3 Steps to Start Your Creative Journey the Right Way

What Is Product Management and How Does It Apply to Creative Work?

As you might know from the about section of this website, my goal is to share product management concepts that can be useful in creative fields. I use my own projects: this website, and my other platforms as examples. But what exactly is product management? Let’s dive into that with this post.

Some serious product management going on here

What is Product Management?

There are many definitions all over the internet, but in my experience, product management is about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes so that you can feel their pain and solve the problems that make the most sense. Plain and simple. But how can this be applied to creative work?

How to Apply Product Management to Creative Work

Let's break this down with an example.

Define Your Target Audience

So, I've decided to tailor my content to people interested in content creation (photo, video, and other mediums) who want to make their work more efficient and structured. These are people who would use certain frameworks to make their creative work more efficient because they don’t necessarily have all the time to dedicate to their projects. There are many ways to do segmentation, so choose the one that helps you find a better audience. This part of the process might take the longest because it’s the foundation of what’s coming next. Don’t worry about perfection (perfect is the enemy of done); just make sure you start from somewhere that’s familiar to you. You might do like I did and segmented based on the audience that you are a part of.

Identify Underserved Needs

It’s not accurate to call this a ‘need’ since we’re talking about art. But let’s say, identify what’s interesting for you audience. What is it that someone looks for when they are scrolling through social media, looking at art on the streets or when looking for videos to watch? If you are using yourself as part of the audience, think about what makes you click on certain content and not on other. What do you enjoy when you look at art. Do you prefer the mood, the story, the colors, or something else? Answering these questions will help you get closer to the next step.

Create Your Value Proposition

Once you know who and where to target, it’s time to prepare what you’re going to provide them. It could be photos or music with a specific mood, videos with a certain storyline, painting that have a specific color, you name it. In the business context, I would normally recommend analyzing if the ‘market’ (a.k.a. your audience) is already being served sufficiently by other providers, since if you go to an already crowded market, then it might be more difficult to be found. Doing the research would not hurt, but in the world of art, you can also be more subjective and still have space to serve an audience even if there is ‘competition’. In the end, as you work on your project, you will find your own style.

Defining Success

This is just the beginning. After this, it is up to you to define what success looks like for your work and track if you are reaching it. Remember, this is the creative world and you can define success however you find fit. This is your product.

All of this is based on the Lean Product Playbook pyramid, which I will go into depth in an upcoming post.

If you liked what you read and you want to see how I go through this journey while sharing my art, follow me on my different platforms (links below).