Anand Sankar

***99% of product managers don’t understand the super effective but non obvious levers for growth. *** Growth is not just paid traffic and writing blogs and good landing pages. Some obvious and non obvious levers - 1. The basic maths says ARPU > CAC so obviously the very first lever to get channel economics work is getting your funnel conversion as high as possible to make this maths work. 2. Now let’s talk about some non obvious levers- the first big one is bundling. Build bundled offerings/build products that increase the basket size in the same transaction. What does bundling do is it increases the ARPU for users which means that you have a better chance of winning the ARPU > CAC equation. 3. Next non obvious lever is to Improve organic/direct traffic %age of your overall traffic. What this does mathematically is brings down your blended CAC across organic + paid traffic and helps you win the ARPU > CAC equation or in other words the organic traffic and orders helps you experiment with higher CAC on your paid channels. How to improve organic/direct %, well build solid products to drive repeats, invest in an SEO engine to drive organic and so forth. 4. Next non obvious lever is help your team identify users on marketing channels who tend to engage with your product more. This means defining key milestone events on your funnel - sign ups, user demonstrating intent eg add to cart etc even before the final purchase and help your team build similar audiences to these users. Relying just on the final milestone will leave you with a much smaller sample to work with and super hard to scale. 5. Finally, a key part of making the economics work is specifically working on a product strategy that heroes high ticket size products. Which means working in tandem your growth team to work out product categories where interest in those categories (either shown by search volume/potential impression volume is high) and the ticket sizes are also reasonably high. Think of a 2x2, you want products with high ticket size and reasonable interest volume. What this does is again improves ARPU while lowering CAC helping you win the equation. Follow me for high quality content, not product philosophy but practical insights https://lnkd.in/gHweK_q7 AND also here https://lnkd.in/ggUKftFq My Playbook - https://lnkd.in/gHzyN-Xc My Channel - https://lnkd.in/gs6qnNUJ

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The concept of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) has drifted away from its original intent. Today, it’s more about delivering a technically feasible product rather than a truly usable one. MVPs are often treated as a measure of output—how fast a feature can be built—rather than the outcome it creates for users. This is where many technical product teams go wrong. They focus more on the complexity of the build and delivering features than on solving real customer problems. Frameworks like the 2x2 prioritization matrix are useful for managing engineering resources and iteration cycles, but they don’t necessarily guide teams toward building the right product. The truth is, creating a product that truly meets users’ needs might be complex, and that’s okay. The problem is that many teams are more influenced by technical difficulty than by the outcome they're trying to achieve. This often happens because teams lack a deep understanding of the problem they’re solving and what their users truly need. It’s hard to build the right product when you’re not talking to customers regularly. Let's focus on three things when aiming for the right product outcome: How broad is the outcome? How narrow is the outcome? Is the outcome the right fit to solve the problem? This leads to what I call the Minimum Viable Outcome (MVO). Unlike technical MVPs, which prioritize shipping features, the MVO is all about delivering the right outcome that solves the customer’s problem. With the right feedback, constant experimentation, and incremental iteration, we can move towards the North Star—building a product that truly fits the users’ needs.

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Efficiency ≠ Efficacy ≠ Effectiveness In the context of Brand Investments #Efficiency comes in context of optimising for the channel & creative mix. Reaching the most people in your defined TG with clarity in messaging at the least cost is as plain & simple as it gets, at a fundamental level. Keep calibrating till you reach Optimisation Utopia. #Efficacy which interestingly owes its origin to the field of Pharma & Healthcare, though now ubiquitous across other disciplines, is a measure of the ability to produce a direct desired result. Direct contribution of investments to movement in marketing funnel metrics like Awareness & Consideration is how efficacy can be evaluated. Brand Health & Marketing Funnel Metrics, when used right especially in the formative years, can be of immense value but they often suffer from the ignominy of being disregarded as Vanity Metrics because that's where the nuanced difference vis-a-vis Effectiveness comes in #Effectiveness is different from Efficacy in the sense that the latter is always subject to controlled conditions & the cause-effect is fairly direct. Effectiveness is second order. RoI on Brand Investments is a great example of this. I often get asked about Brand RoI and have in the past posted on how people make it out to be a mythical beast. And I am not a big proponent of geo or timeline locked A/B style analysis when it comes to RoI measurement. I see the logic, I just feel it is extremely reductive. Instead, a better way to calculate it in my opinion would be to calculate the LTV of organic acquisitions and if you are doing long-term brand building right, this HAS to beat the LTV of acquisitions gained via Performance/Affiliates/Partnerships/Referrals. If you are in D2C, LTV calculations are fairly direct and if not, a constituted panel tracked over time for trial & retention behaviour can give you an effective surrogate. So there it is, plain & simple. Of course, like most things in marketing, you can over-complicate this and build a business out of it :)

