Product Collective - 🚑 Revive your product

Reigniting a stale product

Everyone who is familiar with the product life cycle knows that the fourth stage in that cycle is decline. That lends an air of inevitability that eventually your product will stop performing as you would like it. And while product decline may be inevitable doesn’t mean it has to happen right now. Here are some ways that you can extend the life of your product, and sometimes even your company.

15 Ways to revive a failed product. In product management, it is inevitable to face failure. There are plenty of reasons including bad product-market fit, losses in sales, competitor pricing, brand value, or lack of customer service success. To revive a failed product, you need to understand why the product is failing and put a plan in place to change its fortunes. Niyathi Rao suggests 15 strategies you can use to revive a failed product.
(via @SmartKarrot)

9 Turnaround strategies to revive a failed product or service. 
If you flash your mind back to five, ten, fifteen years ago, you can probably remember some products that existed then but have ceased to exist now. The manufacturers of those products had reasonable explanations for discontinuing the products. But that doesn’t make up for the many years of effort and resources thrown out the window. As a product person you don’t want a product you’ve spent time and money on getting sucked out of the market. Instead of discontinuing a product completely because it’s not performing well in the market, Uday Tank suggests some steps you can take to revive it.
(via @applegazette)

Continues below...

Reinvigorate your stale app before it's too late

In this week’s newsletter, we’re talking about reinvigorating stale products as something that’s a good idea to do. But if your product happens to be an app in Apple’s App Store – it’s something you have to do. 

Back in April, Apple started removing apps from its App Store altogether if they hadn’t been updated in quite some time. The news upset many app developers, including indie developers who had fully functional games and apps that were removed. Those apps simply hadn’t been updated in over a year, which caused them to get flagged by Apple’s App Improvement system – whether the apps were still functional or not. 

It does raise a big question, though…

What makes an app stale? And when should you do something about it?

In the specific case with Apple’s App Store, Apple decided to define that by the last time the app was updated. Even if your product isn’t on the App Store, though, your customers are likely noticing if your product hasn’t been updated in quite some time. While they don’t have the power to pull your product down altogether, they may have the power to simply move on from your product. 

The question of when to do something about it is a tricky one. I’d argue that you should always be working towards ensuring your product isn’t stale. Your product is never “done” – it only evolves. 

But one thing is for sure – you don’t want to wait until it’s too late. Otherwise, you may find yourself scrambling like many app developers in the past who saw their entire products evaporate right before their eyes.

SAVE $100 IF YOU REGISTER TODAY
Running pop-up sales isn't something we do very often for INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, but we wanted to run a little experiment today. If you register for your pass to INDUSTRY at any point today or over the weekend and use the code POPUP100 -- you'll save $100 off of your pass. After the weekend, though, that code expires.

You won't be disappointed if you take us up on this, though. With 3 full days with some of today's top product leaders, practitioners, bestselling authors -- and even award-winning filmmaker, Mark Duplass -- we're confident that INDUSTRY is the best value for any product event you'll find (with or without the discount!). This pop-up sale is only for this weekend -- so take advantage of it while you can!

4 Reasons Your product Isn’t selling and what to do about it. As a good product manager, you routinely monitor key metrics that track the performance of your product only to find your product isn’t selling over a period of time. Sure, you didn’t expect product sales to take off like a rocket ship, but your product’s been on the market awhile and sales are dismal. What should you do next? Well, the answer depends on a variety of factors. Angela Hausman discusses 4 factors contributing to poor product sales and what you can do about them.
(via @MarketingLetter)

Survival road mapping: How to Product Manage in a failing company. Sometimes what looks like a failing product might be the sign of a bigger problem - a failing company. If you find yourself in this situation, it may be too late for the best Product Management practices such as the perfect Product-Market Fit, kick-ass prioritization frameworks, and Lean Product plays. J.A. Becker suggests you try survival road mapping. It's a suitable alternative when all the rules have flown out the window now that your company is failing.
(via @JABecker16)

18 Ways to revive a failed product or Service. Bubble Wrap was created in 1957 as a trendy wallpaper. That product failed, so they tried to market it as insulation for greenhouses and homes. That was better, but it wasn’t until IBM used Bubble Wrap to protect computer shipments that the product succeeded. Stories of successful products that failed at first should easily inspire us to take stock when faced with a product failure. It is indeed possible to re-launch a failed or sluggish product and revive a failing business. Andre Palko describes 18 things your organization can do to prevent product failure.
(via @andrepalko)

The Role of an AI Product Manager

AI is a lifecycle that requires the integration of data, machine learning models, and the software around it. It covers everything from scoping and designing to building and testing all the way through to deployment — and eventually requires frequent monitoring. AI Product managers need to ensure that data scientists are delivering results in efficient ways so business counterparts can understand, interpret, and use it to learn from. This includes everything from the definition of the problem, the coverage and quality of the data set and its analysis, to the presentation of results and the follow-up. In this discussion, we'll cover all of this — plus, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of your own!

Product Manager, Home Depot, Atlanta, GA, USA, Remote
Senior Product Manager, Home Depot, Atlanta, GA, USA, Remote
Product Management Manager, Home Depot, Atlanta, GA, USA, Remote

1. A newsletter each and every Friday centered around an important product topic, like roadmapping, strategy, and analytics.
2. Access to a thriving Slack group with thousands of others to share advice, tips and get feedback on your work.
3. Plus, invitations to exclusive video chats, special member privileges at the conferences we hold in the United States and Europe, and more!