I believe every business should have a plan for how to increase revenue on an existing product. Building something from scratch needs substantial efforts, time, money, dedication, commitment, and the most important thing is passion. After building a product gaining considerable customers is a big challenge. After gaining customers, retaining them is even more complicated. Having a loyal customer base is a nightmare over a period for any business. Let’s assume a product crossed all these stages and is having a significant customer base. What next?

Don’t we have competitors to build similar kind of products? Don’t we have talent to take over the product? Don’t we have researchers to kill the product? To me, building and gaining significant customers from a small blog to SpaceX are equally difficult. Here is the typical product life cycle.

The ‘Decline’ stage follows immediately after ‘Maturity’ stage consequently, I would suggest having a concrete plan in place for continues improvement to increase the revenue on any product. Well, we must understand the tricky point here, why successful products are being fade out over a period of time? It is lack of entrepreneurial thinking.

A person who created a successful product may get old, a person who created an innovative product may lose interest, a person who reached a goal may leave his passion but, a concrete plan/process would work to product works. My dear, Product heads/directors, and Product Managers: That is why we call a product manager as a mini CEO.

So, how to increase revenue on an existing product? Yes, each person in the product division should understand it.

Identify the Core

Essentially, every product has a core module, feature, or an application, it doesn’t have to be unique but it needs to be the important piece which is creating dependency on other parts/applications/pieces. Just like search engine for Google, Operating system for Microsoft and iOS for Apple. Analyze the dependency to derive two simple answers 1. Why is it being appreciated 2. How is it different from others. Create your strategy based on these two core pillars. Why?

I fear not the man who has participated 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has participated one kick 10,000 times.

Bruce Lee

Build Analytics

Why are the analytics so important? Why the globe is turning around data and analytics? Let me tell you the core logic behind it, we are creating virtual mega super markets, we are creating virtual calling, we are creating virtual banking, we are creating virtual gaming, and we are creating virtual money, finally, we are creating the virtual world. Apparently, this is the virtual Reality 🙂 . These many virtual activities are increasing the distance between customer and business, eventually, there is no other choice to understand customer’s behavior other than building analytics, we have to accept it. Thank god wife and husband are not virtual 🙂 .

Revisit the architecture

Let me bring a well-known concept we all know, a buzz word we all hear when we go for shopping “mix and match” pick a T-shirt and match a jeans from other section. pick a shirt and grab a short from another section, pick a chips pack from a known row and a candy from the cash counter. Let me give another typical Indian example, I hope everyone understands it, pick a cigarette with tea or samosa or a cookie. Then why not apply the concept to applications?

Consequently, revisit your old architecture and redesign it to microservice based architecture. Build it in such a way to sell any service which is feasible to integrate with another service so that they both can turn as a meaningful feature. Eventually, it increases your revenue. Be flexible to create a bigger market like Microsoft. Of course, some applications are exempted as they are not feasible for microservice based architecture.

Have business associations

Well, associating with another application/business is not a bad idea, as long as both the businesses are agreed to travel together to get mutually benefitted. Often, it is not a good option to reinvent the cycle. Just like associating Imax with big malls, Sam’s Club beside Walmart. As I said, focus on your core business and associate with others to increase your revenue especially, when you have less resources.

Consider customer feedback

Consider the customer feedback, suggestions, or bugs that they have raised as the first priority to incorporate. Analytics is one of the options to understand the customer behavior but, we can not based on it 100%, just like concluding about someone based on Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp statuses. I would suggest leveraging some CRM tools which are available at a reasonable price. Indeed, considering customer feedback will have substantial increase in the revenue.

Revisit the pricing model

Often, revisiting the pricing model helps to increase the revenue. Keep your price reasonable and create revenue channels from other business associates either. Focus more on quantity-based pricing rather price based quantity, it increases your customer base and product reach. Eventually, the revenue will be increased.

Recruit creative people

Having creative people with entrepreneurial mindset plays vital role in building products. A person, or a team who is working for a product should have a vision about the roadmap. To me, a product team should be matured enough to, the trends to be followed, unique features to be researched, creativity to be incorporated, strategy to be developed, customer to be understood, market to be analyzed, and functionality to be brainstormed. Yes, that is the talent to be hunted, by so called human resource people. Having the right people in place will have huge impact on generating revenue or shutting down the shop.

Tweak marketing strategy

Marketing strategy should be potential enough to grab the customer. As I said, create a marketing strategy around your core product will work. Offer additional product for free of cost or lesser price. I would suggest considering building SaaS applications to make it happen.

I hope the article helps for the great minds who are creating products, startups, and corporates.

Happy Thanksgiving 🙂

Enjoy the holidays’ 2020.

Another good read

How to build a product by solving a problem