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

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 strategies. As an example, let's say your company objective is to increase revenue by 20%. Your product team has likely honed in on a handful of new features or improvements that will help to hit that target. And on the marketing side, PMM will focus on promoting and driving the adoption of those new features. It's likely that there still might be some conflicting priorities. It's important to maintain open lines of communication when it comes to how each team is thinking about prioritization and how we believe the work will ladder into the bigger picture. At Wistia, we look at our OKRs on a tri-annual basis to make sure we're still aligned and focused on the right things that will move the needle for the business.

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 strategies. As an example, let's say your company objective is to increase revenue by 20%. Your product team has likely honed in on a handful of new features or improvements that will help to hit that target. And on the marketing side, PMM will focus on promoting and driving the adoption of those new features. Things can get a bit challenging when there are conflicting priorities. It's important to maintain open lines of communication when it comes to how each team is thinking about prioritization and how we believe the work will ladder into the bigger picture. At Wistia, we look at our OKRs on a tri-annual basis to make sure we're still aligned and focused on the right things that will move the needle for the business.

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 and live chat conversations, you can identify areas where customers are experiencing friction and prioritize fixing those sharp edges. A product ideas forum can also be a helpful tool for quantifying customer impact. By tracking the number of upvotes on ideas, you can identify which updates will have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction. By creating a culture that values customer feedback and encourages the sharing of insights across the organization, you can drive urgency and ensure that the product team prioritizes the updates that matter most to customers.

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-engagement or win-back campaigns for customers who might have left because the product was missing a critical feature. It's important to note that even though a feature may not be brand new, promoting it can still provide value to your customers and potentially bring back those who've churned.

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 valuable if you're trying to advocate for an acquisition-focused free tool, for example). It's also important to understand the tradeoffs that might need to happen on the product side to make your idea come to life. While your idea might be really cool and support the results your after, there may be some unseen tradeoffs that aren't worth making at this point in time, and that's okay. What's most important is that you've had the conversation and made the decision together.

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 larger puzzle. Prioritizing all of that feedback can definitely be a challenge. The key here is to align your priorities with your OKRs. I'll also note that essential user experience requirements should always be a priority (and ideally these should also be reflected in your OKRs so that it's never a question) Beyond looking at your OKRs, tools like User Voice -- or any product ideas forum -- can be a helpful way to quantify and prioritize ideas based on customer feedback. Ticket volume can also be a great way to quantify the importance of an idea or piece of feedback. If a particular point of friction is causing significant support costs, it's definitely worth prioritizing.

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 decisions and provide insights into how users are describing the product in their own words. If the company doesn't have a research function or work with an external research agency, then product marketing may be more involved in this step. Otherwise, product marketing is really just listening in and staying informed. Content Design Ideally, there is a content designer on the team who can think holistically about how copy shows up in the product and its role in the overall user experience. However, in cases where there is no dedicated content design team, product marketing can be helpful in reviewing in-app copy. This collaboration typically happens towards the end of the process, after the UX designer has prepared near-final mockups. Overall, I think it's best when you're able to tap into the specialized skills of a UX Researcher and Content Designer. If your team is much leaner, product marketing will likely need to step in and help provide additional support where there are gaps.

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 influence the product roadmap. There will always be points of tension or areas where priorities will not be interpreted in the same way across teams. And that's okay! If you've established a baseline, you can still have really productive conversations about what you're trying to accomplish and why. At Wistia, we've incorporated GTM input as part of the product team's planning process. Those GTM inputs are directly tied to the company OKRs, so there is some consistency and familiarity there. We've baked in that time for leaders across sales, customer service, and marketing (including product marketing) to share what's most important to their success and the product team is able to weigh that in their own prioritization and planning. Making it part of the process vs. an intrusion is definitely a nice cultural shift that we've been able to achieve.

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 relationships with the product team is essential. By becoming deeply embedded with the team and understanding their priorities and goals, I can help create an environment where the product team recognizes the importance of meeting GTM (Go-To-Market) dependencies for a launch. Through these relationships, I can help promote a sense of urgency that encourages the product team to prioritize critical features and ensure timely releases.