AMA: HubSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing, Nisha Goklaney on Influencing the Product Roadmap

If your goal is to influence the product roadmap there are a few pitfalls you should avoid. Don't treat the roadmap as something fixed/set in stone - Having a roadmap is super crucial to helping focus product teams + also giving the market a clear sign on where you are going. However, there needs to be a fine balance here, so that you don't miss opportunities to meet the moment. A better approach - is to recognize that roadmaps are dynamic, frame your input as a way to enhance priorities or resp ...Read More

Product marketing plays a key role in sharing the roadmap externally to ultimately help buyers buy and sellers sell. Here's some key ways to on how to do this: Public roadmap pages or tools - Share high level public facing roadmap that helps give customers insights into the areas the product is investing in and the use cases, themes and problem areas where the product is doubling down to support. Customer advisory boards - share the roadmap selectively with top-tier customers (in certain upmarke ...Read More

What works here in my experience is having regular touchpoints for alignment + strategic reviews to influence direction. Here's a framework: Weekly or bi-weekly syncs - for ongoing collaboration and alignment. This is where you discuss progress on current roadmap items, any changes to product launch timeframes, updates on GTM plans, customer feedback and market trends. Why it's important: Maintains a constant feedback loop and prevents surprises as features move through development Quarterly roa ...Read More

This is a great question. An important thing to remember is Products should be built with a market in mind - and that's where a PMM comes in. They should be experts in the 'market' (customer, competitor, market sizing) and use this as their grounding. Here's what worked from my experience: Coming to the table with data and insights - Product teams value concrete, actionable insights so bringing data that they can't ignore helps. Use customer feedback, rep feedback, competitive analysis and adopt ...Read More