AMA: Shopify Director of Product Marketing, Marisa Currie-Rose on Growth Product Marketing

Growth Product Marketing focuses on driving feature adoption, activation and retention while Product Marketing is focused on the initial product launch and go-to-market moment. The primary goal of Growth Product Marketing is to help customers achieve the "realized value" of the product and maintain "ongoing value" to prevent customers from churning. This is accomplished through ongoing tactics such as implementing growth experiments, executing adoption campaigns through channels like SEO, SEM, e ...Read More

Some of the things I think about for boosting product adoption include: In-product notifications and promotions, starting first with onboarding and milestone-related campaigns Product and feature Cross-Sell and Upsell Co-marketing and partnership opportunities Email drip campaigns, including those that celebrate customer milestones Push notifications Organic social media outreach, namely featuring customer stories to ground in social proof Influencer marketing promotions with expiration dates Ru ...Read More

When working on a product, the goal is that we are focusing on a problem that our merchants want us to solve. If we are doing that, there is already a natural interest in the product, which leads to acquisition. The audience that is organically interested in our product is likely to be the most highly qualified for the product or feature we’ve launched. Therefore, my priority is to ensure that we retain our existing customers and meet their expectations. If we are not doing this, then focusing o ...Read More

Both Product Marketing and Growth Product Marketing should focus on quantitative impact. Both roles should focus on and track revenue, customer acquisition, and retention, including both lapsed customers (those who are still technically using the platform or service but haven't engaged in a certain period) and churn (customers who have left the platform or product). The key performance indicators (KPIs) used will vary based on business goals and objectives. To fully understand the effectiveness ...Read More

Product Marketing teams need Growth Product Marketing Managers. This close relationship is especially important when the initial product launch and go-to-market moment is done and the focus shifts to growing usage of and engagement with the product. Product Marketing Managers often refocus on the next feature/product launch, instead of having the time to prioritize growth work. The Product Marketing Manager is responsible for understanding product-market fit and building messaging and positionin ...Read More