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****As a PM, have you ever wondered every 1% improvement in 6 month retention translates into how much incremental GMV for the org. It is super important to be able to link your product levers to business outcomes and build solid plans that actually deliver value for the org.**** ** Do you want to understand how the work you do affects earnings and profitability of your organization? It is a super power that helps you understand the most important metrics for an organization and where to focus. ** Do you want a simple, easy guide on how to read earnings reports of companies - eg. PayTM, Nykaa and understand the core business numbers? ** You will be able to demystify typical jargon such as Topline, bottomline, EBITDA, COGS etc. Watch it now! https://lnkd.in/g9Q3h5uJ Follow me for high quality content, not product philosophy but practical insights https://lnkd.in/gHweK_q7 AND also here https://lnkd.in/ggUKftFq My Playbook - https://lnkd.in/gHzyN-Xc My Channel - https://lnkd.in/gs6qnNUJ #product #businessmetrics #careers

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🚀🔥 Crafting Hero Sections That Really Convert! This insightful article uncovers strategies for designing hero sections that grab attention, communicate value, and drive action. Discover how to: 1️⃣ Create clear and compelling messaging 2️⃣ Use visuals to guide user focus 3️⃣ Optimize CTAs for higher engagement How do you make your hero sections stand out? Share your thoughts and tips! #WebDesign #UXDesign #HeroSections #ConversionOptimization #UserExperience #DigitalDesign

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From Product Talk: How Can Product Leaders Support Continuous Discovery? In addition to delivering a keynote at Product at Heart, I also participated in a fireside chat at the Leadership Forum with co-organizer Petra Wille. We discussed some of the common challenges product leaders face with continuous discovery and how to overcome them. Definitely worth checking out if you’re someone who manages product people and teams. Read more: https://buff.ly/3xSVcGB ❓ What has been your biggest challenge in implementing continuous discovery practices, and how did you overcome it?

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The best journeys consist of six building blocks: 🔴 Metrics, 🟠 Personas, 🩷Journeys, 🔵 Insights, 🟣 Opportunities, 🟢 Solutions. While journeys change constantly, the key to managing the customer experience across teams is using a consistent system everyone understands. Not just your service designers. It’s just 6 of these you need to power a journey-centric workflow across your teams. 🔴 Metrics Tracking customer journey performance using data visualization of KPIs like NPS, CSAT, conversion rates, and customer effort scores. Metric building blocks can span the entire journey or measure a specific step. For example NPS can say something about the entire customer journey, while a Conversion metric will say something about customers progressing from one step to the next. 🟠 Personas Creating need-based profiles of your customers provides a useful filter for all your journeys. Personas are building blocks you use to standardize your insights. Personas are like filters to quickly segment and compare journeys. The thing I love about journeys as a business tool, is how they are typically visualizing the emotional experience for different personas based on all insights you have. (more on this on insights) 🩷 Journeys This one is the most interesting: Journey building blocks enable you to create a framework of journeys. This helps to break down complicated customer experiences into manageable pieces. Typical structure to begin with: L0: Framework journey (i.e. customer lifecycle) L1: Macro journeys (i.e. purchase experience) L2: Micro journey (i.e. buying a phone online) 🔵 Insights The most used building block of them all. Get facts from research, surveys, support tickets, VoC programs and service calls. Then synthesize these into insights in the context of your journeys. Customer Pains, Gains, and Needs. 🟣 Opportunities The opportunity is another version of the classical problem statement from service design, but in journey management it is used as a building block to prioritize against opportunities from other journeys. Insights + Journey + KPI = Opportunity for the business. 🟢 Solutions Generating new ideas or concepts to improve customer experiences is one way to use these in a journey map. A better way is to or align existing work items (like Epics, Ideas or Initiatives) to your journeys - so you can track progress from different teams - right there and then. Bonus points if you link them to opportunities. #cx #servicedesign #design #customerjourney #journeymapping

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PRODUCTHEAD: Minimalist product strategy » Balancing opportunity with strategy in the midst of competing distractions is hard » You wouldn’t let genAI write your product strategy without checking it, right? » Product strategy discovery focuses on the problem space Subscribe at producthead.news #ProductManagement #prodmgmt

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"A product roadmap is like a treasure map for pirates... except the X usually marks the spot where your initial launch date went to die." - Author Unknown #productmanagement #productmanager #productdiscovery #userresearch #customerneeds #problemsolving #innovation #humor #marketing #development #productlaunch #entrepreneur #customercentric #MVP #agile #ux #designthinking #learnontiktok #startups

