The Four Products of Every Product

You could make your product be the straight-forward product that it is. A piece of software, a physical product, an online course.

While you’re at it, you can make three other products, one further in the direction of the product, and two more in the direction of the buyer. You’d do that, of course, to help your main product sell.

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Let’s say that your product itself is product number 3 in the sequence. Your buyers bought it for a reason, and that reason is to make progress. Maybe they haven’t used it yet, but they deliberated, they hesitated, they made the decision. “This product will help me with this.”

Product number 4 in that sequence, is the choice to use the product after the purchase was made, to officially integrate it. It’s a different purchase, in a sense, because it’s another decision to go further in the direction of the progress they wanted to make. But, if your product is a gift, product number 4 is a decision made by the person receiving the gift. If you’re building enterprise software, product number 4 is, in a sense, purchased by the end-user, that is to say, they chose to start using it in earnest.

To build this product number 4 is to build your product number 3 differently, so that it does both the job of being purchased, and the job for which your product’s users would start using it. Product number 4 requires a different mindset, as it’s a separate purchase in the mind of the user.

That was the fourth product out of four. Let’s look, now, at products number 2 and 1.

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Product number 2 isn’t exactly a product. It doesn’t look like a product, and like product number 4, has no money exchanged. But in the mind of the buyer, there’s still something happening, in that this product helps the buyer make progress. The product is the company itself. With this product, you’re selling the idea of your company (or its ideals). You’re selling the ability for people to tag along while you’re building what you’re building. Your buyers will pay you in sustained attention. They will be interested in what you think, in what you do. They’ll want to replicate your decisions, they’ll want to hear what you have to say. Maybe they won’t sign up for a newsletter, maybe they will. You’ll know they purchased this product by the fact that they tell others about you. That was product number 2.

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Product number 1 is further in the direction of your buyers than product number 2. It’s whatever small thing to introduce yourself to someone new. It’s smaller than product number 2 in that the buyer will not have paid you any attention, not yet. It can be as simple as a small intro product, like a purchasable PDF, or a free email sequence, or a free online tool. No attention needed, but bit by bit, your name is associated with their progress. And they might soon hire product number 2.

These four products are a sort of useful minimum. The reality is that you’d want many more. Each article you post? Think of it as a product that does a job. Each post on social is a mini product. Subscribing to your feed is a bit like product number 2. While you’re at it, if you make a small product number 1, you’re better off making two or more of those. You’d be helping more people make progress, coming from different directions, into your general orbit.

And product number 4, the one where the buyer or the user is integrating the product into their life in a more official way? Sell that product correctly, and people will be spreading the word for you. “This product has worked great. I’ve been actually using it for a few weeks. You should try it, or at least, check out the company. I think you’ll like them.”