Great question, here are 3 potholes to AVOID when building 1. Not becoming the undisputed expert on your product, market, and audience: * Great PMM teams form strong opinions through rigorous research across market, product, and competition * Focus on three areas: market/persona understanding, competitive intelligence, and deep product knowledge * My favorite research methods: win/loss analysis, paid expert interviews, Gong calls, customer interviews, using competitor’s products, and podcasts 2. Not embedding with Product Management early enough * PMM should join product management discussions early in the product development lifecycle. This ensures PMM can: * Effectively scope and plan launches with full context * Develop and review differentiated positioning before go-to-market * Have time to conduct market and competitor research and course-correct if differentiation isn't strong enough * And in many cases, influence the product direction based on market insights 3. Not getting radical alignment on your messaging house * In the early days of building PMM, it's easy for PMM to think the foundational messaging is complete and understood by the company. More often than not, this is not the case. * It takes more discussions, collateral, and enablement sessions than you'd think making sure everyone, from exec leadership to ICs are fully enabled and aligned on your brand and product messaging. * It's easy to move quickly and skip this step, but it is crucial you spend enough time evangelizing the messaging before calling it done. * Certification programs go a long way to ensuring this is done well.

My framework for analyzing customer feedback after a launch involves implementing multiple voice of customer channels, then analyzing the data to inform our product priorities and launch strategy. Here's an overview of my process: 1. Build dedicated voice of customer channels: * Set up dedicated Slack channels for the Revenue teams to share customer questions and feedback * Monitor community forum discussions * Track comments across social media channels * Collect questions raised at events like webinars 2. Analyze and extract themes: * Utilize AI tools to analyze and categorize the feedback 3. Share insights with marketing channel and Product teams: * Share insights to inform product roadmap decisions and post-launch activities

This is a great and highly relatable question as I've been a product marketer both at HQ (central) as well as in the region and this has happened frequently! As a 'central' product marketing team rolling out a product or solution in to the regions I think the first thing thats really important is to value the expertise of the regional PMM's. One of the core responsibilities of these teams is their regional market knowledge and expertise! They know the market best and also know what solutions/products would likely be successful in their regions (and why.) Consult with these teams as much as possible by way of your launch strategy. Sometimes the insights you get from these consultations are invaluable in HOW these products get rolled out. For instance it might just be a fairly small pricing & packaging or bundling tweak that needs to be made to make it more tangible in a particular country or region. Or something similarly minor. On the flip side if there is absolutely no product:market fit or one which might be a ways off (I've often seen this with different levels of market maturity and that dictating which products would work or not) the regional teams have a duty to raise those concerns and articulate why they won't be prioritising this roll out. I can't think of a time where I've seen pushback from product leadership or other leaders of of a business where they were being given clear indications that a product won't succeed and thus save their marketing spend, R&D, and future revenue aspirations by focusing on other markets! Just make sure you put forward a strong and clear business case on why this product isn't a good fit and thus less of a priority and show the trade offs if you were to have to focus on it and I would be surprised if they pushed back.

Alignment across the org is critical to having strong internal and external messaging. I take these steps to gain org-wide alignment: 1. Identify executive/key stakeholders & goals * Determine which executives will be part of the development process, which will be informed, and the elements they feel are critical to convey * Understand the goals of the teams that will use your messaging and the components they need for their work streams 2. Support messaging with data * Research the latest market trends relevant to the target audience, how the audience is responding to those trends, and the competitive landscape * Gather input from internal research teams and subject matter experts 3. Keep stakeholders in the loop * Check in regularly with stakeholders throughout the development process and share key insights that shaped the messaging 4. Launch and support * Share messaging in a live setting to generate excitement for the story and answer questions that are top of mind * Go on a roadshow and attend team meetings to dive deeper into the story * Host office hours to support teams using the messaging to guide their work streams

While I know you're looking for course recommendations, I genuinely believe that nothing can teach you more about AI than doing. While you can watch YouTube videos and listen to podcasts, being willing to dive into a tool like ChatGPT is the best way to quickly grasp AI and stay ahead of the curve. I'd suggest creating a challenge for yourself: open ChatGPT in your browser every morning and make it a point to try to use it for at least one task a day. This could be anything from writing an email to doing competitive research to coming up with a clever name for your PMM team. The more familiar you get with AI, the more you'll start to test the boundaries of what's possible.

