What role should your brand story have in product roadmap planning?

Your brand story is often rooted in how your company's core mission solves a critical customer problem. So in order to tell a unique and compelling narrative, you want to look at the company's core product DNA, tell an excellent story about how that landscape for that problem has evolved and continues to evolve, and link it to your audience's core need.  Why do you exist - what's the core problem or issue For whom is your product roadmap built - often times it's one of your founders in tech How ...Read More

If things are going right, these should almost feel one-in-the-same: The product direction reinforces the story and brand promise, and the brand messages easily and thoroughly communicate the value of the product.But, this isn’t always the case, as timelines, teams and strategic visions shift. And that’s okay! Especially at nimble, early companies! If one or the other falls out of alignment, just be sure you make the time cross-functionally to identify and discuss why, re-articulate whichever st ...Read More

When business is humming along and you're planning out your roadmap for product enhancements or new features, the brand story won't play a huge role in the product roadmap. Of course, you'll want to make sure features continue to reinforce your key value props, but that can all be spun as part of the launch messaging. Here are a few examples of when brand changes can dramatically impact your product roadmap: - A brand refresh: where you'll need to scope visual UI changes to your product to align ...Read More

The brand story ought to be the true north for the product strategy. There are so many competing priorities when it comes to setting the roadmap -- getting to feature parity with the competition, executing on customer requests, bug fixes, etc. -- the brand can serve as a useful filter and framework by which you can make decisions and set the appropriate priority. At Gainsight, our purpose was to be living proof that you can win in business while being human first. Human first became our true nor ...Read More