What Is A Product Strategy?
A product strategy is a plan that outlines the goals and actions for a product or product line. It helps organizations focus their resources and efforts on the most important aspects of their product to achieve desired results. A product strategy also helps align teams and stakeholders around a common vision and set of goals.
What's Included In This Product Strategy Template?
This template is pre-filled with examples, which you can use as inspiration for your product strategy.
- 3x Focus Areas
- 9x Objectives
- 9x Projects
- 18x KPIs
Once you have set your template, you can also create dashboards for real-time performance monitoring.
And yes—you get free access with no credit card required. ✅
Who Is This Product Strategy Template For?
This Product Strategy Template is designed for leaders and teams from organizations looking to create a clear and actionable plan for their product or product line. It is suitable for teams at any stage of product development and can be customized to fit the specific needs and goals of the organization.
How Is This Product Strategy Template Relevant To Your Organization?
Whether you are launching a new product or looking to improve an existing one, this Product Strategy Template can help you define your goals, identify key actions, and measure progress. By using this template, you can ensure that your product development efforts are aligned with your overall business objectives and that you have a clear plan in place for achieving success. This template can also help you communicate your product strategy to stakeholders and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals.
Key Elements Of Your Product Strategy
Before you dive into the nitty-gritty details of your product strategy, it's crucial to establish a strong foundation that will pave the way for success. By focusing on a few key elements, you'll enhance your chances of effectively implementing your strategy and achieving your goals.
Understand your customers
Gaining a deep understanding of their needs, desires, and pain points will help you develop the right products that will appeal to them. Take the time to gather insights about your target audience through market research, surveys, interviews, and customer feedback.
When you know what features they’ll look for, you can position your products to meet their expectations—leading to higher sales, repeat purchases, customer referrals, and positive brand impression. You can also address any reservations they may have and better educate them about the benefits of your offer.
Putting yourself in your customers' shoes will go a long way in shaping your product strategy.
Analyze competitors
To position yourself effectively, you need to understand who you're up against and how your offerings compare. Conduct a comprehensive analysis of your competitors, examining their products, pricing, distribution channels, marketing strategies, and customer base. You can check out different competitive analysis frameworks for guidance.
Analyzing the competition will help you gain valuable insights into your market positioning and identify areas where you can differentiate yourself. This knowledge will inform your product strategy and help you craft unique value propositions that set you apart from the pack.
You should also keep tabs on your competitors during the product life cycle so you can quickly adapt your product strategy and remain one step ahead.
Determine your “big-picture” vision
Take a step back and envision where you want your product or company to be in the long term. What impact do you want to make? What goals do you want to achieve?
By defining your "big-picture" vision, you'll create a guiding light that will steer your product strategy and inform your decision-making process. Write this vision in a clear sentence and share it with the entire organization.
This vision should be ambitious yet realistic, inspiring your product teams and rallying them around a common purpose.
5 Steps For Creating And Implementing A Product Strategy
1. Define clear examples of your focus areas
A focus area is a particular viewpoint that groups certain requirements set out by an organization. A recommendation from the Cascade team would be to create 4-5 key focus areas which you feel are most important to address when creating your Product Strategy. The next step would be to ask yourself: Why is this focus area important to me? What is the benefit of focusing on this viewpoint from a customer's perspective? And, of course, what is the monetary benefit of investing in such a focus area? This process is useful in identifying the key area that needs prioritization, which can become focus areas of the strategy.
For example, the focus areas in this Product Strategy Template are: Customer acquisition; Customer retention; and Product development.
2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area
A strategic objective usually has to be specific and measurable to cause enough impact and effectively explain what you want to achieve.
An example objective that could fall under the focus area of Product development could be Launch 2 new products per year.
3. Set yourself measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective
A KPI is a key performance indicator that is measurable and evaluates the success rate of an organization in relation to the task at hand. KPIs can be very industry-specific or broad and applicable across multiple industries.
An example of a KPI in this Product Strategy Template associated to the objective Launch 2 new products per year could be: Increase sales revenue from new products to 20%.
4. Implement related projects to achieve the set KPIs
Projects are ways in which the objective can be achieved, but more so, closely tie in with ways in which organizations can make sure they are working towards their KPIs.
A project example for the objective Launch 2 new products per year could be: Conduct market research and prototype testing.
5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy
Make sure your strategy is front and center with Cascade. You can plan, execute, measure, and adapt your strategy in one easy-to-use platform and make sure your strategic plan is connected to on-the-ground execution.
What Are The Benefits Of A Product Strategy Template?
✅ It provides a framework for your strategic plan: A product strategy template serves as a blueprint for organizing your thoughts, ideas, and actions. It offers a clear structure that helps you outline the key components of your strategy and ensure that all essential elements are considered and addressed, so you can easily communicate the plan and measure success.
✅ It clarifies your vision: A well-designed template prompts you to articulate your vision and mission in a concise and focused manner so everyone can be on the same page as to where you’re headed. By clearly stating your purpose and desired outcomes, various departments involved will have a common ground in developing, marketing, and promoting the product.
✅ It helps you work faster: With this product strategy template, you can forego long-winded meetings since product managers and team members can easily provide updates on the development process. This efficiency enables you to accelerate the strategy creation process and allocate more time to implementation and execution.
✅ It ensures strategic alignment: With this template, you can promote alignment within your product teams and encourage cross-functional collaboration to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page. By aligning different product teams and departments around a unified strategy, you enhance coordination, minimize conflicts, and maximize the chances of success.
In Cascade, you can see every plan made in your workspace from a bird's eye view:
%20(1).png)
✅It improves accountability: With this template, you can easily define responsibilities and set measurable objectives. You can establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones, helping you track progress and hold individuals and product teams accountable for their contributions. This transparency promotes a culture of ownership and motivates everyone involved to deliver on their commitments.
✅It helps you identify potential problems: As a product manager, you should be able to consider potential challenges, obstacles, and risks that may arise during the execution of your strategy. This proactive approach allows you to anticipate problems, develop contingency plans, and mitigate risks on time. By addressing potential issues upfront, you increase the chances of successful execution and minimize the impact of unexpected setbacks.
More related product templates
- Product Release Plan Template
- Product Marketing Strategy Template
- User Adoption Strategy Template
- Product Portfolio Strategy Template
- Category Management Strategy Template
Product Strategy Template FAQ
How much does the Product Strategy Template cost?
Exactly $0. The Product Strategy Template is free for product managers and their teams. You and your product team can collaborate on a free plan for up to four members. The free plan gives you unlimited strategies, metrics, and basic dashboards.
Is the Product Strategy Template for enterprises only?
Even small product teams can benefit from the Product Strategy Template. Enterprises will also hugely benefit from the product strategy template by cross-linking various departments into one cohesive and collaborative dashboard.
How do I execute my product strategy?
Creating a product strategy is half the battle. To win the game, you need to successfully execute your strategic plan. The best way to do so is by using strategy execution software. This tool lets you plan, execute, and measure your efforts all from a unified dashboard, so you can keep everyone on the same page and easily track progress.
With strategy execution software, you can say goodbye to the stress of managing multiple tools together. Everything gets integrated into a single platform so you can save on time and costs, and focus on execution and performance, improving efficiency.
Use this Product Strategy Template and launch your strategy in Cascade; it's $0 forever.