Udacity is excited to announce that we’re giving early access to an exciting new course in our upcoming Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program. You can enroll today in the second course, Activation and Retention Strategy, that is available for enrollment today at 30% off. The first course from the program, Growth and Acquisition Strategy, is also still available for enrollment today at 30% off!
Not only will you be able to get a head start on the full Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program — available in June — but taking this course will unlock 30% off the price of the full Nanodegree. All progress in this course can be applied towards graduation from the full Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program
Growth Product Managers Help Grow the Business
Like Product Managers, Growth Product Managers love analyzing data in order to develop and improve their strategies. Unlike core Product Managers, Growth Product Managers are solely focused on growing the company by achieving short-term business goals and driving revenue.
According to the Harvard Business Review, the three main responsibilities for a Growth Product Manager include:
- Define the company’s growth plan
- Coordinate and execute growth programs
- Optimize the revenue funnel.
Most companies will not only have a Growth Product Manager, but will often have both Product Managers and Growth Product Managers. Even though Growth Product Managers are mainly focused on the business, and core Product Managers are focused on the customer, the two often work together to drive more value.
Product Managers think about delivering long-term sustained value to the customers. Growth Product Managers think about achieving short-term, clearly-defined and quantifiable business goals. While these two mindsets can sometimes be at odds, the two often can work together to build long-term success for the company.
Due to their hyper-focus on optimizing business growth, Growth Product Managers require a specialized toolkit compared to Product Managers.
According to an article by Product-Led Growth Collective, a community of growth-minded product leaders, successful Growth Product Managers are scientific, have a need for speed, and are adaptable and flexible.
Unlike Product Managers that focus more on long-term planning and methodically structured product development lifecycles, Growth Product Managers repeatedly form hypotheses, gather data, perform analysis, and quickly run experiments to further optimize their plans.
In addition, Growth Product Managers crave ambiguous environments with opportunities to figure things out, versus their polish-focused Product Manager counterparts.
Rather than owning a specific product (or part of a product), they own a specific business metric or goal (i.e. increase conversion by 15%) and often work as part of a cross-functional team consisting of members from engineering, design, and data to execute towards their business metric.
Growth Product Manager Nanodegree Program Details
The projects in the Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program will prepare you to grow the user base and engagement of an established product. This Nanodegree program is perfect for Product Managers, Marketing Specialists, and Engineers who are already in growth-focused roles and want to further their skillset, as well as those who wish to break into the growth domain and help propel their company and product forward.
In Course 2, Activation and Retention Strategy, you will hone specialized Product Management skills by learning how to guide users through the activation funnel as fast as possible, so they reach your product’s aha-moment. Apply the fundamentals of increasing customer engagement, and learn how to analyze cohorts to identify key factors for retention. You will also deploy experiments to improve customer lifetime value and decrease churn rate.
Project 2: Let It Grow
Act as the Growth Product Manager for productboard and Slack to optimize the sign-up flow to ensure maximum conversions, determine the activation funnel, create a retention curve, and perform a churn analysis. Then, suggest experiments to improve overall activation and retention.
In Course 1, Growth and Acquisition Strategy, you will hone specialized Product Management skills in growth and acquisition strategy by learning how to build an agile acquisition plan with market-based measurable KPIs which fits well into the overall growth strategy. Apply the fundamentals of acquisition funnels and growth loops, measure and optimize acquisition performance, define target audiences and key acquisition channels, and A/B test at scale to expand the user base of your product.
Project 1: Unleash Growth “to the Clouds”
Act as a Growth Product Manager for a B2B cloud infrastructure product, building an acquisition strategy to increase signups for the product. Formulate and apply acquisition strategies, then measure and optimize performance using A/B testing.
While the full program is not available until June 2020, we are excited to provide you with early access to the second course: Activation and Retention Strategy. Early access to the first course, Growth and Acquisition Strategy, is still ongoing. If you take either course, you will unlock 30% off the price of the full Nanodegree.
Udacity Collaborated with Top Growth Product Managers to Create this Program
To develop this program’s world-class curriculum, we collaborated with professionals from companies including LinkedIn, eBay, Yelp, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Each of these collaborators contributed guidance and feedback to focus the program on the most in-demand skills. Also, each of the instructors in the program has extensive professional experience as Growth Product Managers and Product Managers in the tech field.
Instructors
- Art Khlobystin, Product Manager Lead at Microsoft, Instructor for Course 1
- Shiv Patel, Growth Product Manager at Productboard, Instructor for Course 2
- Rizwan Ansary, VP of Product Management and Design at Sendoso, Instructor for Course 3
Enrollment Options
Add activation and retention strategy to your Product Management toolkit today! The options for enrollment are:
- Enroll today in Course 2, Activation and Retention Strategy, or Course 1, Growth and Acquisition Strategy, at 30% off, AND unlock 30% off the Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program when it is available. Any progress you make in Course 1 or 2 will transfer over into the Nanodegree program!
- Wait until June and enroll in the complete Growth Product Manager Nanodegree Program at full price.
Begin Your Career as a Growth Product Manager Today
A recent Google Trends analysis for “growth product manager” shows a 425% increase in average monthly interest over the last 5 years, and the time to get hired in this role has never been better, since many companies in all fields have been shifting focus to customer growth and retention.
Enroll today to begin your career in Growth Product Management! Develop the critical skills to help take your product (and company) growth to the next level and enhance your data-driven experimentation and analysis skills through hands-on projects and industry-leading instruction with the Growth Product Manager Nanodegree Program today.
