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AMA: Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing, Mary Sheehan on Product Launches
January 16 @ 10:00AM PST
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Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing, Mary Sheehan on Product Launches
Top Questions
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
Post-launch momentum, what I call "Rolling Thunder," is one of my favorite topics! I think a lot of times people throw in their hats when the launch moment is done, but this is really when it's just beginning. A good strategy is to take some of the "core" assets you've created for the launch (e.g......Read More
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1 request
How do we approach the launch plan that was pre-decided and what changes in approaches would you recommend?
A product marketer jobs starts way before the product launch. However, it is difficult situation when the product launch is delayed from eng side.
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
I'd recommend to play the "new person card" and ask a lot of questions: what market problems does this solve? How did they ID these market problems? What customers or products have they talked to? What are competitors or doing? If they can’t answer these questions, there is likely room for you ......Read More
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3 requests
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
Although I’ve managed over 250 launches, not a single one has gone perfectly. That may sound crazy, but know that most of the time when something goes wrong, only I or a small number of people internally catch it, and the customer is never the wiser. Also, as I mentioned in another post, once the......Read More
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3 requests
How do product marketers lead a product launch when roadmaps and priorities are constantly changing?
There is a lack of alignment at my company and our teams act in silos. Consequently, my roadmap and goals seem to change on a weekly if not bi-weekly basis because marketing keeps getting pulled in different directions. There needs to be some sort of roadmap and role that aligns sales with product, but I'm not sure if that should come from product marketing or not. I want to initiate this conversation, but I don't know if it's overstepping my role or not. Advice here?
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
There are 2 major questions here - one has to do with priorities changing (e.g. no strategy) and the other is indirectly about out of control roadmap timelines - I'll answer both below! Priorities changing Major Roadmap and priority changes are often a symptom of a weak strategy. It’s comm......Read More
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Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
This is a great question! It's easy to get stuck with the same GTM checklist for every launch and feel like there's no creativity. An easy fix is to push the boundaries of what you normally do with a new visual approach or new mediums. Never tried a video before? Try it out now! I always l......Read More
2219 Views
2 requests
How do you think about the scope or deliverables for various launches?
Do you have a tiering system? What factors do you consider?
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
I definitely recommend tiering launches by the level of potential impact and therefore the level of activities. While starting the GTM plan, you need to decide how “big” you want to go. Time, resources, and budget all come into play here when you're thinking about the activities. Here's an......Read More
2122 Views
3 requests
Have you ever been part of a launch where the eng/product team brought in product marketers or customers after work has kicked off (but before launch) and influenced feature development? What was that like?
Sometimes when product kicks off work they have assumptions about how people think about certain features. Marketing, support, and even customers can come to the table with real stories that may invalidate the assumptions product had early on in the feature dev process.
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
Yes, definitely. Although it’s not ideal, it can happen and you can make an impact in terms of helping them understand product feature prioritization, since they probably already have some idea of what they're building, and (hopefully) who they are solving a problem for. If there are a ton of......Read More
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4 requests
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
Ideally, it's a combination of the GM, product management and product marketing. The GM would set the overall business goals for the year or quarter including revenue. The PM often drives the product launch adoption and revenue goals for that product. PMM often builds the plan with the metrics to......Read More
2090 Views
3 requests
In your organization does the product marketing also work with a portfolio marketer?
In our organization we have Product Marketers assigned to audiences (customer segments) and products. It is difficult to align efforts and avoid duplication - have you seen a model like this work well and how?
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
Yes, we do. In fact, I think Adobe is probably the best example out there I've seen of Portfolio marketing. At a high level, they've divided the Adobe business into 3 business units: - Creativity & Design - Documents such as PDFs and our Adobe Sign - Marketing & Commerce - called Adobe Exp......Read More
1851 Views
3 requests
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing • January 16
At Adobe, it's been a pleasure so far to work with many cross-functional teams for a product launch. For my team, Adobe Advertising Cloud, which is on the B2B side, we work with the following teams: - Product / eng - Program management (which is the organizational arm and keeps eng timelines......Read More
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