AMA: Zapier Former Head of Product Marketing, Gregg Miller on Influencing the Product Roadmap

In an ideal world product and product marketing should be embedded in one another’s efforts from start to finish (see my other response on “customer needs” and getting PMM further upstream). In this world product marketing has played an active role in helping set the vision for the feature, doing research to support its validation/market opportunity, and coordinating the launch priority (e.g. is this a “nice to have” vs. a tentpole launch). In such a scenario it can often be appropriate for prod ...Read More

It's all about doing great work that matters to the business, matters to your partner, and fits into the context of the relationship! The playbook below can help get the ball rolling. Sorry for the long answer, but it's a complex question with big implications for your ability to add value as a PMM. 1) It's essential to understand your business — the market you play in, the strengths/weaknesses of the competition, how customers feel about you, etc. — better than just about anyone else in the com ...Read More

Before delivering any feedback, it can be helpful to take a minute and empathize with your product managers. Most are constantly bombarded with product feedback and things people think they should build: customer support, your biggest customers, CSMs, executives, their own boss, and even friends and family members! What’s more, they often shoulder a lot of the responsibility of the business outcomes — both good and bad — of roadmap decisions. PMs have an incredibly challenging job! With that sai ...Read More

My guess is your product team might benefit from PMM partnership earlier on in the product development process. However, that’s easier said than done! In order to move from downstream value addition (what’s the timeline of something that’s supposed to launch, what comms are we developing for the launch, etc.) to upstream influence (what are we building and why), you need to first establish credibility. Someone else asked “how do you establish credibility” in this AMA so check out that response a ...Read More

In a prior role (B2B) the team found it helpful to set expectations with customers on what communication to expect from us. Product hosted a quarterly roadmap review where they would share the big boulders they were planning on shipping in the next 6-9 months with *rough* quarterly estimates on timing -- definitely better to not commit to an exact date and thus disappoint your customers if that date slips. This was mostly a knowledge share from our company to our audience, but there was time for ...Read More

I don’t think my team experiences specific advantages and challenges of remote work that other teams at Zapier would find different from their own experience. I think what matters much more is how the company overall treats remote work. Let me provide two specific examples of things at the company level that matter a great deal: Team vs. company-wide remote work: I firmly believe that remote only works — and especially so for PMMs who rely deeply on cross-functional relationships — if the entire ...Read More

Our job as product marketers is to help the organization maximize the capture of market opportunity — whether that’s becoming more competitive, entering new markets, increasing the value we deliver to existing customers, or numerous other ways. Thus I think it’s important to start with “what opportunity will this new feature/product unlock?” Ultimately the feature/product should drive some core value for the business in the form of a measurable KPI. Often this will be revenue. But if you can’t d ...Read More