Operational planning for a product: the focus is on ideas, not writing plans

To put it simply, if you are given a product, how should you plan for it? How should we think comprehensively and orderly?

First, let me talk about the overall idea. The order is as follows:

1. Product Positioning
2. Target user portrait and needs analysis
3. Core indicators
4. Operational Strategy
5. Specific measures and KPI breakdown

Here are the details:

1. Product positioning

There is a sentence pattern that can be applied, for example:

In what kind of scenario, what kind of product form should be used to meet what needs of what users.

There are four whats here, which are four core issues. You can try to apply them. Each situation may be different, so it may not be completely applicable. It doesn’t matter if one element is missing.

2. Target users and needs analysis

That is, who are the target users, what kind of people are they, what are their daily living habits and habits of using Internet products, and what are their demands. Product positioning and target users depend on your understanding and keen judgment of the industry, population and market.

3. Core indicators

The importance of the first two steps is to know what this product and project is about. The next step is to determine: what kind of indicators can measure the effectiveness of doing this thing. This indicator is not about KPI-only, which allows the team to achieve the goal by cheating, but this indicator is the direction we are going to do this thing.

There will be different roles in the team, such as product, technology, operation, and design, and everyone’s work content is different; even the operation team will be divided into different directions, such as user operation , event operation, and content operation. These people all serve the product and hope to contribute their efforts to push the product forward. But the problem is that if everyone works in different directions, it may cause unnecessary internal friction or resistance. So this indicator actually points out a direction for the entire team, allowing everyone to work in the same direction.

It should be noted that this indicator is a core indicator, such as DAU or GMV; then it needs to be broken down into secondary indicators, so that it can correspond to different roles or directions in the team, and become everyone's KPI. Since the core indicators and secondary indicators have a corresponding logical relationship, we can ensure that everyone's overall goal remains unchanged.

For example, if the core goal is DAU, and the secondary indicators are new activations and retention, then new activations are the secondary indicators, which correspond to the channel operation or event operation team. If necessary, it can be further divided into three levels of indicators. As long as it is helpful to the project, there is no problem.

4. Operational Strategy

For example, just like leading troops to war or a football match, there will be an overall tactic, and this tactic will be very simple to express, probably just one or two sentences. Back to the operational strategy, the same principle applies, that is, what tactics you use to operate the product well, so a summary of one or two sentences is enough.

Let’s take another example. Suppose a boy wants to pursue a girl, how should he do it? The method is to first understand what the girl likes and cater to her preferences, so that you have a chance to slowly approach her, build trust, and finally develop feelings. This is the strategy.

Let me give you another example of operation. I want to build an app. The core indicator is DAU. The operation strategy is:

Attract new customers through channel operations and event operations, improve retention by establishing a core user system and brand column planning, and then distribute high-quality content to new media channels to enhance the brand.

5. Specific measures and KPI breakdown

The next step is how to do it. It needs to be listed in great detail, detailed enough to guide execution and even allow for project management. Therefore, this part of the content is the largest in terms of the amount of text.

I can't send you my plan, but I can describe the general outline. The specific measures are likely to be divided into several parts, such as:

• User operations, including how to attract new users, what channels to use, what recruitment activities to conduct, how to manage incentives and retention, etc., should be explained with specific methods;
• Content operation, how to standardize positioning and tone, what are the update specifications, what are the brand columns, etc.;
• Similarly, there are event operations, brand operations, channel operations, etc.

After writing these specific measures, follow up with KPIs.

At this time, it should be a secondary or tertiary indicator. There are several dimensions. One is to be formulated by month, such as October, November, and December; the second is by indicators, such as new additions, next-day retention, and number of comments; the third is by people, for example, how many people is Robin Li? How much is Ma Huateng? How much is Jack Ma? This is the specific goal.

At this point, the entire plan or idea has been explained, but you can add a "little tail" later, just simply list it, which is "product requirements."

Based on the current status of the product, list the functional support that the product needs to have in order to execute the above operational plan. There is no need for too much description, just a prospect and mention it briefly.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

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