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Anna Wiggins

AMA: ManyChat Former Sr. Director Product Marketing and Content, Anna Wiggins on Influencing the Product Roadmap

August 11 @ 10:00AM PST
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ManyChat Former Sr. Director Product Marketing and Content, Anna Wiggins on Influencing the Product Roadmap
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Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
It’s really important to understand your product’s team development process. How is the Product team structured and why? What and when are their sprint cycles. How do new tasks get on the backlog and how is the backlog prioritized. If possible, attend backlog prioritization meetings so you can un......Read More
1148 Views
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Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
This will depend on the type of business you are in. Hardware? Enterprise? These have longer development and sales cycles so the teams have to plan much further ahead vs. a self service model where products tend to ship faster. Also the maturity of the company will make a difference because Produ......Read More
1197 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
This goes back to your goals for running the alpha/beta and what kind of information you want to gather. In general I look for honest feedback on some of the following themes, but you’ll want to work closely with your PM partners to define specifics. 1. Does the product solve the right problem ......Read More
1130 Views
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Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
I answer a similar question further on, but at a high level a great way to preview the roadmap is part of annual or quarterly account health checks. In the past I’ve had a section in the sales deck. We’ve also recorded videos with our PMs covering high level plans because customers tend to reall......Read More
1052 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
The first thing I would recommend is to understand your company’s definition and expectations for Product Marketing. Be prepared that it may be a narrow definition and as a result you may be seen as a service/support function vs. a strategic partner. It’s common for the first PMM to either become......Read More
691 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
I would start by understanding why it’s not seen as a priority - does this feature align with your overall product strategy? Perhaps this is an area that the company has made a conscious choice not to enter. However if this is simply a prioritization issue for the Product team, I suggest you qua......Read More
968 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
I’m going to assume that by data you mean customer research. In general, it’s difficult to drive a roadmap or any type of strategy without insights. However you don’t always have to do formal research to understand your customers and to make recommendations advocating for their needs. Some areas......Read More
830 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
This would depend on your goals. Do you want to share the roadmap to get feedback or do you want to share the roadmap to give customers insight into your vision and upcoming plans. Also, think about what kind of expectations your customers have from you and what kind of expectations do you want t......Read More
884 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
I’m glad you are asking this question because this is exactly the right mindset you should have in a young Product Marketing org to avoid becoming solely a GTM service function. The path to this is through a mixture of education and showing value to the Product team. Something you should find ou......Read More
1301 Views
3 requests
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
This question becomes more about how you can influence your PM vs. the roadmap yourself. Without knowing your history or the nature of your relationship I would advise for you to focus on building trust with this person. Start by understanding his or her definition of product marketing and expec......Read More
848 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
As a rule, I like to work with existing tools the Product team uses to avoid adding overhead to their day. To communicate and collaborate we use the usual suspects: Slack, Notion, Asana, Google Slides, and live meetings. However a big focus for me was to establish a Research Hub - a centralized ......Read More
838 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
I think this question is relevant for all of us across all teams right now. And to be honest, I don’t have a good answer because in a lot of ways we are all still figuring out this new world. However here are some things that worked for our team: - Schedule 15 min Zoom coffee chats with PMs you ......Read More
955 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
Great question and tough but interesting situation. Ideally this research is not coming in right before launch and you have time to adjust. I would want to understand if as a result of the research we know what a compelling MVP would look like - ideally a few versions - and work with the PM team......Read More
560 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
ManyChat’s Marketing team is composed of Product Marketing, Content, Channel, and Events & Community teams. Product Marketing sits within the Marketing org and we all roll up to the CMO. We also have a cross-functional Growth task force composed of reps from Channel, Content and Product Marketing......Read More
930 Views
2 requests
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
Based on this question, I’m going to assume that your company doesn’t have a research function and that the account team holds the key to contacting customers. My first piece of advice would be to work on establishing a research function within the Product Marketing team so that you have constan......Read More
1025 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
Since ManyChat is a younger company, we don’t yet have a lot of product lines that merit the traditional squad PM <> PMM structure. Today the Product Marketing team is structured based on target customer personas with each PMM also responsible for a functional area like research or competitive in......Read More
1144 Views
1 request
Anna Wiggins
Anna Wiggins
Bluevine Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Content, Customer ResearchAugust 11
This depends on the nature of the conversation but in general our Product team expects us to come to the table with an educated, data based POV on how to approach a strategy or a problem. However, I would reframe the second part of your question. We are not delivering to our Product team, instea......Read More
937 Views
1 request