The author | Chen gang, more than ten years experience of senior business product manager, worked at baidu, watercress, sohu and other well-known companies. This article is authorized by the author to be published in the staff association, if you need to reprint, can apply for authorization through the staff association, otherwise will be corrected.

In today’s Internet world, product managers with all their glitter, the roll of their eyes and their determination to change the world have long packed the stage. However, in this huge group, there are some minority, they are usually low-key, low-key even their products, they seldom come out to recommend and tell friends.

We call this group of people, commercial product managers, as opposed to the common user product managers.

Such division, will intentionally or unintentionally appear some of the opposite meaning, and in the past quite a long period of time, the starting point or goal of the two is indeed opposite, this and the past site first for users and traffic, and then consider the development model of money and profit has a lot to do. Now O2O and other models are increasingly mature, so that user scale and profit model are no longer two isolated links, which need to be clearly unified in product definition.

For historical reasons and for easy differentiation, I will call them commercial product managers, because they differ significantly from the well-known user product managers in terms of numbers, capability models, working methods, internal and external perceptions, to where they can be used, and their subsequent development routes.

If the Internet world is a river’s lake, commercial product manager is not an independent factions, they also distributed in the companies, but the science of uniting the way different, like peripateticism north ghost alkaloids and shaolin yi jin jing, are profound internal work, no one high low, but with different way, uniting the acme, is a top player.

I just was born of a commercial product along the way, so also want to borrow this to every entrepreneur, the boss, HR and headhunters, understand the mysterious but vague position, avoid all appear clearly know this is a very important position, but don’t know where to find, to find what, find how to use good, after such problems, let you can at the appropriate stage, Find the right people and don’t waste those who have the skills to slay the dragon.

How many Commercial Product Managers are there?

“Let them change the world. Let’s make money.”

The above sentence came from CSH, a student of commercial product Marketing Department, at baidu annual meeting in one year. He is a PM who looks like a rascal on the outside and is also very rascal in the heart, but he is a real commercial product manager. His mouth of “they”, it refers to Baidu’s numerous user product managers. However, this paragraph was eventually rejected for the sake of unity. Now CSH is starting a business in Shanghai, striving to realize the last half of the above sentence.

At that time, baidu commercial Product Marketing Department had over 100 commercial PMS in phoenix Nest product line alone. So it is no exaggeration to call Baidu the “Whampoa Military academy” of commercial product managers. After working in Baidu, I truly feel that the commercial product department is indeed a high-speed, sophisticated and complex machine. Not every PM can take the lead on his own, but everyone can be deeply involved in a branch.

Although In the game of BAT now, Baidu is desperately trying to catch up and diversify its profit model, but for quite a long period of time, It is thanks to the mature bidding ranking, and Google as a reference and competition business model, Baidu has laid its shaolin status.

No matter how black, Baidu is still a technology-driven company from the bottom of its bones. Whether it’s a search service for users or a way to make money, it’s all about a system that’s as automatic and as hands-off as possible. In its early days, when Baidu was still a small company of about a dozen people, it was working behind the scenes to support ChinaRen’s Sun Wukong search, and a prototype of the paid-ranking business model was in its blood. Across the ocean, Google was just beginning to commercialize, experimenting with a business model that would come to be known as “printing money.”

Do not know China and the United States these two big search engine giants, at that time did not think of their own empire today; Nor is it clear who has borrowed more from the model of displaying relevant advertiser information based on users’ diverse search behavior. But certainly, no matter Baidu or Google, are relying on their own efforts to improve the efficient method of cash.

And the bidding price that is demonized for a time ranks a mechanism, actually essence does not have the cent of good and evil, just it is in in chain of an interest, have to face all sorts of challenges. For example, anti-cheating, there is a long-standing legend that Baidu has hired a lot of people to click on their own ranked advertising, because advertising is pay-per-click, more points can make advertisers pay more money, Baidu can make more money, and this method of killing the goose that lays the golden egg is really believed. A little bit of business, you should know that only let advertisers advertising useful, they can continue to spend money, there is the possibility of sustainable development, in fact baidu is looking for a lot of people, to study how to identify and exclude this malicious click on advertisers caused by the loss. In such a team, the PM (product) and RD (research and development) need to work together.

At this time, the product manager is no longer designing the interface that users can see, but needs to design rules and strategies to filter or compensate for the extra consumption caused by abnormal clicks. In the implementation process of RD, the product manager should observe the effect and adjust the threshold, so as to achieve an optimal dynamic process through repeated attempts.

