Apps (that is, applications on the mobile) have redefined commerce. With the consumer becoming more mobile savvy, companies are scouting for personnel who are comfortable in this space and are ready to learn and innovate constantly.
The jobs that have seen the most radical change are those of product managers and marketers. They are now required to learn how to build brands, create marketing campaigns, and measure them — all by using mobile apps.
Whether your company is digitally driven or not, a product manager will get busy integrating either the front-end of product development through apps or the customer transaction step (or sale closure) through apps.
Other processes, such as testing, obtaining customer feedback and tracking customer satisfaction, can also be done using this powerful software. All these make mobile applications not just a tool, but a channel for growth. They serve as a platform for communication, carrying out transactions, time management and e-commerce, among other things.
Here are some things all product managers need to learn:
~ Research consumer behaviour differently
Gone are the days when market research was conducted as a reactive response by organisations to understand consumers’ needs. Today, there is a need for the information to be real-time and interactive. Mobile apps are just the right tool to enable that.
To do this successfully, the process of training researchers and designing questionnaires, needs to change.
~ Cross-functional effort on product design
Due to the nature of inputs from various stakeholders (customers, vendors, trade, sales-force, R&D), the speedy response needs to translate into product design that reflects a holistic understanding. Is your product manager capable of that?
~ Understanding that aesthetics are as important as content
Today, the user wants it all — form and function, ease and accuracy, instant gratification, and also long-term reliability. This means that every interface with the consumer is an opportunity to build the brand. The company cannot divorce the role of the user interface, either through a website or a Facebook page, with that of a mobile app that performs a specific function.
This means the product manager has to be comfortable with all social media platforms, and understand that there will be information overlap between various media.
~ Evaluating media with new metrics
The aforementioned point on being social-media savvy means that the product manager should also know newer ways of evaluating the effectiveness of apps. What worked yesterday need not be relevant today.
A manager may look at metrics such as the pace of app downloads, time taken for a full navigation of the app, volume of app-based transactions, retention of apps by customers, and the like — as the measures for the performance of the mobile application. These too will have to be stitched into a manager’s media plan evaluation.
These are some ways the role of product managers is changing. Of course, there are a lot of challenges that they need to cope with technically, right from syncing with the operating system of the mobile to creating a UI for customer engagement.
In the words of the Coca-Cola Marketing VP Wendy Clarke: “If your plans do not include a mobile app, then they are not complete”.