Alex Lobert

AMA: Facebook Former Product Marketing Lead, Measurement, Alex Lobert on Influencing the Product Roadmap

August 26 @ 10:00AM PST
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Facebook Former Product Marketing Lead, Measurement, Alex Lobert on Influencing the Product Roadmap
Top Questions
How do you get product management to focus more on customer problems and solving them, and less on shipping features that customers don't need?
They want to convey 20+ features to the public when we should only focus on top 3-5 features then figure out what the true benefit is to the end user.
Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & CommerceAugust 26
I suggest that you start by taking a step back to really diagnose the problem. Why is it that the team wants to ship so many features?  I try to always assume good intent. With that in mind, the team's actions are probably logical, but there is either mis-alignment on the goal they are optimizin......Read More
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Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & CommerceAugust 26
During roadmapping, each product team articulates the "understand needs" for their product area and what we will do with the information to improve the product. This process is often led by the PMM.  From there, we work with the product team to document hypothesis to test based on information we......Read More
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Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & CommerceAugust 26
The first piece of research is typically WITH the product team - aligning on the key things that we don't know, but need to know to make better product or feature decisions.   Upfront you should lay out that we will try to learn X in order for us to decide whether or not to do Y.  If you do thi......Read More
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Have you found a good framework to communicate your product roadmap to customers?
We're trying to strike a balance of communicating high priority initiatives without getting caught up in exactly timelines.
Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & CommerceAugust 26
I find it both tricky and exciting to share your product roadmap with customers. I agree it's hard to strike the right balance of specific yet not tie your hands. But also, it's so much fun to show people the exciting ways you plan to help people. Some considerations:  (1) Share the overarching ......Read More
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Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & CommerceAugust 26
Two mistakes I've seen are: (1) Not getting on the same page as to the goals for the product. If you don't have a shared undersatnding with your PM / your product team as to what you are building and who you are buidling for you are likely going to provide insights that miss the mark. More hurtf......Read More
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Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & CommerceAugust 26
I find that the key difference between influencing a 3 year product vision vs. features for the next quarter are about the precision / availability of information. The next quarter can typically be assessed pretty clearly. You can talk to customers / do research into what their needs are now and......Read More
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How can you prove to hiring managers in the interview process that you can hit the ground running as someone transitioning to product marketing?
My background is in account management and client services. I'm nervous that I'll be asked questions that I don't have direct experience to answer. Anyway to answer questions based on my transferable skills to prove that I'm not a hiring risk?
Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & CommerceAugust 26
I find diverse experiences to be valuable to product marketing. When I think about research and influencing the roadmap, what is most important to me is: * Can this person create a data-driven argument for change? That could be getting a client to adopt a product or changing an internal proc......Read More
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