All-in-One Solution for Managing Product Experiences

How is your product data managed today? Do you have a nice, neat organized system? Or do you have scattered spreadsheets that give your team members a headache of trying to find this information at crucial times?

It’s likely the latter.

Manufacturers have a ton of product data at their disposal. The problem is they often don’t have digital solutions to help them manage this data. That’s where a product experience management (PXM) solution comes into play. 

Let’s dive into the world of product experience management and see how your company can benefit from a solution like this 

The Relationship Between Customer Experience and Product Experience 

Customer experiences reign supreme. It's what can make or break a brand. Just after two negative customer experiences, customers would be willing to ditch a brand they’ve been loyal to for the competition. 

Manufacturers likely understand the importance of a positive customer experience. It’s what fuels positive reviews, repeat purchases, and brand advocacy. Besides outstanding customer support and a great product, one way to boost the customer experience is to create helpful content for the customer. 

But this comes with a double-edged sword. Creating more helpful content for your customers is important, but if it adds friction, your customer may be soon to jump ship.   

Traditional vs. Forward Thinkers 

This is where we have the divide in manufacturing: traditional versus forward-thinking brands. 

Traditional manufacturers tend to allocate their time and resources to the creation of printed materials to engage with customers during the customer journey because it’s “how it’s always been done” and oftentimes what their sales team is most comfortable using. However, these aren’t good enough reasons to continue investing in printed materials that are most often thrown away by your prospects before the content is even consumed. Instead, manufacturers need to become digital-first in every aspect of their business. 

We’re at a paradigm shift in consumer behavior. Individuals are spending upwards of five hours on their phones which means they prefer for communication and experiences to be delivered on the device they use the most.  

Manufacturers that want to future-proof their business need to be more forward-thinking and invest in a solution customers want - digital product experiences.  And in order to create a digital product experience, you need an easy-to-use solution that allows you to create a product experience that’s timely and relevant for the customers. 

Why Bad Data Is Problematic for Manufacturers 

All manufacturers share a common problem - their product data management leaves a lot to be desired. From “shoeboxes” to “junk drawers” to “multiple spreadsheets”, data is in multiple places within the organization that cannot be easily accessed by employees. It’s also very common that product information resides with subject matter experts (SMEs). While having extremely knowledge SMEs is ideal for any company, it quickly becomes problematic if the SME decides to leave the company. These are just some of the reasons why it’s essential to have product data stored in a centralized location. 

Why Bad Data Management Hinders Employee Productivity

Employees across all industries are having to do more with less. As employees already struggle to balance everything on their plate, the added frustration of locating disparate product data takes away precious hours and redirects their attention away from completing other tasks. 

The challenges of having unorganized product data include: 

• Mistakes with data collection and management 

• Time-consuming for employees 

• Difficult to collaborate with team members

• Inaccurate content created and shared internally and externally

Why Bad Data Management Can Harm Customers 

Now let’s look at this data management challenge from the customer’s point of view. If pricing is inaccurately reflected in a product catalog for example, and a customer has to pay more than originally anticipated, this is obviously going to cause a lot of friction and negative emotions for that customer. And inaccurate pricing is only one example. An opportunity for a bad customer experience exists anytime inaccurate product information is shared with customers. 

The slightest inconsistency could cause customers to lose trust in your brand and go with a competitor. 

What Is Product Experience Management?

It’s time to give your product data (and your employees) the solution they need to set you and your organization up for success. 

It’s time to switch to a Product Experience Management (PXM) solution. 

PIM. PXM. DAM. CMS. The list of acronyms goes on; marketers have all of these acronyms, and it's hard to keep track of what it all means.  Let’s define each of these acronyms.

Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS is a solution that enables organizations to manage content on their website without requiring technical resources. Using a CMS or a digital experience platform (DXP) is critical to enable marketers to update their website without requiring developers. 

Digital Asset Manager (DAM)

A DAM is a tool that enables organizations to store their digital assets such as images, documents, videos, etc. Using a DAM allows companies to have a single source of truth for all of their digital assets and makes it more accessible to share these assets both internally and externally. 

Product Information Management (PIM)

Product information is everything to a manufacturing organization. Product information is the number one thing customers view on a manufacturer’s website. 

What is PIM in Product Management? A Product Information Management (PIM) solution is a tool manufacturers can use to store their product data in one place. 

What does product management software do?A PIM removes any friction manufacturing team members face when trying to access product data. PIM solutions enable manufacturers to have a centralized location to store all of their product data and remove the need for team members to store this data on local computers, spreadsheets, etc. 

