How would you increase the revenue of MS Powerpoint?

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How would you increase the revenue of MS Powerpoint?

Asked at Microsoft over a year ago

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sbansal · Answer 1 · 2020-05-02T18:28:49+0000

I believe the estimation question here is not about describing the metrices, rather it is more on improvig the product and suggesting new features/ product improvement focusing upon the revenue or monetization metrics. I would approach this problem in following manner:

Clarify:
- do we have any specific channel (mobile, desktop) that we want to improve or focus upon
- are we focusing upon any specific use case/ geo location which has been recently launched
- Assuming we want to take a generic case and increase the overall revenue
Application Definition: MS powerpoint is a tool which is used to createpresentations and visual content which can be used by the creator to present to an audience or transfer to same for expressing his thoughts/ viewpoints
Users:
- Students: use it to create assignments, study material or presentations for important topics
- Teachers: to prepare lectures
- Sales/ Business Developers: use it to create sales presentation which can be presented to a client
- Consultants: to create presentations for providig strategic inputs to the clients
Choose one persona to focus upon and expand use case for them which can be monetized:
- Ex: Lets deep dive Sales Professionals persona: they use powerpoint to create:
  - Sales pitch creation
  - to collborate betwee teams for finalizing their deck or presentation material
  - to gather feedback
  - to transfer their sales pitch to prospective clients
Lets choose some use cases basis: Revenue Potential, User Value
- Sales Pitch Creation: High Revenue Potential, High User Value
- Collaborate: Low Business Potential, Medium User Value
- Feedback: Low, Medium
- Transfer: High, High
Basis this lets expand the Sales Pitch creation and feedback use case and explore some ideas like:
- Sales Pitch Template: make a help corner and present various templates to choose users can buy templates they can use
- Share on LinkedIn: add feature to allow users to share their decks with potential clients over linkedin
- Expert Corner: Create a powerpoint community (like github) where users ca share their decks:
  - to gather feedback
  - to take help from other's templates
If we evaluate above ideas on : revenue potential, user value and ease of implementation metric we can see Sales Pitch Template to be 1st implementation then Share on Linkedin and then Expert Corner
Summarize: We would want to explore new use cases and create a template corner which can be used by users to purchase requried templates starting with focus on sales professionals

Gaurav P · Answer 2 · 2020-01-29T13:11:23+0000

How would you increase the revenue of MS Powerpoint?

Clarify (5W, 1H)

What - Define product (Microsoft powerpoint)
- Powerpoint is a tool that helps users (various personas) to present ideas, thoughts in meetings; where speaker can share a visualization (text, picture, multimedia etc.) to audience.
Where
- Are we focussing on any specific market (geography)? globally
- Are we focussing on any platform (web apps, mobile app, web)? Are all of them monetized? web app & office 365 is a paid product. App is free (in app purchase)
why
- Why do we want to increase the revenue? Goal - increase Monetization
who
- Who are the user personas? Defined below
when
- NA
How - How user buy this product?
- Can user buy powerpoint alone or as a bundle? currently, you buy it as a bundle w/ Office suite or Office365.

Formula: Revenue = average order price (aop) * # of qty sold (Q)

To increase revenue i can focus on increase either aop or Q

Identify user/customer personas

Office (Working Professionals)

Corporate Sales Reps [offline usage] - to present in front of clients [focus more on text & images, lightweight videos/animations]
corporate employees [online usage] - who work in collaboration with teams
Ad Agencies / Graphic heavy users - to create artwork & display innovation for design

Home

Students - to make notes, share reports & homework assignments
General Purpose - Digital content user, Internet Surfer / General PPT (multimedia usage)

Strategies to increase revenue

increase APRU per user (since office 365 is a subscription-based product focus on up sell/ cross sell - we can think of services that can help above user simplify there needs. for example sales reps can have presentation ideas to make ppt quickly, working professional can collaborate faster)
- Focus on al-a-carte based
Increase LTV per user (retain users > extended revenue)
expand to new user personas (which product is not currently focussing on)
- focus on growing products to similar industry like marketing banners, ads, photographers who are not pros at photoshop and can quickly get the job done from powerpoint.
grab users from competitors (revenue from new users)
- Focus on al-a-carte based bundling so that users can try powerpoint.
Focus on tier-based pricing (for various personas)
- students can be an early users in there lifecycle; but can be retained for longer - hence can be sold products at discounted rates.
- Try variation with smaller subscriptions (monthly, quarterly) to showcase products (on trial basis)
Segmentation & marketing to user based on there stages
- new user, inactive, active, power user. Push user to next level via engagement campaigns.