AMA: Dropbox Former Vice President Product Marketing, Naman Khan on Product Launches

I’m a big believer in customer research as a part of the overall launch plan. It’s tempting to make decisions based on “I think” or “I like” but in most cases, the PMM is not the target audience so it’s important to balance a convicted point of view with actual customer signal.  At Dropbox, we work with our Customer Intelligence team to do quant & qual research across areas like: value prop definition, messaging, creative brand and even perform research early in the pre-build phase to help i ...Read More

There are 3 that I couldn’t live without:Total Project Manager (TPM): This is the “quarterback” of the launch, they own the master launch plan, ensure dependencies are captured, establish alignment & drive accountability. When I was at Salesforce, we assigned a TPM for Dreamforce every year from within the PMM team and it was a key to a successful launch across the exec keynote, breakout sessions, analyst briefings, web & more. Workstream DACI: This is a comprehensive list of the various ...Read More

In terms of similarities, I think the craft of Product Marketing stays the same across B2C & B2B (SMB & ENT). The functional competencies required are generally consistent: Target Market Definition, Audience Definition, Pain Point/Needs Definition, Value Prop Definition, Core Messaging & Positioning, Core Content Development, Launch Planning etc. In fact, I have found that PMM’s with B2C backgrounds that move to B2B perform exceptionally well! One theory is that Product Marketing has ...Read More

First, I would start with the customer in mind, develop a clear understanding of who they are & what they care most about. If your target customer is an IT Leader in a large enterprise, they might be more open to regular updates & even expect them from their vendors. At Microsoft, we would send weekly updates to these customer audiences including detailed product updates, it was the right cadence for this audience as they really valued constant information in their function. If however y ...Read More

One way to do this is build a launch plan that eliminates the “Big Bang” altogether :). When building your launch plan, craft a “Season of Launch” instead of a plan that is centered around a single moment in time (ie, when your product/feature is announced or generally available) and ensure your resources are allocated thoughtfully across the “Season of Launch” time frame. Also, your launch plan should ideally define goals that map to broader company goals (ie, awareness uplift, usage & adop ...Read More

At Dropbox, PMM maps to the Product/Design/Engineering organization and reports into Marketing. Our pricing teams report into an adjacent team to Marketing and we have PMM's aligned to work on packaging. For the PMM team, we also focus on balancing the work we do with Product across "pre build" where we provide the voice of the customer (ie, target segment & audience, challenges/pain points, competitive landscape, market opportunity etc) to help inform product roadmap & the work we do wi ...Read More

PR can be a major component of a launch plan & your marketing mix. At Dropbox, our PR teams engage with the major media outlets that cover Dropbox, like Fast Company, Wired, Fortune etc to help them understand what we are launching, what it means to the market, how it adds value to our customers & more. We support our PR partners, who are awesome, during the launch process to ensure we are telling a consistent story across our sales teams, customers as well as the press. If done well, th ...Read More

Great question! Far too often, major product launches end up being HQ centric, with launch events at HQ, customers on stage that are from the same city at HQ, execs that are all based in HQ etc. The irony is that for most SaaS companies, the majority of their customers are nowhere near the HQ! During my time as a PMM at Microsoft, I was able to be part of some awesome international launch moments that reflected a non-HQ centric model, also at Salesforce I think we did a great job and internation ...Read More

With the increase in remote work overall, it is becoming much more the norm for functions like PMM to be remote as well whereas even 5 years ago it was less common to have a PMM role based remotely. With any remote based role, I think making a greater effort to connect with your stakeholders becomes super important, this is especially true of PMM. So much of a PMM’s role is driving alignment across key stakeholders like Product & Sales, and it becomes more challenging if you don’t have a sol ...Read More