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AMA: Quizlet Product Marketing Lead, Caroline Walthall on Influencing the Product Roadmap
January 30 @ 10:00AM PST
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Quizlet Product Marketing Lead, Caroline Walthall on Influencing the Product Roadmap
Top Questions
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
Every team has a different dynamic with this. In my experience, the PMMs who are highly empathetic and clued into team dynamics do best in this scenario. One of the fears many designers and PMs share is “design by committee”. It’s important to ask for a seat at the table but in a way that’s not f......Read More
665 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
It’s almost a cliche, but a really well-made slide deck can go a long way. Gather insights from all parts of the organization (sales, user operations, customer success, marketing) and from users themselves and distill them into a well-made deck that outlines your segments and target markets and i......Read More
681 Views
1 request
How do you get product management to focus more on customer problems and solving them, and less on shipping features that customers don't need?
They want to convey 20+ features to the public when we should only focus on top 3-5 features then figure out what the true benefit is to the end user.
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
Yes! I can relate! Feature-level messages are so limited on the marketing side. Part of your job as PMM is help recommend the best way to 1) connect features benefits, 2) roll benefits into value props, and 3) provide positioning statements for your target markets. PMMs can take the lead o......Read More
1154 Views
2 requests
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
If you can get it, the most important thing is executive buy-in for a team structure that honors marketing not just in the end phase, but also as a crucial thought partner to product and design. If you’ve had product launches that haven’t landed with the impact expected, those are great case stud......Read More
1479 Views
3 requests
How do you manage launches when the product team has a difficult time sticking to timelines?
This makes launches pretty difficult to manage without creating large lapses in communication.
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
I would bake in as much buffer time as you can in your marketing timelines. If they have a track record of not shipping on time, I'd start assuming that. If your product partners get upset about that, explain the marketing dependencies that you can't deliver results when timelines are always in f......Read More
1007 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
We have a product pod structure at Quizlet. Each product pod has 1-2 very clear business goals and usually owns certain product lines or domain areas. Every pod has a PM, a PMM, a designer, a product analyst, a product support specialist, an engineering manager, and an engineering team. This ......Read More
1573 Views
2 requests
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
So, I never use all these types of research, but here's a great menu of research phases that I keep at the top of my Research Plan Template. Usually at most I'd pick one of these per phase, that is most important and will produce the most actionable insights. Phase 1 - Early stage * Market ......Read More
1051 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
Other than the things already mentioned throughout my answers (relationship building, offering to facilitate planning sessions, etc.), I would also try to show them your own marketing calendar/roadmap. Share what you think your goals will be and ask to compare it to the rough product roadmap.......Read More
1206 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
It depends what the real downstream problem is here: - Does it hold up your launch campaigns? - Does it create a poor or unconsistent customer experience which damages brand credibility? - Do minor updates and overflow and bugs dominate instead of meaningful work that pushes the product forw......Read More
1036 Views
1 request
How do you influence the product roadmap without clear monetization targets for new features/products?
It's clear there is an opportunity, but currently hard to see how big of an opportunity.
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
Before prioritizing product initiatives, it's important to help your product team get a handle on the market and estimate the market opportunity. I usually work with an analyst to do competitive and market research that are inputs into a bottoms up revenue model. These early models contain a ton ......Read More
845 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
Set super clear research goals whenever you talk to customers or conduct a research study. As part of those goals, explain what the physical output of the research will be and articulate next actions the team should be able to take. Examples might be something like "create a customer journey ......Read More
1089 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
This may be bold, but I like to help facilitate the roadmap development process when PMs are okay with it. Not all PMs will jive with this, but if you can develop a strength as being a good facilitator, that can get you a long way. The key is to provide open frameworks to support discussion. I th......Read More
843 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
For a full-scale launch, yes, I do a pre-mortem about a month ahead of time so there is time to act on any key risk-mitigation activities before launch date. I like to do an async brainstorm in a google sheet with two tabs. 1. 🤕 Everything failed miserably... 2. 🤩Everything was beyond our ......Read More
968 Views
1 request
Have you ever been part of a launch where the eng/product team brought in product marketers or customers after work has kicked off (but before launch) and influenced feature development? What was that like?
Sometimes when product kicks off work they have assumptions about how people think about certain features. Marketing, support, and even customers can come to the table with real stories that may invalidate the assumptions product had early on in the feature dev process.
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 31
Yes. One of product marketers’ jobs in the process is to continue sounding the alarm for user validation at each phase of the process, but that’s easier said than done. Pressure to ship product work quickly directly conflicts with this. The reality is that some product teams are more user-centric......Read More
978 Views
1 request
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