Product Management
Protecting your Product Soul when the Same Product meets New People.
23 Nov 2024
When your next product is going to use your same technology but sold to new people (the Same Product strategy) the product must truly be the same. You can expect to make product changes, of course. You might add features. You might re-package and re-brand the product. You might change how you sell it. But it’s important to keep the main benefits and the core technology the same. These are the soul of your product.
If you try to change the core product concepts and sell to a new audience, you’re changing everything about the product. It’s no longer a market expansion where you use your existing knowledge for a new market. With no overlap between the old and the new, you’re not gaining leverage or efficiencies. You’re just doubling your work.
It’s easy to mess this up. You find a similar market that needs your product. But they need some tweaks. The more you dig in, the more differences you uncover and the more changes you make. Eventually, you’ve created a completely different product and sold it in a different way to different people. The new product has a different Product Soul. There’s so little overlap that the two products might as well be separate companies.
You can avoid this by identifying your product’s core value proposition. Define the Soul of your product. If you ask your customers why they buy the product, you’ll see a pattern in the responses. These patterns form the basis for your Product Soul. The further you stray from the common reasons, the more likely you’re building a completely new thing.
Use the Favorite Thing question to find what your core audience views as their most important features. Limit yourself to a few of the most mentioned ones. How many you’ll pick will depend on the depth and complexity of your product. A simple consumer product may only have one or two core features. Complex business software could have dozens. Your core feature list will be a single-digit percentage of the entire “most important” features mentioned by your ideal audience. Usually when you look at the list, sorted by how often each item is mentioned, it‘s pretty clear where the cutoff is.
Once you’ve identified these core features, you can determine what other aspects of the product can and should change to suit a new audience. As long as you keep the Product Soul the same, you can make these changes without becoming something completely new.
You identify these areas by finding out why the new audience isn’t already buying your existing product. The best way to find out is by asking them. Find people who have the problems you’re solving and find out how they solve them today. Learn why they didn’t buy your product. Find the differences between their current solution and your product. Find the common reasons the new audience doesn’t already buy from you.
These are the things you need to change to bring your product to a new audience.
You’ll probably find that a small number of your existing buyers are already part of your intended new audience. These early adopters have made your product work for them even though it wasn’t designed for them, so be careful about focusing your efforts on their needs. They probably don’t need the same things as a wider audience will.
The early adopters chose your product for the core value and didn’t see the missing or different features as deal-breakers. This means they may not value the same things at all as a wider audience does. When you talk to your target audience, if their needs diverge from the early adopters, err on the side of the wider audience.
You can avoid the mistake of changing your product so much that you drift from your core values. You can avoid this becoming an entirely new product. Figure out those core, best-fit features from your existing audience. These are the features that your ideal customers say are important. These are the Product Soul. Make sure everyone on your team understands your Product Soul. Talk about it until everyone is tired of hearing it. And as you rework your product for the new audience, make sure it has the same Soul.
What does it look like to keep the same core product, but adapt it for a new market? Look at Gillette razors.
The core value proposition for their flagship razor is 5 blades and a lubricating strip to give a close shave without irritation. That’s the Product Soul. They sell a variety of men’s products based on this platform. But they also have a line of women’s razors. The women’s razors have a different name, handles that are shaped for holding from different angles, and heads that are shaped differently. These changes are designed to better fit women. But those razors still have the core five-blade system and a lubricating strip.
They changed the design to better fit the new market. They even changed the name. But they’re still pushing the same core product idea. The same Soul.