A lot of similar product managers, contributed to the bidding ranking this huge machine operation: they have anti-cheating mechanism and bidding sorting mechanism, the logic and mechanism behind these are often invisible, can not touch, is the soul of this system operation; There are also focused on the form of advertising information, how to let users do not reject, and can effectively obtain these information; There are also product managers who design back-end systems for advertisers and agencies to actually operate; And really get in touch with the front line selling, thinking about why someone would buy the AD, how much is reasonable to sell it for, what units to sell it for, and so on.

Back to the theme, according to my humble understanding, a large part of the first generation of commercial product managers came from Baidu. One of the reasons is that Baidu’s business model relies on mechanism and technology, while the huge agency sales system is just an extension of its tentacles. In other words, this is not a sales-led business model. It is not one that can grow bigger and stronger with good sales. Second, baidu has vast users and traffic resources, and is always keeping a close eye on Wall Street, making money is important, but the efficiency of the more important is to earn money, also is the efficiency of cash, that is brought by each PV value, need to be improved, which will require large-scale way of cash, and not like several major portal at that time, Rely on content marketing, event marketing, such as the traditional labor-intensive way to make money.

Under the management of Z, one of the earliest seven employees of Baidu, baidu commercial product team first defined the working mode of commercial products and established a clear way of division of labor and cooperation. The subsequent flow of these people also drove the recognition and standardization structure of commercial product team in large Domestic Internet companies. For example, 360, Sogou, 58.com, Meituan, Autohome and so on. Smaller Internet companies, because they have not yet reached the stage of scale realization, and do not have strong enough technical teams to support independent commercial products, so most of them are not places for commercial product managers to play.

At that time, the other two BAT companies had a different path. At that time, QQ had already started charging users forward by selling QQ show, which was completely different from baidu and Google charging b-end customers. At that time, Taobao had not been online.

It is estimated that commercial product managers should account for no more than 10% of all Internet product managers. The current demand for commercial product managers is for companies large and small. Let’s talk about the positioning and expectations of commercial product managers in companies of different sizes and characteristics.

Business Product Managers are people who do business

The job of product manager should not be defined as product design in a narrow sense, but needs to stand at a higher level and become a big product manager who considers both product and operation. He is responsible for creating a competitive product according to market and user needs and achieving the expected market share through various methods.

Therefore, the essence of a product is a business, and how to make this business is the ultimate goal of product managers. For such big product managers, one skill is particularly important — the ability to properly assign product and operation weight. Many product managers may hate it, but the hard truth is that some products are rubbish and useless from a product design perspective, but they satisfy a significant number of users and operate efficiently. Such as Brain Platinum, the shanzhai phones of the past, and even some Tencent products — there is no disrespect here, even respect here. Because I’ve always believed that product managers, especially commercial product managers, who want to be less artistic and crafty, need to think more about the business itself.

If the above words offended the ideal dream of each product manager, I need to explain is that you do not leave the pursuit of the idea of perfection, only in the jobs created under the influence of this spirit of the pursuit of perfection of products, a lot of people ignored him to the market and the thoughts of this business, resulting in serious dine, given too much weight of the product design, This may include my deeply loved teacher Luo.

Operation helps products do better business

When communicating with peers, I often hear students in operation complain that they cannot decide on products, and they feel very passive and powerless. Many students were confused when they started their career. Should they do products or operations?

Regarding this question, the famous product person @Icarus Wing once gave a classic answer when discussing in the group of the employment association: “The first question that the product manager thinks about is what the hell is wrong with the user? And the problem that the operation thinks about is how to catch the user’s psychology and eye.”

That’s exactly what happened. Operations solve the problem of How To, while products solve the problem of Why. Therefore, the choice of products and operations is actually similar to the problem of high school classification, whether to study liberal arts or science. Although there is no distinction between high and low, people always think that only those who are not good in mathematics and physics go to liberal arts courses, and those who are not good in mathematics and physics always feel that they are not so smart. It’s actually more of a secular idea.

Again, it may seem that the problems that products think about are more logical and fundamental, but we don’t live in a world where physicists and mathematicians run the show, and many times the problems that operations solve are decisive. For example, the product manager of Ali department has a particular emphasis on operational ability. In taobao mode, the complexity and diversity of the transaction relationship determine that technology and logic are not enough to deal with these problems. The operation of the product manager seems to be laborious, but it is the most effective.

