AMA: Nextdoor Head of Product Marketing, Brianne Shally on Influencing the Product Roadmap

Since PMM is the voice of the customer, it is vital to always be talking to customers. Here's a couple of approaches:  - Schedule "Voice of Customer Day": Have day full of customer calls with a specific theme. Bring in cross funcational stakeholders (e.g. Product, Eng, Design, Product Ops, Brand, Comms, etc.) to participate and sign up for roles: notetaker, interview key takeaways, interviewer, etc. Host a kick off in the morning with interviews through out the day and and wrap up at the end wit ...Read More

Sharing the product roadmap externally is a great way to share the company's vision, investment in innovation, and upcoming features to get prospects and customers excited about the potential. It can be a strong selling tool to get prospects on board and a resource to get current customers to invest more. What's important is that the roadmap isn't standing on it own, but partnered with an overall vision to show how product efforts later up to a great vision. This is where Product Marketing can p ...Read More

Product Marketing should closely partner with product and other cross functional teams (Eng, Finance, etc.) to inform and develop the product roadmap, including:  Insights: Provide key insights and synthesis from competitive intelligence, market trends, analyst insights, customer and Sales input, research / NPS, etc. Go beyond pulling all the information together to analyze it and provide recommendations. Storytelling: Product Marketing brings the roadmap to life through telling the story of the ...Read More

Here are a few of my approaches to influence product leadership on the product priorities: Work cross-functionally across UX, research, Data Science, Product Operations, Sales, etc. to incorporate everyone's input so Product Marketing's list represents all input and is the source of truth. One of the challenges Product faces is distinguishing signal vs. noise with all the input that comes to them. Product Marketing can take a leadership role to collect, analyze, and synthesize the input to provi ...Read More

There are various inputs into the product roadmap that Product Marketing can provide, beyond data and customer anecdotes. Where Product Marketing can be most valuable is in connecting the dots across the various insights to share a point of view and answer the question 'why this matters'. For instance, you can share competitive trends but take the analysis a step further to share 'why this matters'.  Additional inputs into the product roadmap:  Competitive Analysis: Understanding key competitors ...Read More