A start-up is generally finance-restricted, which means a particular individual would be taking up multiple roles. The product development manager can adorn those roles, which would put a lesser burden on financial health. The professional would need to show multi-disciplinary talents. They need to focus on product development and marketing, to reach the target audience quickly.
The key areas that the product development manager should focus on are building trust with customers and improve the customer base with useful and quality products. To accomplish these targets, the manager should handle growth hacking for start-ups. It will allow the professional not only to provide the best product but also effectively reaching the customers.
Who Is A Product Development Manager?
A product development manager can be a software engineer, QA tester or UX designer, who can identify new opportunities for launched product’s development and exposure. They would be responsible for improving the brand’s image and meet the client’s expectations, by working in coordination with product development engineer. It would help to develop a strong foothold in the market. Market research, market analysis for the present trend and understanding the customers’ expectations are a few key areas that these professionals need to deal with.
Most companies would look for product development manager‘s skills such as:
- Problem-solving: Analyze available data to find a sustainable solution for the complex problems
- Intentional Communication: Able to communicate with clients or customers, online and offline, across various platforms
- Masterful organization: Possessing strong organization management skills to keep up with the decided deadlines; yet staying within the budget.
What Does Growth Hacker Do?
A growth hacker would think out of the box for new and creative ways to reach and retain customers, grow, and scale business to new heights. The professionals would experiment with the latest technologies to improve the product. They would contact the end-users to understand on-ground reality and bring in changes through technical skills.
Similarities of Product Development Manager and Growth Hacker
Both the roles are quite critical in a start-up and could make the difference between the success and failure of the product or service. Key functions performed by the two professionals that would help growth marketing consultant to provide impressive solutions include:
- Analyze user behaviour: The growth marketer studies every part of the sales funnel, while the product manager scans every action performed to discover user experience. Both these actions would give an idea of what works and improvement scope. Both roles aim to improve conversion rate and retention.
- Users’ wow moment: Every start-up company’s dream is to create those wow moments. The dual roles would help understand the product value and force customers to use it; thus, encouraging them to create wow moment more frequently.
- Plan improvements to retain users: Professionals holding these key roles always try to bring in changes, which improve the product performance constantly, and meet customer’s expectations. The changes always focus on converting leads to customers and increasing the size of the customer base.
Product Development Manager Vs Growth Hacker
The key differences between the two roles are:
- The product development manager would collect data to analyse user’s behaviour, while the growth hacker would collaborate with influencers and build a good target online community.
- The former role requires them to conduct surveys, while the latter get involved with guest blogging and writing case studies.
- The manager would inform customers about the updates and provide customers with better product navigation. The hacker would create online videos and use social media platforms to reach customers.
The present world is dependent on the digit world; it does not mean that one can ignore traditional techniques. Start-ups should understand that a product development manager and growth hacker target the same goal, but work on different principles. It is important for management to define the roles clearly.