If we zoom in to the whole e-commerce industry, e-commerce is an industry with heavy operation as a whole. Due to the small differentiation of products, the core competitiveness of e-commerce lies in price advantage and service guarantee. The operation of traffic, user, conversion effect, activity and service naturally constitute the most influential part of the sales volume and realization efficiency of e-commerce.

All in all, a product manager should have both product design ability and operational experience to be a CEO-type product manager. So from that perspective, try these two kinds of work is to try and understand the relationship between the two and cooperate with the way, for the order, the product design skills to ask for more, suggest first solid to learn these skills, holding the understanding of the product, then turn operation is easier to give a full play to the superiority of the product itself.

What do I need a Commercial Product Manager to do?

Some friends often consult me, they are in urgent need of a commercial product manager, or even the head of commercialization, but in addition to choosing the right person, they are still confused about how to set up the responsibilities of the position and how to assess it.

Zhou Yuan of Zhihu once said in an article that many companies of the same size lack common sense about business. Or look down on the commercialization, feel that the product is done, money is natural; If we don’t regard commercialization very highly, we must innovate and not conform to conventional conventions. I quite agree with the sentence in the article, “If advertising cannot be done, there is no need to think of anything else”.

Advertising model is the most commonly used and the most mature business model. At the same time is a commercial product manager should have the most basic skills.

Many people think that advertising is a planning, operation and even sales-led affair, which seems to have little to do with the product manager. Indeed, the advertising model needs a relatively strong sales system support, need to have customer resources, need to have a strong planning and execution ability, which is much like an advertising company. For example, Zhihu outsourced advertising to a former Douban team, which solved the problems of self-established sales, planning and execution teams.

However, Zhou yuan also mentioned that Zhihu is eager to find a person in charge of commercialization, even though advertising is the only way to explore, it still needs a great person. So what’s the difference between this person and the sales team?

▌ Control and allocation of resources

As an AD product manager, the most important step is not how many AD Spaces to sell, or what kind of AD form to make, but how much resources a website or app has to sell, what is the value of those resources, and is all that value now money?

Product managers should not only know how many saleable resources there are, but also divide resources into three, six and nine levels, including the number of resources of each level, the unit price (CPM), the sales rate, and how to deal with the relationship between different levels of resources.

  • The first step is to have tools to monitor and analyze the above data in real time. Product managers need to be able to create tools on their own.
  • Based on the results of the data analysis, the product manager will set expectations, formulate principles and strategies. How much money can a company make based on its current resources? Should it increase the price per resource (CPM), the ability to sell (sell rate), or the number of resources (traffic and activity)? The resources that sell best should be raised in price, or not so good resources, or good resources let rich customers to compete, poor resources let small and medium customers to compete.
  • Improve products and allocate resources according to strategy. Since the resources are divided into three, six and nine levels, the underwriters who sell these resources can also be snobbily classified, and PK mechanism can be established according to the realization efficiency of different underwriters. Of course, generally speaking, the most high-quality and large-scale resources should be the product manager’s own products to maximize the realization efficiency, rather than other teams’ grasp. It is just like that if a local government only makes money by selling resources (such as land), it will be criticized as incompetent by the people.

Designing and operating commercial products

A company’s most core profit model must be in its own hands, which is also one of the reasons why Zhihu has been looking for someone to do its own commercialization in addition to the outsourcing team. Because the best way to monetize, must be with their own resources and product deep integration, whether the so-called native advertising, or other and q&A related information services, are not sales led. It needs the product to calculate, to grasp the potential demand.

  • Do systems: advertising systems, CRM systems, and internal processes that involve collecting money.
  • Design advertising products: including style, sales method, customer definition, price mechanism, sales channels, etc.
  • Operational number objectives: Product from 0 to 1 is production, in addition to the product manager needs to work tirelessly to achieve the number of targets through operations.

The characteristics of the above functions show that the commercial team needs to be independent of the sales team, and even has the authority to allocate resources to sales. This is not about “helping” sales with ideas, it’s about managing sales. In fact, it would be awkward to set up a commercial team in such a company, because after all, every penny of income is eventually earned by front-line sales, and it would be difficult to obey a man who sits in an office all day and makes armchair arguments. Therefore, a reasonable position of commercialization leader should be a person with product capabilities. As VP, he should not only manage the product and technical teams of the business, but also listen to the report of the sales director.

