As a product management consultant for IPL’s Freelance Marketplace, a key objective is to articulate the strategic thought process that guides how product managers discover, prioritize, and define the most valuable problems to solve for the business and users. The role requires asking the right questions to uncover unmet needs, analyzing data to spot issues and trends, and framing potential solutions to determine if they are impactful, feasible, and viable investments of resources. Additionally, the goal is to synthesize research and proposed solutions into persuasive recommendations presented to key stakeholders and teams. Building alignment and securing stakeholder commitment on product directions is critical for ensuring solutions deliver intended value and desired outcomes when implemented. This requires skills in translating technical concepts into compelling narratives for non-technical audiences through clear logic, evidence, and strategic rationale. Ultimately, proposed solutions should demonstrate hands-on experience solving common issues related to designing, building, managing, and continually improving digital products and platforms to drive user growth and engagement.

To drive increased engagement on par with competitors like Upwork, IPL’s Marketplace should look to implement some new high-value features. One major opportunity is offering improved profiles and portfolios to enable freelancers to better showcase their work and skills. By providing customizable profile pages, personalized URLs, and expanded sections for displaying portfolio samples or client testimonials, freelancers can highlight their unique value (Hari & Srinivasa, 2022). This helps attract more specialized, qualified candidates that job posters want access to. It also allows freelancers to more effectively differentiate themselves in a crowded market.

Another impactful addition would be advanced search and filtering capabilities for job posters. Things like skills, work history, client reviews, certifications held, or communication tools used should be categories job posters can use to narrow down candidates. This means job posters can easily surface more tailored and compatible freelance talent for their needs from the expansive marketplace. More relevant matches improve outcomes on both sides. Automated job recommendations represent another chance to increase engagement. Using the platform’s data on freelancer profiles and their stored areas of expertise, it can recommend jobs to candidates that closely match their skills. This introduces users to openings they may have otherwise missed, leading to more applications. The algorithms can be refined over time using historical data to surface recommendations users showed interest in. There is little downside to advancing these automated recommendations.

Of these proposed features, developing out robust user profiles and portfolio sections should be the top priority. This has the most potential to realize Marketplace goals because top freelance talent is attracted to platforms where they can comprehensively showcase their previous work and credentials. By making themselves stand out, it increases their chances of landing lucrative contracts (João & Silva, 2020). The profiles also lend credibility for freelancers looking to build a personal brand. Lastly, providing as much insight into previous work gives job posters more confidence during the vetting and hiring process. Improving profiles checks all the boxes by benefiting both sides of the marketplace.

To address the concerning trend of decreasing subscriptions, I would propose IPL prioritize exploring opportunities around offering enhanced professional development and upskilling. The general idea is to partner with e-learning platforms and service providers to give discounted or free access to in-demand courses, certifications, and training. As more skilled freelancers are attracted to low-cost or free offerings to level up or pivot their skills, it should organically bring more job posters in to match rising talent levels.

Some examples of education partners to potentially work with include Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Skill share, Coursera or even product training programs from software companies like Salesforce. This differs from competitors significantly because it adds a value-adding layer beyond just a static job matching board. It shows users that IPL is invested in their career growth and providing paths to increase their earnings potential over time (Ouma, 2023). That engenders goodwill and loyalty. It also future proofs skills democratization as the economy and job automation accelerates. Access to continuing self-education opportunities will become more attractive over traditional education paths which can price out certain demographics. Lastly, it gives freelancers community, mentors and credentials they can proudly display on revamped profiles.

For self-paced online platforms, discounts on premium content subscriptions is feasible. For accredited certification programs, sponsoring a certain allotment of enrollments annually through partial subsidies can provide access. Based on utilization rates the first year, the program can scale appropriately in following years. Promoting the e-learning aspect heavily early on should generate buzz and interest in the community. Incentives like unlocking profile badges for completing courses also gamifies the experience (Sherman & Ng, 2022). During onboarding emphasizing upskilling differentiators will hit users immediately at the sign-up stage as well. As it adds considerable value, the hope is it ultimately retains and attracts more freelancers first, followed by job posters seeking their services. This influx of new skilled labor rekindles the flywheel effect that underpins thriving talent marketplaces.

In conclusion, reversing declining subscriptions requires IPL to think outside the box and augment their core offering with strategic value adds. While refining existing marketplace features is prudent, adding services that enable users to transform their skill sets gives IPL’s platform an advantage. Users stay within their ecosystem while levelling up their capabilities to earn higher incomes over the long-term. That breeds loyalty which sustains growth. It will take deliberate coordination but embraces product evolution beyond traditional models. This balanced feature enhancement and value innovation provides the clearest path to recapture marketplace momentum.