Assess market conditions
Understand what is happening in the market around you
Conduct market research
Ground your product strategy in the real world. Gather data on market size, trends, and customer preferences to get a full picture of the landscape. Use a mix of primary and secondary sources — such as user interviews, focus groups, industry reports, competitor benchmarking, and polls. Capture your findings in one place and use the AI assistant to distill top takeaways.
Structure your analysis
Leverage strategic models to organize your thinking. Run a PESTLE analysis to evaluate external factors, use Porter's 5 forces to assess competitive dynamics, and conduct a SWOT analysis to identify market opportunities and threats. Pre-built whiteboard templates are ideal for sharing your analysis with stakeholders to discuss key assumptions about market conditions.
Devise your approach
Hone in on market opportunities. Create a market requirements document (MRD) to lay out the high-level capabilities your product needs to provide to address customer demand and set yourself apart. Assess every aspect of your business model — including product positioning, pricing strategies, and marketing mix — to align on how you will succeed.
Solidify product strategy
Create a plan to address market needs you have identified. Set your vision, define goals, and develop personas. Validate key product initiatives — completing a a proof of concept to assess the feasibility of new ideas before investing resources in development. Then, get to work building solutions that address customer needs in a uniquely different way.
Achieve product-market fit
Adapt quickly to new market insights. Keep gathering feedback on features and enhancing your product to meet customer needs. Focus on delivering a Minimum Lovable Product experience to deliver new functionality that is highly valuable to customers from the start. Markets shift fast and customers quickly move on if they are not satisfied — so make this practice a habit.
Top capabilities for assessing market conditions
Capture market insights | Use workspace documents and pre-built templates to organize your research | |
Build strategic models | Evaluate market dynamics with a PESTLE analysis or Porter's 5 forces template on a whiteboard | |
Gather customer feedback | Use polls or schedule discovery interviews to capture direct input from customers | |
Identify opportunities | Create an MRD and proof of concept to validate your market approach | |
Connect research to strategy | Use market research to inform strategic goals and initiatives that deliver tangible value | |
Ready to get started?
See how Aha! helps teams build lovable software. Try Aha! Roadmaps now or let our product experts — who are all former product managers — show you the possibilities.
