AMA: Wealthsimple Director of Product Marketing, Shezana Manji on Influencing the Product Roadmap

I believe most organizations product marketers are leverage as either Inbound PMMs or Outbound PMMs.  Inbound PMMs are focused on insights that feed the product roadmap; pricing and packaging, and product positioning that feeds into the marketing strategy.  Outbound PMMs are focused on go-to-market planning and execution of launches and adoption KPIs (The PMs are responsible for building the product/feature and their PMM counterpart is responsible for strategy and execution to drive the KPIs) It ...Read More

If your'e missing the mark, take a step back. Make sure you have a clear understanding of the business challenge you're trying to solve (why do we need this research, what decisions will it help drive). I will share a tangable example of how we approached "how does our tech stack up" At a previous company we were evaluating the decsion to build or acquire to fill a gap in our offering. The first step we took was to be clear on who our target audience was (if we invest in this, who will care and ...Read More

Working from a place of positive intent, some R&D teams may not realize that launch activities are as much work at building a new product/feature. They don't see all the planing and activities that go into it.  Whether or not you have program managment function: build a clear project plan for gtm activities, circulate it and create rituals to ensure it's on track. If you break down any GTM delivery into talks, it'll naturally create trip wires.  ex/ team needs final UX to build help docs and ...Read More

As product marketers, we need customers to believe in the why (value, benefits), the how and what become proof points. This is also a critical input for the design team to create the right solution to the problem. I have never struck out by telling the PM and UX lead that I will be better at my job by being part of the design process and see it come to life. At first you may be an observer in design reviews, and as you build context arout the product, customer, competitors.. you'll bring a more ...Read More

A wise mentor once told me, there is a very big difference between being respected and being liked. You don't need your PM to like you, you need them to respect you.  With that being said, remember that as a PMM you're a strategic partner to the product management team. PMs are ultimately responsible to make the decisions about the roadmap, our role is to help them make the right bets.  There is no way that PMs can champion all the workstreams needed to understand competitive landscape, product ...Read More