Four Types of Commercial Product Managers

As mentioned above, BAT did not follow the same pace and pace in its commercialization in the early stage, but now the three giants are naturally going together: Baidu Phoenix Nest, Alliance and brand advertising, the three commercial product lines, are still the pillars of the company’s revenue today. People are more likely to pay attention to the double 11 taobao Tmall transaction volume, but easy to ignore, Taobao’s income mostly comes from the diamond exhibition, through train and Taobao union composed of commercial product matrix; Tencent’s genes enable it to do very well in forward charging, and the income from games and QQ members has always played an important role in financial statements. Even so, since 2013, China Diandian, which started to make efforts, soon gained considerable advertising income in the sea of traffic of QQ and wechat, and became a new generation of star products.

In BAT, Sogou and 360, product managers are generally divided into four functions or types: strategy type, platform type, market type and operation type. These four functions have different focus, detailed division of labor and close coordination. No matter the size of the product, these four roles are needed together, but in some small product lines, one or two PMS will hold several jobs. No matter what the role is, first and foremost they are all PMS and must have the basic skills of PMS.

▌ market-oriented

Market PM is the source of demand and the main force of promotion. Commercial products demand different from users, not just what the user wants to, but where is the user’s interests balance, the needs of the investigation to the whole sales process, even customers deeply into enterprise interior, grope for the new business model for enterprise boss, head of marketing, advertising companies, internal sales and users see the ads, what are the value respectively, And how to unify those values. They are the initial definers of the basic shape and logic of the product.

At the same time, after the birth of products, marketing PMS also undertake the task of promotion, after all, the source of demand is the best object to verify whether the logic of these products is valid.

▌ strategy type

In terms of image, strategic PM should be a typical boring male scientist, who is rigorous and rational. They need to develop strict and even demanding strategic mechanisms to ensure the optimal long-term results of the product. These strategic mechanisms are just like creating a market, who can enter the market to sell things, what kind of things can be sold, what price range should be within, how to control the competition among different sellers, and how to withdraw if the business is bad… These require rules to be set up and a mechanism to enforce them.

It can be said that strategic PM is an important step to realize the product value proposition of market PM through rules. In the field of advertising, including price mechanism, relevance optimization, advertising ranking, product style, etc.

When a strategic PM and a market PM argue, the scene might look something like this:

  • Market PM: this kind of price and sort logic, some effect is poor and have no money of small business, can’t play!
  • Strategic PM: Let them go, they are the low quality client that should be eliminated…

▌ platform type

Platform PMS are really the key to product implementation, they need to implement the business logic as a visible system, is the soul of the product to create the body. Whether it is the background system used by customers, the CRM used by sales, or the display form of advertising finally presented to users, it is built brick by brick by platform PM. Of course, they need to work closely with UE, UI, RD and QA to manage project progress, which is the closest type of product manager to the traditional sense.

▌ operation type

Some people always associate operation with helplessness and pain, and the operation TYPE PM also seems to be the most busy, constantly communicating with all parties on the phone all day. The first three types of PMS determine whether a product will produce a beautiful, intelligent baby. In the process of the child’s growth, the day after tomorrow’s education and training will depend on the operation of PM.

No matter the product is not well received by the market, or the effect data is not beautiful, or even the users can not use it, the operation PM, with the support of data analysis, has to find the first three types of PM to solve these problems.

The coordination methods and importance of these four types of PMS vary greatly among different companies or product lines. If it is just graduated or just step into the field of commercial products, don’t need to pursue comprehensive, can be in complete system, such as BAT choose a branch to learn, as the internal strength of ascension, you actually again turn their favorite type, the mistresses, like xiao feng in MAO chang chuan also can kill juxian bloody zhuang.

Business Product Manager’s Manual

“The commercial product manager is like fernando Torres, he can score goals at Atletico and Liverpool with the manual, but he can’t score goals at Chelsea without the manual.”

Commercial product managers are a rare breed. Not only are there fewer of them in absolute numbers, but they also need more to get the most out of them.

A great user product manager, perhaps on his own, can single-handedly grasp requirements, write MRD, manage development, test launch, iteration after iteration, and experience a complete product life cycle. And the success of the commercial chain operation, it needs business product manager of sales, agency, channel, customer service, finance, operations, and so on every possible business link, at the same time, including the research needs, writing MRDS, strategy formulation, the price mechanism, project management, data analysis, the labor of work product is essential, and at the same time, also need to have enough support for a user product, Maintain user size without hurting the user experience.

