AMA: Google Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform, Madeline Ng on Influencing the Product Roadmap

When I'm communicating with product teams, I always want to start by making sure that I'm heard, then that what I'm saying is understood and considered useful, and then finally that what I've shared inspires action. To break it down, here's how I would approach. Be heard Always start by considering what your product team cares about. What KPI are they assessed upon? How does what you are sharing help to influence their success? If you start here, you'll be much more likely to get the attention o ...Read More

When I look at an external product roadmap, I see it as a coordinated effort where the product marketing team is accountable for delivering the roadmap, but the product team is responsible for providing the key building blocks of information that build it. Product marketing is responsible for Crafting the narrative: Your roadmap should thematically address how you are recognizing and serving your customers' top problems in a meaningful way Building the template focused on customer centricity: En ...Read More

First off, I feel your pain and I understand your frustration. While not articulated, it sounds like you feel the product direction is a little bit off course and could be improved with brand/sales/product marketing in the room. I'm biased, but I agree! There is so much value in bringing the outside world's perspective - market dynamics, competitive insights, sales objections - into a product direction discussion. The very first thing I would do is understand why the product direction omits the ...Read More

I love this question because it reflects the reality of working between a sales organization and a technical team of product managers and engineers! This is a situation where you have to start with the success metrics for the launch, try to find alignment in the goals between sales and dev, and then find some creativity in the execution. Here's a rough framework I use: What does success look like for the feature updates? There are infinite flavors of this answer but if the feature success is con ...Read More