AMA: Asana Head of AI & Platform, Product Marketing, Neel Patel on AI and Product Marketing

Balancing the good and bad of AI is incredibly important, and something I think about regularly for what we build and launch at Asana. How that plays into our marketing plans really comes down to a few key themes: Ethics for a "human-centered" approach: think about the ethics or principles for AI that you want your customers to know as they evaluate your AI solutions. Ex: Before we even built anything at Asana, we established a set of "human-centered" principles that grounds everything we do—fro ...Read More

This is something I've been grappling with for some time too, but have learned a few best practices through trial and error (and seeing what resonates with customers): Speak to how AI supercharges your overall narrative/platform value: often times, we get caught up in launching new products and thinking about what makes them unique/different but instead, I'd focus on how does it amplify your existing product value. AI is a catalyst in many respects, so it should further demonstrate your establis ...Read More

Like a good loaf of sourdough bread, it only takes a few ingredients. But the ratios are key to getting it right. The same can be said about training AI bots for any sort of role or task you're giving it. It all starts with a clear, actionable prompt. I've learned through AI experts at Asana about a 4-sentence prompting framework that's really helped me see great results from building PMM-specific bots: Persona: “You are an expert at _____” Goal: “Your goal is to _____” Task: “Your task is to __ ...Read More

It's important to be transparent and consistent in addressing security & privacy concerns of enterprise customers. I've found that ~70% of their questions are the same from customer to customer but then the nuances of regional teams, specific data sharing protocols, etc. make up the remaining 30% of differences. In the past few months, we've found engaging with AI Councils within these enterprise organizations leads to more in-depth conversations around business use cases, ROI, AI applicatio ...Read More

When it comes to measuring AI's impact for product marketing, I've found it really helps in several areas: Message crafting & testing Competitive & industry analysis Predictive analytics on consumer trends/behaviors Content writing support (e.g. press releases, keynotes, etc.) Actioning various stages of a product launch workflow I'm also discovering more and more applications—whether that's helping synthesize key trends from customer calls or helping inform what we should think about la ...Read More

We've seen our technical teams really lean in to help with customer-facing documentation, fact sheets, resource guides, etc. Essentially, an enablement partner to PMM across a few areas: Validating documentation: for many of our customers, understanding what data AI has access to, how it interacts with that data, and when/where is it shared with LLM partners is what we're often fielding. Our technical documentation team has helped us create very clear diagrams, wireframes, and fact sheets that b ...Read More

I've recently been reading more in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report that last year was all about the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” with the rise of LLMs and promise of Co-pilots—or as I like to call it, "the year of AI billboards on every city corner!" And now, we're in this "Trough of Disillusionment" where we're trying to find 1-2 clear applications of AI within organizations. But if we fast forward past those stages, you'll see we soon turn to a "Slope of Enlightenment" ...Read More

I really like this question, and worry there's not enough characters to do it justice here! But let me give it a shot by sharing my high-level thoughts based on the past 2 years of bringing new AI solutions to market: For me, this comes down to what's at the core of Product Marketing and what really drew me to the craft: storytelling. I love telling stories. And with the help of AI, I've seen how it can make Product Marketers even better storytellers (or in some cases, even worse if we're lazy a ...Read More

I'm using AI to help with automating a lot of the rote, manual work that often bogs us down (e.g. writing status updates for XFN teams, assigning out work & next steps, taking a first pass at generating content, etc.). It's been a powerful addition to our product launch process where we have created workflows with AI embedded in various stages. For example when new launch requests come in, we have AI triage the request, validate it, assign it to the right team/individual, and provide a first ...Read More

There's no doubt that AI will transform our careers and starting now is important. I've found myself diving deep into a variety of trainings, boot camps, certifications, and research articles to help with my own learning curve. What it's shown me is this isn't a "one and done" motion but rather an on-going skill investment as the technology continues to evolve. Essential skills I'd recommend include: Prompt engineering AI 101 & 201 baseline certifications Automation education (e.g. creating ...Read More

There are so many AI writing bots out there, but I primarily use Poe and Claude with my own prompts built in. I've started experimenting with Jasper and Grammarly to just see what they can offer, but haven't tested them deeply just yet. What I've found is most helpful is having a really solid prompt. If you just put in a request without a lot of guidance, AI will spit out something that might not resonate. But if you give it more prompting or guidance, you'll see a night & day difference in ...Read More