different from other planning methods like lists and bug reports. It is rather a tool used by product managers to communicate the what and the why of a product and gives you a visual map of the product’s progression over time.

Building a product roadmap is very important especially when it comes to strategic planning. Roadmapping gives you a clear idea about the step that you should take next and what you and your team should prioritize.

This will actually make it possible for you to visually communicate the direction of your product to internal teams and external partners which highly enhances collaboration.

With Product Plan, you can easily plan and visualize your strategy to create alignment across your entire organization. The advantage of this tool is that it allows Product Managers to create attractive roadmaps that will help them plan, visualize, and communicate the product strategy.