How do you get your product team to involve product marketing early enough in the strategy and product planning phases?

Answer

5 Answers

Influencing the Product Roadmap

Caroline Silverkorn

Freed Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Quizlet, Udemy, San Francisco Ballet • 6y

If you can get it, the most important thing is executive buy-in for a team structure that honors marketing not just in the end phase, but also as a crucial thought partner to product and design. If you’ve had product launches that haven’t landed with the impact expected, those are great case studies to use to ask for that. After executive buy-in and team structure, pure relationship building can get you a long way. If you get to know your PMs and show your support in other ways they are more lik ...Read More

1,993 Views
Ruturaj Patil

Google Product Manager • 8y

This is a common issue across the board. To address these situation, you have to set expectations with your product manager well. For instance, there are certain experiences such as upgrade path, purchase experience within customers account, inapp notifications messaging that impact your role as a product marketer. You have to make sure the product manager involves you in those meetings at least as it impacts the revenue which is what you are accountable for.

669 Views
Christy Roach

AirOps CMO • 6y

This is a question so many teams struggle with and is super important - the more you are involved up front, the more you can help your team build great products and set yourself up for successful product launches. But this doesn't just happen, it takes work and partnership to build. Put yourself in the PM's shoes - lots of people have opinions on their roadmap, they probably are getting lots of questions and requests from sales, they've got pressure from engineering to finalize the roadmap so th ...Read More

895 Views
Julian Dunn

Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management • 7y

We have had some success in educating the PM team to start with positioning before they build anything. We use a modified version of the product positioning document (PPD) from Pragmatic Marketing and are asking them to write one before they build anything. It has to be the foundation for a discussion with PMM about the go-to-market, though, rather than being perceived as just another artifact to be thrown over the wall to marketing.

573 Views
Mike Flouton

Boxford Capital Managing Partner | Formerly Barracuda, SilverSky, Digital Guardian, OpenPages, Cybertrust • 8y

Be a strategic partner and show them you can add value to the planning process. You and your PM should be joined at the hip, so if you're not getting involved early and often you need to fix the relationship or find a new PM to partner with.

501 Views