Growth Hacking for Product Managers by Chris Long

Chris Long, Product and Growth Leader and part of the new product development team at Booking.com, introduced the ProductTank community of Karlsruhe to processes and models to drive product growth.

Growth and Product Management

Chris says that product managers often are unaware of their responsibility in the growth process. Although many areas in a business affect growth (product, marketing, engineering, data, design), the product manager is first and foremost responsible for the success of their product. A successful product, says Chris, is one that creates value for its users. Growth is getting more people experience this value.

How do we drive growth? Chris tells us more about the concept of “growth hacking”, where hacking means “finding shortcuts, easy solutions in a short period of time”.

What to do?

Define your Fundamentals of Growth.

Chris suggests you start with the following:

Define Your Users’ Value

What about your product creates value for your users? What are its most important, beneficial aspects? Remember that value can change over time.

Define Your Metric(s)

How do you measure value? What metric should you grow? How do you measure the progress? Be careful not to make your metrics your target, keep the user’s value in mind. Defining counter metrics can be helpful.

Try Roofshots Instead of Moonshots

Make small, continuous changes to your product instead of big and risky ones. What is the smallest change you can make in order to create the biggest possible impact for the user in the shortest period of time? Growth is the series of Roofshots.

Watch the video to get more details on why product is the foundation of growth and how and where to apply the fundamentals in order to drive growth.