A strategy is a deliberate, prioritized plan that can lead you to a goal. She helps answer questions:

• What result do you want to get and what are you aiming for?
• Why are you creating a specific product?
• What’s the best way to achieve your goals?

So that the developed application does not turn out to be a waste of time and your budget, it is important to take into account all the information received not only before starting development or during testing, but also for further promoting the mobile application.

Step 1. Get started

Strategy is work that requires the collection of a lot of data.

Here are a few points to get you started:

Market analysis. What do users want, what do they need, and where can they find growth points? By starting with external analysis, you can work around your own misconceptions and find new opportunities. Of course, this method is best combined with your insider knowledge and data. Keep up with the news in your industry, conduct customer interviews and research your competitors for a complete picture of the market. Think about how your application differs from competitors in the market and what user problems it solves.

User interviews. Talk to your target audience and users. Ask about their lifestyles, problems, jobs and needs using empathy and intuition.

Data analysisFind trends and patterns in metrics by user type, country, platform, and industry. Write down the expected result, taking into account the amount of effort that the project may require. This could be something other than revenue or engagement: for example, customer satisfaction (short term), development speed, etc.

Article: How to upgrade CustDev using user interviews

Step 2. Determine the criteria for success

What is success and how can you measure it? Many people express it in terms of increasing revenue or audience engagement. These metrics are important, but not the goal. Success criteria should take into account both the long and short term and reflect a clear vision for product development.

For example, if you only have high user engagement in your success metrics, you may be missing out on other opportunities, so aim for complex strategies.

Answer yourself the following questions to avoid myopia in terms of goals:

• What is our mission? Why is this important and how do you broadcast the mission through the app? Try saying out loud, “What will the world be like if comes true?”
• What basic human need do you satisfy?
• What success rates can be calculated in 6 months, 3 years? Different periods of time will help answer different questions.

Step 3. Select ideas

When you have a clear idea of ​​the goal and the necessary information, it is time to form your own vision and strategy. You may have a lot of good ideas, but it is not enough to simply distribute them on a timeline – you cannot build a long-term plan out of this.

Here are some common mistakes when formulating a strategy:

Do only what the users / team / managers ask for
This is a safe path: it helps to easily create a roadmap and makes everyone happy at once, but only in the short term. Most of the time, people will ask for incremental improvements rather than leaps and bounds, but this is a dangerous strategy: the feedback from such users will be short-sighted and unlikely to lead you to your goal. Don’t ignore this source of feedback, but know that it is more about customer retention than about strategic change.

One big brilliant idea
Sometimes we fall in love with an idea so much that we want to go to great lengths, ignoring the risks. This strategy can be used if the company is small and has not yet had time to gain a foothold in the market. For example, the decision to go into VR technology in most cases will be the wrong strategy, since it is associated with great risks without the right amount of data and testing – this is not a reasonable risk.

Change everything at once
This is often due to technical debt and the need to clean up a large codebase. Changes to the product and code base are necessary, but doing everything at once without clear goals and results is dangerous and time-consuming. A new design can lead to frustration among users and the team, and in the long term, nothing will change.

Step 4. Visualize the strategy

Presentations and other documents to summarize and publish the product strategy provide clarity and concreteness without being distracted by visuals. Typically, a strategy document is 2 to 6 pages long with the following sections:

• Key players: who will implement the strategy.
• Context: Research and analysis, user interviews, and other data you relied on to create your strategy.
• Plan: what activities it includes, and why you chose them.
• Metrics for measuring results: short and long term indicators of success.
• Key risks and their mitigation: is the company ready for such risks and can they be controlled.
• Collaboration: What kind of help you need from other teams and partners.
• Evidence that your strategy will be successful.

Analysis-based and well-articulated mobile app marketing strategy – the basis for the success of the product. Think about strategic positioning, learn all about your target audience, conduct competitive analysis and define performance indicators.

Of course, real life is much more complex and includes many subtleties with limitations, and it can also be difficult to find a balance between ambitious, interesting and achievable. You can endlessly hesitate and read tons of books on strategy, but just getting started is enough to strategize and bring your best ideas to life.