#40 Prioritize The Gap
The purpose of mapping your community journey is to recognize the gaps. The gaps help you identify and prioritize your product strategy.
If you're focusing a ton of energy into growing an audience, but you don't have a strong journey to send them through, then you're wasting time and energy.
That doesn't mean you have to have every product and step thought through, but ideally you have some way to connect your new community members to a paid product.
The methodology I teach helps you identify which products to build and focus your energy on so that you aren't making those "Broke Ass Decisions". The steps:
Scrappy Research
Community Journey Map
Product Strategy
Develop & Test Products
*repeat*
Three reasons to create a product strategy
01 Prioritize With Purpose
Product strategies help you prioritize your initiatives and product ideas objectively.
You have a ton of brilliant ideas... but without a clear strategy, it's like trying to juggle too many balls at once.
By prioritizing strategically, you can focus on the most impactful ideas that align with your long-term goals.
02 See The Big Picture
A product strategy enables you to take a step back, look at the macro view of your business, and identify the gaps in your community journey.
Maybe there's an opportunity to enhance the onboarding experience or add a product later in the journey.
It will help you better serve your customers, increasing your retention & LTV ($$$$$$).
03 Fuel Your Marketing Calendar
Product strategies aren't just about developing amazing products... they play a vital role in creating a marketing calendar.
With a clear product strategy, you can align your marketing efforts with your product roadmap to crush your revenue goals.
The #1 Marketing Mistake
Founders often jump straight to the marketing calendar and let that guide what products to develop... working backwards from cash injections.
That's backwards – we need to let our product strategies guide our marketing calendars to build a sustainable business that serves customers longer.
I use this same process with clients at both small and large brands. The only thing that changes is the scale... so as you watch it, think about the scale of your business and where you might "zoom your map" to.
In this video I share how to use your journey map to identify which products to focus on when, and then align that to your annual marketing calendar.
If you're new here and want to learn more about the scrappy research that fueled my community journey map, watch this video.
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