How to Build a Product-Market Fit Framework in 3 Steps

Product management can be unpredictable. Markets change all the time, and customers’ needs change with them. Achieving measurable product-market fit (or PMF) early on is a sign of a great product, but your work is far from over.

As new tech develops, products that are successful now could be obsolete in a few years. There’s no guarantee your product will still fit your market after you’ve launched a new feature set or after new competitors have entered the landscape. Targeting new segments or new markets altogether can also disrupt product-market fit.

Change is inevitable in SaaS, but with a product-market fit framework, you can navigate unforeseen changes and keep your product successful long term.

What Is a Product-Market Fit Framework?

If product-market fit means your product solves the right problem for the right market, having a product-market fit framework means you’ve got a strategy to help you iterate on and maintain that fit. Your framework guides your organization’s approach to product development in a way that always tracks back to what you know about your market, your customers, and your competition.

There are three components to product-market fit: the market, your customers, and your competition. To build a product-market fit framework, you’ll need a deep level of understanding of each of those three pieces.How do you know when your customers’ needs change?

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Step 1: Understand the Market Your Product Serves

With a deep understanding of your market, you may be able to spot potential changes coming. It’s important to know key metrics about your market—like TAM, SAM, and SOM—and it’s also crucial to watch how those benchmarks change over time. Good markets develop alongside profound needs, and great products offer what the target customer is looking for.

Those profound needs can emerge as a result of new tech entering the landscape. Not too long ago, the concept of a scheduling tool to manage social media posts wouldn’t have made sense. When Myspace reached 25 million users in 2005, it was because the site offered more entertainment value to its users than competitors did (not because it was good at connecting businesses with customers). However, as more social media platforms sprang up and started collecting a vast amount of users, companies noticed their potential—and developed a new need to reach their audience on every available social media channel. A tool to manage the cross-posting process like Hootsuite became a natural fit for that problem.

Likewise, consider how the market for online advertising has changed over the years. In the early days of the internet, we started with mysterious banner ads and disruptive pop-ups; now, we have a hyper-targeted ecosystem that spans paid search, paid social, and native advertising. That’s because the market shifted. Once users became savvier and more discerning with their clicks, businesses needed a way to serve up ad content that was interesting and relevant enough to earn people’s attention. Companies like Google and Facebook responded effectively to that new problem—and they’ve experienced quite a bit of success ever since.

How to Check-In With Your Market

Customers hold the key to predicting changes in your market. They know when their problem has shifted—and they’re typically willing to tell you about it. Give your customers the ability to provide feedback through quantitative surveys and/or qualitative interviews, and keep an eye out for mentions of a new problem your product doesn’t currently solve. These customer feedback check-ins can be done regularly and on a small scale.

Your target customers are another great source for new market insights. They may not be familiar with your product, but they do know what they need from their SaaS tools. You can use these same tactics to survey your potential customers every so often. You’ll get a pulse for their needs and keep track of how those needs change over time.