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AMA: HackerOne Former Vice President of Product Marketing, April Rassa on Influencing the Product Roadmap
April 2 @ 10:00AM PST
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HackerOne Former Vice President of Product Marketing, April Rassa on Influencing the Product Roadmap
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April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
At HackerOne we have open lines of communications across teams, everyone has visibility into each department's OKRs and we have a weekly company-wide AMAs where anyone can ask anything about the business to any employee. The AMAs are also structured with a weekly agenda outlining 2-4 topics that ......Read More
1078 Views
1 request
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
Great question. Oftentimes customers’ requests for added capabilities or improvements to current features are already in your product roadmap. When customer feedback corresponds with your product plan, use the volume of requests for a certain feature to prioritize stack and rank, perhaps bumping ......Read More
1055 Views
2 requests
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
As a product marketer, you don't manage scoping releases. Product managers need to be accountable for managing release dates and minor updates. If those dates are slipping, you need to set a meeting in place to better understand the gaps and the implications. There is a communication and sales el......Read More
736 Views
2 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?
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
As the CMO of the product, product marketing should take the lead and make sure the teams are aligned. This may require you to set up a meeting with Product Management (and perhaps other leaders across the busienss) to discuss the shifting priorities and align on a path forward. Map out the impac......Read More
729 Views
2 requests
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
You need to understand which customer segments you will tackle first and in what order. Not only will this exercise help define your Go To Market strategy but it also will greatly impact your MVP. I like to think of this incremental Go To Market strategy as a customer acquisition roadmap. A produ......Read More
866 Views
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April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
Sure, as the first product marketer, you need to arm yourself with customer insights (be the voice of the customer), be able to clearly define who you're selling to, what is their role, how do they make decisions, what are their pain points, how is your company uniquely addressing those key areas......Read More
1077 Views
1 request
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
The PMM team at HackerOne reports in Marketing. PM's purpose in the universe is to build the right product by translating customer needs into products they can't live without. PMMs role is to translate these products into value propositions that move customers to action and help influence the pro......Read More
772 Views
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April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
To be clear, Product marketing doesn't priortize feature on a roadmap, you enable Product with the data and business case to prioritize features. Arm the teams with the data and insights needed to drive your case. Can you pull in product usage data, sales pipeline and revenue impacts, support tic......Read More
1018 Views
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April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
I'm fairly new to HackerOne but I can tell you how I've done it before and its worked. We've had a customer insights meeting with the sales leadership team, we review the deals and discuss opps that were won, lost, etc. In these meetings we discuss product gaps, feedback, etc. PMMs also set up ti......Read More
799 Views
1 request
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
Build strong relationships with your product team. The product plan presents strategic goals and initiatives spanning a long timeframe. The release plan tracks specific phases of work that lead to the deployment of functionality or a major launch. This is usually much shorter than the product pla......Read More
1087 Views
1 request
How do you influence product roadmap as a product marketer.
This is an interview question we get all the time
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 1
Captain obvious here but customers and data. Framing stories and pain points mapped to personas helps, partnering with your Product team so you're locked in the customer journey is also super helpful, so the teams recognize where the shifts muct be made. Customer retention is the holy grail of b......Read More
1434 Views
2 requests
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
When a product is in development you typically will be working on a launch plan in parallel. These elements include: - GTM strategy: product adoption strategy, pricing/packaging, competitive, customer playbook - Internal enablement & comms strategy - Sales enablement/technical enablement ......Read More
1411 Views
2 requests
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
There are probably three major questions to answer when operationalizing a GTM plan: What is the governance? Meaning who is in charge? What is the division of labor? Who holds what decision rights (e.g., decide, influence, escalate)? When do you scale? There are two broad options: launch-and-......Read More
2090 Views
2 requests
What role should a customer advisory board have in influencing your product roadmap, and why?
Product marketing owns the customer advisory board but product management owns the roadmap.
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • April 2
CABs are great. Customer advisory boards have several common objectives in mind, including: - To create champions for the brand - To validate product ideas and guide the product roadmap - To help shape marketing messaging - To gather market intelligence - Understand the buying triggers of the c......Read More
1214 Views
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