AMA: MetaRouter Director of Product Marketing, Michele Nieberding 🚀 on Influencing the Product Roadmap

Get buy-in early. You can "own" the customer-facing roadmap, but make sure to ask for their input early and often. This collaboration makes them more likely to commit, as they see their input reflected in the final plan and you're less likely to get any crazy surprises when it comes time to discuss plans for the next seasonal launch. Understand their challenges, concerns, constraints, and priorities, such as technical limitations or resource allocation. By acknowledging these challenges, you sho ...Read More

I suggest always having a customer-facing roadmap ready, so you can always use that for conversation when needed (I have templates if you're looking for one!). This roadmap is presented exclusively in 1:1 meetings with customers or prospects by our sales or customer success teams. It undergoes a significant refresh annually, with smaller updates occurring 1-3 times per quarter based on new developments.That's for the roadmap itself. But for conversations with the Product Team, I like to have a r ...Read More

For me, it's a balance of "what's in it for you?" and "what are our shared goals?" Emphasize and give examples of how product marketing feedback aligns with their objectives, like increasing adoption, improving user satisfaction, or driving revenue. Joint KPIs per launch can help with this! And frame suggestions in terms of potential ROI, market differentiation, or customer retention. Align on strategic priorities with execs: Work with leadership to ensure PMM insights are included in discussion ...Read More

In these cases, influence the product roadmap might feel like trying to squeeze water from a stone. But...it’s not about squeezing harder (because of course that won't work!), it’s about reframing the conversation. (Keyword in all of this: PMM should be INFLUENCING the product roadmap, NOT defining it)A full roadmap is almost always full competing priorities, and your job as a PMM is to bring clarity, focus, and a true/well researched understanding of the customer and market. Here are some thing ...Read More

Start with building the relationship, and put "business" on the backburner when you're first getting on board. Here are some tips on how I like to do that: Use Slack (but not just for work-related stuff): Send casual check in notes--what did you do this weekend? Happy birthday! What do you have planned for the holidays? etc. This helps build a more authentic and fun connection from the start. Understand their POVs: Ask them early and often what their goals, challenges, and priorities are (and WH ...Read More

This is best case scenario! It's always a collaborative process, but if you have someone owning customer research (and you have Gong to listen to those calls), that is awesome. Use that research and incorporate that into your POV on roadmap prioritization and/or suggestions on new things to add.Other inputs from PMM might include: competitive analysis/gap analysis, product adoption metrics and usage data, sales insights and customer requests, NPS/CSAT scores, win/loss analysis, etc.Some tips for ...Read More

Interestingly enough, I've started using Perplexity AI with Google Notebook LM to pull together market research for me (for free). Here are some prompts I've been playing around with: Start with Perplexity: Use it to scan recent insights from industry news, forums, and reports. Frame the response by asking it specific questions like: "What are the key trends in [your industry] for [current year]?" "What are customers saying about [competitor product/feature]?" Iterate Query Focus: Narrow down to ...Read More

Maybe unpopular opinion, but I let the product team and CPO lead the 3-year product vision (though provide input if asked based on what I know about the market and competitors), and I focus my attention on the next quarter/year. Things change ALL the time, and my product marketing support relies on the suggest of the releases coming in the next year.but some things to think about here: 3 year vision: what are the long-term company goals (IPO? go public? fund raise?), industry trends, and emergin ...Read More

As someone who has solely worked in tech, this is a great question! Because you want to build rapport with your product team when you make suggestions, but also need to understand the technical side of things. A couple things to consider here: Speak the (technical) language: Learn enough about the product’s architecture, tech stack, and engineering constraints to accurately frame your suggestions in terms that resonate and build trust/confidence with technical teams. For example, do you know wha ...Read More

If you haven't tried the RICE framework to help prioritize in a numerical/data-driven way. try this! RICE Framework (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) Reach: How many users/customers will this feature impact?Example: Number of users affected, target segment size. Impact: What is the expected benefit?Example: Score as High (3), Medium (2), Low (1). Confidence: How certain are you about the reach and impact?Example: High (100%), Medium (80%), Low (50%). Effort: How much work is required?Example: ...Read More