It can be seen that a good commercial product manager requires sufficient team cooperation in addition to his own ability and quality. This is not because teamwork is emphasized in any industry in general, but because many incompatible functions cannot be integrated into one person.

I once worked with a commercial PM who was doing mobile apps, but he was also burdened with kpIs for the user product. In other words, he has to consider both the efficiency of the business and the harm to the user experience, and he has to keep the red and blue fighting in his head, and as a result, everything has to come to a standstill. The two sides representing different positions should do their best planning, and then put it together in a unified standard PK, instead of one person constantly playing two roles, fighting with himself, we joke that he is not schizophrenic is good enough.

Commercial product managers can only thrive in the right environment. So what is the best place for commercial product managers to thrive?

Where to make commercial products

First of all, not to mention the company culture, development prospects, treatment level and other specific conditions, only from the function of commercial product manager and job content, you can choose the type of company:

BAT+ Sogou +360’s commercial product department

This kind of company business with a complete product line, and is the company’s main business model, important position, the business model is clear, suit to new classmates or into the students like to study, phoenix nest, train, and wide products, basically is the industry’s most leading advertising representatives of business products, is conducive to learning and developing expertise in a certain field.

O2O Internet companies, such as Meituan Dianping, 58.com, Didi Chuxing, etc

The good thing about these companies is that commercialization always follows the evolution of the company and the product, the decision makers don’t look down on making money (no joke), and they already have a business model with a certain scale. However, this model is also in the process of improvement and upgrading, at least from the income level, has not been fully recognized by capital (i.e., not listed). Therefore, there are many opportunities in this kind of company, and of course, it is also challenging. At the same time, it is closely integrated with the business of the company, which requires comprehensive and diversified capabilities, and the product and operation level should reach a certain level.

Vertical e-commerce companies, such as OTA companies like Qunar

However, it does not include platform e-commerce companies such as JINGdong and Womai, because platform e-commerce companies are procurement and marketing companies. For example, JINGdong was once rumored to acquire online advertiser MediaV and finally set up its own advertising alliance team. Therefore, it is also very important to make commercial products and choose to work hard in the most important business model of the company. The advantage of vertical e-commerce is that it is basically under the main business model of the company, so it is not too biased, but may be more focused on operation, which is a choice for students who need to supplement their operation ability.

Commercial star companies with poor soil, such as Zhihu, Kuaishou, Momo, Inke, Meitu, etc.

These companies in their respective segment industry leading level, and also has a certain amount of income a year, but they are far from find a continuous, large-scale business model, also explore between the various patterns (your boss not to scold me, maybe you have found your own path, it’s just that I don’t know). If you go to a company that has a lot of room for improvement in commercialization, you need to have good resource acquisition and decision-making power, because this is a change-leading department. In addition, it needs to be an independent organization, which can not be attached to the business division of the existing business model, but take charge of the choice of the overall business model of the company. So this position is very demanding, and it’s the job that the CEO should do, otherwise you have a good relationship with the CEO and he can trust you; Either the core executive team is self-confessed bad at this (but there’s no reason for these successful ceos to be so low-key and diffident), or the CEO doesn’t like making money (don’t laugh, there are plenty of them).

To sum up, sounds like fun, but if you can do this kind of position, is absolutely the highest challenges of business product manager, regardless of the success and failure, are their own level of adventure, like Yang guo eat snake gall, guo jing drink blood, broken jade eat mang Gu zhu clams, tour of eat ice silkworm (oh, this didn’t star aura, please ignore), and falsely bamboo dream gu.

It’s not exhaustive, but just follow a rule of how far away you are from the company’s main business model, and whether their business model is clear and established. Of course, it doesn’t have to be picking peaches. The more challenging it is, the more you’ll learn, and the better your personal score will be if you do it. It depends on each person’s own values.

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Last but not least, business PMS need to consider the company’s perception of what you are good at when changing jobs or transitioning. It’s not an exaggeration to say that too many companies have a general understanding of the role of a commercial product manager. Most professional club is helping mentioned above (xiamen)/Beijing, quickly, quick Momo, reflected the guest, comics, zhihu, melon seeds used cars such as the subdivision of industry leading companies recruitment business/value/advertising products, commercial products, such as head manager, welcome consulting WeChat haijun, we provide one-to-one recommendation and help for the product manager.

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