AMA: Wistia Director of Product Marketing, Elise Beck on Influencing the Product Roadmap

This is a great question! At Wistia and HubSpot, we implemented a "Product Spotlight Series" as a monthly mechanism to showcase incremental product improvements to customers via email, blog posts, and videos. This approach reminds customers that your product is continuously evolving and encourages them to revisit features that they may have overlooked. Additionally, as the product evolves, it's essential to run campaigns that celebrate the new functionality. It's also beneficial to consider re-e ...Read More

Again, I'm a firm believer that product marketing should be in lockstep with their counterparts in product. As a new product marketer, taking the time to forge those relationships and build trust with the product team is an essential first step. It's also important to align around higher-level company objectives. This helps establish common ground and ensures that everyone is working towards the same outcomes. With a strong foundational relationship and a shared goal, it's much easier to influen ...Read More

In my experience, it's important for the product team to establish their own OKRs that ladder into the company-level objectives. However, creating a culture of agility that enables quick and reliable product releases can be a real challenge. I've been in scenarios where the product organization has struggled with scoping work effectively or in some cases they've had super ambitious plans for MVPs that would take forever to build. As a product marketer, I've found that building strong relationshi ...Read More

In my experience, it's best if product marketing is in lockstep with the product triad (product manager, designer, and tech lead). They should all have a really clear idea of what they're building and who it's for. There are two parts of the design process where PMM might be a bit more involved: UX Research As a product marketer, I've found it valuable to sit in on UX research calls to hear firsthand how customers are interacting with the product. This research can help shape final design decisi ...Read More

In product marketing, we often focus on brand-new features that can attract new customers and expand our market. But for existing customers who've already bought in, sometimes the little updates make the biggest impact. To ensure that the product team prioritizes these updates, it's really important to have visibility into how customers are experiencing the product. While average NPS score is a useful benchmark, support inquiries can provide more valuable feedback. By analyzing support tickets a ...Read More

I believe that every idea and request can be valuable, and at Wistia, we've worked hard to foster a culture where product ideas and feedback are openly shared. Of course, there's always room for improvement, but we strive to make feedback visible and welcome. It's important to keep in mind that sometimes what seems like a great idea could actually be a bug (this happened to me recently) or something that's already being evaluated. You never know when your feedback could be the missing piece to a ...Read More

Again, I think this is where it's helpful to align with your company-level OKRs. At a high level, you're all working towards the same goals. If you have an idea that you think might help you achieve those goals, it's important to share that with your product org. Any data you can bring to the conversation will certainly be helpful -- whether that's trends you're seeing in your existing funnel or macro trends like search volume for keywords you might be trying to go after (this is especially valu ...Read More

When it comes to aligning the goals of your product and PMM teams, it's important to first look at your company's overarching OKRs--which should act as a guiding star for your entire organization. Once you have a clear understanding of these company-level OKRs, you can start to align your product and product marketing teams around a shared goal. This can be achieved by breaking down the company-level objectives into smaller, more specific goals that are relevant to your product and marketing str ...Read More