What specific areas of roadmap influence do you think product marketing can help the most with?

tl:dr: Both and then some. 

It is as important for product marketers to be involve in the inception stage as it is when taking new feature/product to market. Features that are built in vacuum seldom stick or give your product a market advantage. Product marketers input is key to how roadmap is prioritized based on customer need, value delivered, competitive advantage gained or $$$ unblocked in deals, or $$$ unlocked in TAM. Being involved in the inception stage also gives the product marketer a deep understanding of the challenges the feature/product attempt to solve, what approach is the product taking and how hard/easy is it to deliver the solution. Armed with this information, the product marketer can create more precise message when taking the product to market.

Activities carried out by product marketers when taking product to market are more obvious and sit squarely in the domain. However are not limited to naming, branding or positioning. Successful product marketers have a good handle on all the tactics around how the customer will learn about the new features/products and how will they try and adopt the new introductions.

Bringing in information about trends in the market, what competitors are doing, and the most important thing - USER FEEDBACK! I have learned over the years that the best way to get any sort of buy-in for roadmap planning is to come armed with real evidence. This includes existing user anecdotes but it also definitely includes higher-level trends you are seeing in the market. I think PMMs should be utilized as more than just marketers, we should be experts on our users, their needs, and the climate they are working within. Of course, things like naming, positioning, targeting are very important and the backbone of any PMM role, but that being said, if PMMs are not involved at the level of influencing features based on customer feedback - they will have a much harder time later trying to market features. It's easy to get stuck in the weeds of feature building and forget that at the end of the day these features need to serve REAL users. A PMMs job is to keep that vision clear and relay information in both directions, back to the people building the features, and out to the users and teams that at the end of the day will utilize said features! 

I have seen it go both ways. It really depends on the relative strength of the product and product marketing teams. Product marketing, though, is probably the best positioned part of the business to be a voice for segments of the market and the future customers that don't already have a voice in your business. It's the customers who aren't prospects yet, the markets you haven't entered.

In my experience there are plenty of voices speaking for bug fixes and feature enhancements for existing products at existing customers -- Customer success is usually the loudest voice for this.

The sales team speaks loudly for competitive features that are causing their prospects to turn to competitors.

And implementation teams are very vocal about the problems in the product that make it harder to get up and running.

Product can get bogged down in triaging these endless requests and demands. Product marketing has a great opportunity to speak for the voiceless "customer of the future".

The other area where product marketing can help is in synthesizing competitive features to better understand your product's current competitive position, and the opportunities (or perils) of potential product changes. 

This answer really depends on the partnership between PM and PMM at your organization. Are you the type of company where PM and PMM are partners? Or are you the type of organization where both groups operate in different silos?

If there is a strong partnership, then the PMM should be just as valuable a team member to the PM as their Designer or Engineer. Strong PMMs bring the voice of the market – the positioning, messaging, insights from win/loss, voice of the field, and insights from winning/failed marketing plans – into the product development lifecycle.

At the end of the day, “what to build” should always fall to Product Management. However, PMM should be one of the strong inputs (including your take on market opportunity and customer feedback) the PM listens to when making the final decision on what should and should not be prioritized.

Product marketers should leave there stamp outside and inside the product. What I mean is that traditional marketing always takes place outside of the product i.e. sales enablement, blogs, technical demos, tools etc . Now with the advent of SaaS PMMs can market inside the product as well. By having a pulse on the customers end to end journey PMM can shine a light on where the experience can be improved by highlighting moments that matter. PMM should also co-own consumption targets like MAU and DAU and help PM / engineering drive product experience improvements to increase usage. There are tools Pendo that provide rich data on user activity and your platform while allowing you to create in-product experiences with guidance without engineering work. Here are some examples where PMM can use customer and product data to make a real difference in the product roadmap:

• Trail experience and in-product guidance
• Onboarding experience and in-product guidance
• Most popular feature(s) guidance
• New release experience and in-product guidance
• Renewal experience and in-product guidance 

I think both, though the latter (naming, branding, messaging, etc) seems to be the default for most PMMs. If PMMs want to partake in the beginning of the cycle—what's actually being built, they need to bring new data—not just personal opinions.

Product managers have a product vision that aligns with the company mission, incredibly deep market grounding, a keen understanding of what's actually possible given engineering resource, and (hopefully) a clear understanding of product usage. They have strong hypotheses about what to build. 

So I think PMM's participation would look a little less like, "build this brand new feature!" and a little more like a repeatable set of contextual inputs that the PM team should expect from PMM every year. Like:

• Where and why we lose today
• The YoY delta of objections that come up most in the sales cycle
• The point where everyone gets stuck in onboarding
• The markets where we tend to see fastest adoption and the biggest land.
• Features that are getting more or less use by certain personas (to influence areas of expansion or iteration)
• The advent or growth of new buyer segments.

Truly, I don't believe most PMs realize PMMs can help with the above, just through the ICP and sales cycle analysis + customer interviews we're already doing. So PMMs should take it upon themselves to set this expectation, and sign up for the job.

In terms of roadmap, one area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of value is through market and competitive insights. By bringing insights from the market, competitive landscape, buyers, and/or analysts, PMM can ensure that product has considered all inputs when they build their roadmap. 

Here is a deck we've used internally to help build collaboration between PM & PMM. If you're still struggling with being brought in too late, my advice is to focus on 1-2 deliverables that could really drive value for your product org. Pilot that with a product group or PM, and then go from there.

The answer has a lot to do with how you and your PM work together. Ultimately, much of the PM<>PMM relationship comes down to what you each agree to own- it's different for every group. It's a relationship that requires a lot of influence without control. The more trust and rapport you have built, the better your work will be. 

If you and your PM don't see eye-to-eye, or they feel a lot of ownership over the roadmap and aren't open to influence -> Focusing on message strategy and GTM (sometimes called 'outbound marketing') can be an easy way to show value as you build the relationship. As you develop these deliverables, use data to help communicate what is working to your PM. Can you run some message tests? Partner with user research to run some interviews discussing a few variations of the value props? When you demonstrate measurable value, your PM will be interested in applying your gains to the product experience. 

If you are able to show up as a contributor to the product experience from the beginning, it will feel much more natural for you to contribute to the roadmap directly. Find ways to add value- if your PM isn't valuing your input, go to user research, content strategy, design. Give people information that will help them make better decisions, and always be thinking of ways to build trust with your product collaborators.