This is the type of data one can store in a PIM

• SKUs

• Pricing information 

• Product ratings

• Product ingredients

• Product classifications

• User manuals

• Owner’s guides

• Related products 

Product Experience Management (PXM) 

A PXM solution delivers rich product experiences across multiple channels to deliver a cohesive product experience for the customer. The outputs created by a PXM can vary greatly based on the solution. For example, Salsify focuses on delivering product experiences to channel partners such as Amazon, Target, Shopify, etc. and creating catalog sites while Lumavate enables you to create any type of digital experience from landing pages to mobile apps to your website. 

Additionally, a PXM Platform often includes both a PIM and DAM making it a much stronger choice for manufacturers compared to a solution that only offers a PIM. There are also PXM Platforms such as Lumavate that include a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) and mobile messaging functionality in their PXM solution to provide an all-in-one offering to manufacturers. 

The product information from the PIM solution gives the customer the factual details they need, the images and videos from the DAM or CMS craft the story behind the product descriptions and paint a picture of what could be done with the product. And the PXM pulls everything together and enables marketers to create a front-end experience that customers can interact with and help them make their purchasing decision. 

What Solution Should Manufacturers Invest In?

So which solution do you need? Well all of them. But here’s the good news - Lumavate is a PXM that offers DAM and PIM functionality. Plus, you can create digital product experiences quickly on Lumavate’s platform.  And if you already have a PIM, DAM, or CMS in place, we offer integrations to those too. 

What Does a Product Experience Management Do?

A  product management platform provides customers with the information they need about your products at the right time.

Let’s take a look at some benefits of using a PXM. 

Benefits of a PXM

• Shorten time-to-market - Stop waiting in a long IT queue and manage product information on your own time. 

• Brand consistency - Admins can control the branding of all of a brand’s product experiences including brand-approved digital assets. 

• Accurate product information - A centralized location for all of your product data and related assets ensures you’re always using the most up-to-date information through all of your product experiences. 

• Improved customer experience - Providing your customers with contextual product experiences based on where they are in the customer journey with your products takes the overall customer experience to the next level. The more personalization you can provide to your customers the better overall experience they’ll receive. 

• Create data-driven digital experiences for your products - Quickly create data-driven digital experiences to showcase your products for a wide variety of use cases with real-time product information.

• Increase sales - Drive additional revenue for your business by promoting related parts and accessories in digital product experiences like product catalogs, a trade show booth, or personalized quiz. 

• Empower collaboration and increase productivity across your business - Employees can say goodbye to having to track down product data on team members’ hard drives and say hello to an easier way to collaborate knowing all of the product data and content is in one centralized location. 

What Is an Example of a Product Experience?

We’ve talked about the concept of a product experience, but what does it actually look like? 

What Makes a Good Product Experience? 

You’ve gotta meet the customer where they’re at in the journey. It is the most important part of providing an excellent customer experience.  You have to match your product experiences with the expectation and needs of the customers. For instance, you can’t overwhelm a customer who is in the awareness phase of the customer journey with information like troubleshooting. They don't care about that information at that point in time. 

Let’s walk through examples of product experiences for each stage of the customer journey. 

Awareness Phase

92 percent of attendees go to trade shows to hear about new products. You can create a product experience to highlight at your trade show booth that provides relevant information about your products. With an interactive trade show experience, you can craft a compelling story using visuals and features that wow attendees to share with their colleagues, friends, family, or anyone else. 

By scanning a QR code, attendees can activate the product experience to read product descriptions, view product images, get pricing information, and contact sales for more information. This is even a great opportunity to launch the announcement of a new product at the trade show and give everyone new information on a digital product experience they can send to employees at their company who could not attend the event. 

Consideration Phase 

The customer has learned about the product from visiting the trade show and has activated the interactive trade show experience. But they still want to shop around a little before committing to a specific brand. 

In this stage of the customer journey, customers want specific bullet points that they can use to stack up against the other products they’re considering. Do the heavy lifting for the customer by creating a product comparison experience. Plus you have the opportunity to sweeten the deal with a coupon if customers need further convincing. 

Purchase Phase 

Immediately after purchase, you can send them a rebate product experience that prompts them to fill out the form and provide you with their contact information and details about their purchase, and in return, they get a rebate for completing the purchase from your brand.

Retention Phase 

There are a number of customers who will abandon their new product if they are unsuccessful in onboarding. Make sure you retain your customer with a product onboarding digital experience that welcomes the customer to your brand, gives a quick recap of what they purchase so they get excited to use it all over again, and provides clear instructions on how they should set up their new product. Customers will recall if onboarding was smooth or rocky for future purchases. 

Loyalty Phase 

People remember how they were treated in their time of need. Products inevitably all come with some issues during their lifetime. Customers need quick access to troubleshooting information and other resources that can help them solve their problems independently. 