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MVP—> 🚀 launching a 💩 product into the wild 🦁! Some people think of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as the minimal effort needed to launch a product; this misunderstanding usually results in a poor product. The customer experience matters: how they see, hear, feel, and interact with your product. A wrong first impression leads to churn and negative associations. Internally, a rushed MVP creates operational bottlenecks and workarounds, increasing costs and making the product rigid. The key word is "viable". An MVP should help your organisation mitigate risk by testing the product in the real world early. Some call it a Minimal, Lovable Product, focusing on solving customer problems and providing value. Products are complex. Viewing them as ecosystems rather than linear constructs helps frame the MVP. Don't waste time gold-plating; you don't know how your product will be received. Find the balance between launching early and offering a viable/lovable solution. Next time someone mentions MVP, ask: Will it scale (if needed)? Will it cause churn? Is the experience viable? What's the impact on operational costs as you grow? #mvp #mlp #product Image DALL-E using the text as a prompt, spot the hallucinations and errors 😆

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💡 Designing B2B Products is no easy ! In B2B, there are multiple user personas, each solving different problems. Plus, the buyer and user are often not the same. 💡 Are you also curious about how design makes a product stand out? In my latest podcast with Dhwani Shah,Product Designer at Happay we discussed about various topics like 🎨 What is Product Design and UI/UX Design? 🔄 The difference between UI, UX, Product, and Visual Designers 🛠️ Skills needed to become a UI/UX Designer 🧰 Tools used by UI/UX Designers and the Product Designer toolkit 🗺️ A step-by-step roadmap to becoming a Product Designer 📚 Free resources to learn design 📁 Building a Product Designer portfolio 📊 UI/UX Designer case studies 🎤 Interview rounds for UI/UX Design roles 💼 Designing B2B products Watch the full podcast here: https://lnkd.in/g8weg4D6 #userexperience #uiux #ux #fintech #design

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Best books and/or courses on Product Marketing?

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Can Gen AI bring scale and value for advertisers' on Shopping Ads? Yes, it can! Excited to share a global-first Gen AI case study on Shopping product title optimizations for 'Tira Beauty', a Beauty Personal Care (BPC) advertiser in India. The Gen AI solution helped improve operational efficiency, product discoverability & online sales, ROI for the client. Watch out this space for more updates! Jui Shinde Poorva Bhatikar Sajeet Nair Ragini Sundarraman Asif Unneen K P Jenny Shetty Anjani Kumar Thakur Sambhrami Patil

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Think Product Management is All Digital? Think Again! In today’s world, the lines between digital and physical experiences are blurring. A successful product manager must craft seamless journeys that connect every touchpoint, ensuring users feel valued and engaged, no matter where they interact with your brand. As Product Managers, let's broaden our horizons and consider the entire customer journey, both online and offline, to create truly exceptional products and services. How are you integrating physical and digital experiences in your product strategy? Let’s discuss in the comments below. PS: Co-author #GeminiPro #ProductManagement #UserExperience #CustomerJourney

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Products are built on needs, not asks. We understand that the most impactful products don’t just respond to customer requests - they address real needs. By solving pain points and delivering true value, we ensure we’re not just reactive, but proactive in creating solutions that move the business forward. That’s product intelligence!! Look beyond the request and focus on the need. That’s where true innovation and business impact lie. #leadership #productstrategy #businessgrowth #innovation

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"Our goal when interviewing is to understand the variation in customer behavior—both the variation from instance to instance for a single customer and the variation from customer to customer." 🎯 Explore the value of atypical customer stories in product discovery! 🚀 This article discusses: - Why atypical stories aren't always as rare as we think 🤔 - How these stories uncover important use cases 💡 - The evolution of atypical to typical behaviors 📈 - Designing for diversity and avoiding unintended inequities 🌈 Key takeaways: - Atypical stories can lead to richer products that work for more people 🛠️ - Continuous interviewing exposes us to a wide range of customer experiences 🗣️ - Focusing only on "typical" stories may replicate existing inequities 🚫 Want to improve your approach to customer interviews? Check out the full article: https://buff.ly/3BZqBZG 📚 ❓How do you handle atypical customer stories in your product discovery process? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Interesting read on #SuperApps Expansion into India, a large populous market that remains full of opportunities. Nonetheless, key principle applies: - Branding can prevent audience from thinking of an app as a super app and would rather use it for single purpose. Very similar to why few years ago Colgate's frozen Lasagne's failed - Changing habits is not easy even if it is a simple switch to another app. Any change requires incentive, aka value and incentives Any others that I missed?

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