Product Management For Dummies

Chapter 5

Working to Understand Who Your Customer Is

IN THIS CHAPTER

Developing customer segments

Creating and using personas

Getting a handle on customer visits

Customers are the lifeblood of a product manager. They give you the information you need to create and market products. However, product managers make decisions on the best kind of customers to target depending on all the attributes of their product including, but not limited to the benefits, the features that support those benefits and the price. In this section, the focus is on defining a customer segment and then sharing that information in an effective way within the company. Key terms that you use are target markets, segmentation, and personas. The goal is to develop a shortcut in communicating both within your teams and outside the company. Accomplishing this work usually involves direct contact with customers, so in addition to the market research section in Chapter 6, there is additional material here on how to get the most out of each customer visit.

Moving from Markets to Segments

Before diving into a discussion of segments, you need to understand some very basic marketing terminology that drives the rest ...