Creating a product information experience empowers customers to fix problems on their own (while reducing your call center support costs ) and provides them with easy access to troubleshooting information.  If customers know how easy it is to solve their problems with your brand versus having to be stuck on hold for hours at a time with another brand, they are always going to purchase from you.

Iterate Constantly By Keeping Tabs on Analytics 

How do you know if your product experiences are meeting the needs of your customers? With analytics. Lumavate provides you access to a wide variety of analytics that can help paint a picture of your customers’ needs being met with your experiences. 

We use Google Analytics to help provide our customers with data and help inform their decision. These are some of the metrics you can track:

• Pageviews - Did they click on a ton of pages? This may be an indicator of them not being able to find what they were looking for. If you created your experience and thought that all of the info was on the home page, yet customers are going to a multitude of pages, this may be a sign you need to go tweak your copy

• Session Length - How long is your audience spending on your content? Again, more doesn't exactly mean better in this case. It just goes back to what the purpose of your product experience was and if you think the data you’re getting back reflects that.

• Number of Users - This is a time when more is in fact better. Let's say you know you had about 300 people visit your trade show booth for example yet the number of unique users is double that. You can infer that at least some of the traffic is people sharing the experience with their colleagues, friends, and family, etc. You can deduce people believe your content to be helpful and therefore share your brand’s product experience. 

Again, by using Lumavate, especially on our various subscription plans, you get access to support which can help you solve your product problems. Your customer support manager will come to know your business better than anyone and can help look at these insights with you. 

What Tools Are Usually Used By a Product Manager?

A product manager is tasked with many things. According to Atlassian, a product manager is, “The person who identifies the customer need and the larger business objectives that a product or feature will fulfill, articulates what success looks like for a product, and rallies a team to turn that vision into a reality.” 

That’s no small feat. Let’s break that down even further and dive into the three key areas of responsibility for product managers, plus we’ll share some tools that every product manager should have in their tech stack to make their lives easier. 

What Are Three Areas of Product Management?

When talking about product management there are three main buckets the responsibilities fall under.  

• Discovery - By surveying customers, reading reviews, or analyzing Google Analytics, this area of product management is all about understanding what the customer needs and then filling that gap with a specific product. 

• Planning - You’ve identified what the customer needs. Now it’s time to put it on the product roadmap so engineers and developers can create or enhance a product.

• Development - The product has been created, now it’s time for user-testing and launching it for the public. An important thing to note is that this phase isn’t done once you’ve launched your product. You’ll need to keep an eye on the analytics and customer behavior to see if you need to go back to the Discovery phase and make iterations of this product to enhance the customer experience. 

Product Management Tools List

Below is a list of software tools product managers may find helpful when completing their daily tasks. 

• PXM

  • PIM

  • DAM

  • CMS

• Google Analytics

• Project Management Software

• User Survey Tools

• Mobile Messaging Solution 

Perhaps the most important tool on this list is a PXM and the functionality included with it. This is because PXMs like Lumavate hold the ability to encompass a lot of these items. For instance, you can create a digital survey on Lumavate to gauge customers’ perceptions of your products. You can integrate with Google Analytics to capture valuable insights for all of your product experiences. 

Lumavate even has text messaging capabilities that allow manufacturers to communicate directly with their customers on their phones to notify them of product recalls, coupons, product information, and so much more. 

Best Product Management Software

Lumavate is the best product management software because it's simple to get started and our level of customer support is unmatched. 

Just read this quote from one of our customers, “The Lumavate team is TOP NOTCH. Beyond easy to work with. They helped us quickly and efficiently every step of the way. And often helped us with things we could have done internally, but they helped us do it anyway. Very impressed with their team.”

Getting started using a PXM like Lumavate is simple. Let’s walk through the steps of how to start using a PXM. 

1. Enter Product Data in PIM - The first step to using a PXM is storing and organizing your product data in the PXM’s PIM capabilities. Lumavate’s onboarding process is extremely simple and you can add your product data into our PIM within a day.

2. Store Digital Assets in the DAM - The next step to getting onboarded to a PXM solution is to add all of your digital assets and content (like images, videos, documents, etc.) into the PXM’s. 

3. Create Digital Product Experiences - For every moment in the customer journey, you should be creating digital product experiences for a wide variety of audiences, including customers, partners, distributors, employees, etc. Here’s the good part - because you’ve invested the time storing your product data and digital assets into the PXM, you can easily pull this content directly into your digital product experiences. Using Lumavate’s PXM, any changes you make to product data or digital assets are instantaneously reflected in the product experiences using this content, leaving you with peace of mind that your experiences are always accurate. 

No, we didn’t miss a step. It’s really as easy as entering your product data and digital assets into the PXM, then getting started creating and launching digital product experiences.