Retention would always be the top of my list to monitor around a launch. This simple view of whether or not customers are sticking around will tell you more about the success of your product than even revenue or customers in. For example, think about products like Threads that brought in hundreds of millions of users, but very few stuck around after months of usage. While many products have had explosive growth, it can be temporary. Retentive customers can most likely be monetized or grown over time, so ensure your product usage stays high, and your return or bounce rate from the product is low.

We are using AI for our competitive intelligence program in two ways right now: (1) product intelligence for competitive offerings Rather than manually build and maintain feature lists for our competitors which then immediately get out of date, we have an internal answer bot that will scrap the web to answer whether a competitor has xyz feature. Any seller can submit a prompt to our answer bot which greatly reduces the burden on PMM fielding repetitive questions. (2) the tl;dr for real time competitive intelligence AI can not only keep you abreast of what’s happening, but also distill the noise into the key messages that matter for your world. AI tools today help aggregate and synthesize announcements for you to pass on to product and the field. While I find that you still need a human expert to analyze the potential impact of a given announcement to your business, AI can help do a lot of the upfront aggregation and distillation for you. 

Getting buzz before launch is about building curiosity without over-promising. The most effective strategy I’ve seen is a phased approach: 1. Tease the Problem, Not the Solution: Early hints about the problem you’re solving can spark curiosity. Drop vague hints that hint at the pain point without giving away the entire solution. 2. Leverage Trusted Voices: Get your champions and advocates talking before you go public. User advisory boards and beta testers sharing positive feedback builds credibility. 3. Prepare the Ecosystem: Give your partners, sales, and support teams enough lead time to get behind the launch. A well-orchestrated launch requires the whole company rowing in the same direction. Post-launch, it’s about maintaining relevance. Treat the launch as day one—keep the drumbeat going with customer stories, testimonials, and product spotlights. Keep connecting the new feature with the outcomes it drives.

A case study is essentially a narrative that captures a specific moment of challenge or transformation in a business context. Similar to a story, a case study begins by setting the stage with the 'before' scenario, outlining the problem, obstacles, or goals faced by the business. This 'before' moment serves as the starting point, highlighting the context and significance of the situation. As the case study unfolds, it transitions to the 'after' phase, where the narrative evolves to showcase the actions taken, strategies implemented, and outcomes achieved (ie. lots of juicy data) This part of the story focuses on the transformation or success realized by the business as a result of overcoming challenges or achieving objectives. You can punctuate the moments of transitions with customer quotes to humanize or make the pieces of the story more tangible and relatable. You can also create a chart or section of your sheet that focuses on big impressive data points.

This is a fun, but challenging question. If there's no Wave or Magic Quadrant (MQ) for your category, long-term and strategic thinking becomes incredibly important. Here are some approaches to consider: * Play the Long Game: Understand that establishing recognition in a category is a journey that typically spans 2-4 years. Be ready to commit to a firm and analyst practice for an extended period, getting placed doesn't happen in a single cycle. * Explore Adjacent Categories: Look for existing reports/categories where you can position your company as a part. Being included, even if it's not as a top-ranking company, can pay dividends if you're called out as exceptional in a specific niche. This can add to your competitive positioning and visibility in the market. * Cultivate Analyst Relationships: Build strong relationships with industry analysts. Provide them with valuable insights, learn from their perspectives, and engage in meaningful discussions. Analysts play a crucial role in shaping market perceptions and can be valuable allies in gaining recognition. They are human as well, they want to work with interesting and smart people! * Start Small, Aim High: Begin by aiming to be included in reports or analyses that may not carry the same weight as a Wave or MQ but still contribute to your visibility and competitive standing. Every inclusion adds credibility and opens doors for future recognition. There really aren't shortcuts here, you need to take a patient approach, but it can pay off in the long run, particularly in the enterprise space!