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Influencing the Product Roadmap
Influencing the Product Roadmap
3 answers
Founder at BrainKraft
Be in the driver's seat. Product marketing managers are the CMO of the product. Launching a product is a campaign ("series of connected activities designed to bring about an accelerated result"). When you think about launch that way it changes your entire perspective. You define launch goals, put metrics in place, develop a campaign strategy, build campaign elements, identify/close readiness gaps, etc.
Be large and in charge. Take the reigns. Go big or go hom. [Other trite corporate-speak saying goes here]
Director of Product Marketing at 6sense
Wow, great question! Given these departments are measured on very different
dimensions, it's important to keep their North Stars in mind and collaborate in
a way that supports individual departmental goals. Let's start with
collaborating with product. I often think about our orgs as a mouthpiece (PMM)
and earpiece (Product). To be good amplifers of product's "market listening", we
need to connect early and often throughout the product development lifecycle. To
do this, I suggest establishing milestones throughout the development process to
collect, validate, and crystallize market positioni...more
VP Global Head of Product Marketing at Shopify
PMs are like your close family. There are lots of heightened emotions throughout
a launch—good and bad. It’s a partnership that must stay rigid because they
truly are your partner in crime. Some of the best PMs I’ve worked with have
challenged me and honestly, I value that. Making sure that you hear everyone’s
perspectives is the only way to be sure that you’re covering all of your bases
in a launch. I encourage PMMs and PMs to push each other in the right ways for
this exact reason. You’ll ALWAYS come out stronger on the other side. Also, it’s
quite rewarding when the customer success team...more
2 answers
Sr. Director Product Marketing at BlueVine
As a rule, I like to work with existing tools the Product team uses to avoid adding overhead to their day.
To communicate and collaborate we use the usual suspects: Slack, Notion, Asana, Google Slides, and live meetings. However a big focus for me was to establish a Research Hub - a centralized and searchable repository for customer insights so that PMs and Marketers could quickly make decisions because they had easy access to this information. Today this lives on Notion, but I could see us moving to a more specialized solution as we grow.
Head of Product Marketing at Lattice
Most of the tools we use in product marketing are focused on collecting and
analyzing the insights (customer feedback or otherwise) we need to use to define
our strategy and inform our cross-functional teams, but not actually relaying it
to Product Management. So this part of the process for us ends up being a lot of
slideware, emails, Slack messages or one-on-one meetings (shameless plug here
for my company, Lattice, which helps me manage and track all of my one-on-one
conversation agendas with my peers in product management and across the
organization – it rocks for building these relatio...more
1 answer
Head of Product Marketing at Lattice
When we’re assisting Product in determining the roadmap, we’re doing all sorts
of research to inform the recommendations we make – from both an outside-in and
an inside-out perspective. Some useful examples for us have been…
Outside-in: competitive research (recent product launches, press, content, where
they’re hiring, what their leadership is talking about publicly), analyst
relations (inquiries, formal reports, reading research), customer research (
first-party interviews, surveys answering specific questions, or listening
continuously to real sales and customer success conversations, h...more
1 answer
Head of Product Marketing at Lattice
In my experience this usually breaks down due to underinvested
relationship-building or lack of alignment of objectives across teams. If you
try to convince a PM or any cross-functional stakeholder of a point with
research you conducted – as quality or strategic or correct as it may be –
without first establishing a foundation of credibility and trust, or
understanding what that person and their team is trying to accomplish and
positioning it around how this research helps them achieve those goals, then it
will likely fall flat.
So I guess the tip here is to use your PMM skills to unders...more
1 answer
Head of Product Marketing at Lattice
This can totally vary team to team, company to company, product to product. Like
you said, you want to do all of this early, the question just becomes how early
and what kind of value PMM can drive the most for that particular product or
roadmap.
Sometimes product marketing should be the first team to touch a new product bet.
When there’s an adjacent space or market that you’re eager to break into but
don’t have clarity or conviction about the problem space or product needed to
succeed, product marketing can do the upstream research about the market,
competitive dynamics, buyer criteria,...more
2 answers
Director of PMM at Ironclad
- Anchor on the highest priority for the company, versus any one team. One of
the hardest but also most liberating things about product marketing is that we
are an inherently flexible function. Our skillsets are diverse, so we can
quickly get into formation behind whatever is most important and strategic to
the company at any given point in time. This is our greatest strength (and, if
handled poorly, our greatest weakness; see below response), so don't let it go
to waste! If the most important initiative at the company is revenue, make
yourself indispensable to sales by holding your team to...more
Head of Product Marketing at Lattice
It’s a useful exercise to determine first what the company’s most important
objectives are rather than any one team’s. PMM, being as cross-functional as it
is, acts as sort of a layer of utility business athletes within the
organization, pushing for whatever the most important outcomes are that the
business needs to achieve in that specific period of time. Once you clearly
understand what the company’s goals are, you can push for alignment between
these three groups and prioritize which voice needs to be heard the most at that
moment. You can also usually find common ground between these te...more
8 answers
In establishing segments, it is critical to get cross-org alignment so that all
functions are working off of the same definitions. Methodologies for defining
segments can vary depending on how you plan to use them, so I would recommend
investing heavily in the upfront phase of gathering requirements from all
internal customers, establishing a shared understanding of how your segmentation
will be used and getting buy-in on the methodology.
From there, research on the needs of those segments can take various forms
depending on the type of question you are seeking to answer. I always start...more
VP of Product Marketing at Oyster®
One thing worth adding to Laura's great reply is that "systematically
influencing the product roadmap" can be viewed as an ongoing process. Once you
have a set of segments and persona needs per Laura's playbook above, it's
important to regularly reinforce this as the "single source of truth." As a
critical internal product evangelizer and voice of the customer, it'll be on you
to keep beating the drum.
Two specific examples of what this can look like in action:
* During quarterly/annual roadmap planning sessions, point out where the
group's thinking does/doesn't align well to the ne...more
VP of Marketing at Qualia
There are a variety of low touch and high touch research methods we've used over
time. Most recently what's been on my mind has been the value of Closed Won/Lost
interviews for earlier stage products.
As companies scale they're likely to have existing products that have been in
the market for a while (I think of these as graduate students or grown ups
depending on how mature they are) and others that are new kids on the block (I
think of these as toddlers or preschool children). Each of these requires a
different degree and type of attention to make it successful.
We've recently laun...more
Head of Industry/Audience Marketing; Director of Product Marketing at Procore Technologies
Research has to be an ongoing, continual process -- if you aren't continually
talking to market experts, customers, and prospects, you lose credibility both
with your sales organization and with your product organization.
True standardization is less critical than repetition and at-bats, and building
the muscles to produce high quality results quickly.
If you can do that well, you'll have earned a seat that the product leadership
table to influence roadmap because it won't be "so-and-so the product marketer
said so", but "this specific market research said so, and here's five quotes
...more
Product Marketing Lead, Creator Promotion at Spotify
During roadmapping, each product team articulates the "understand needs" for
their product area and what we will do with the information to improve the
product. This process is often led by the PMM.
From there, we work with the product team to document hypothesis to test based
on information we need to know and detail the best approach to prove of disprove
those hypothesis.
At that point, it's all about execution and pulling together what we learn in a
compelling way.
With regard to systematically influencing roadmaps, I feel like this is an
"always on" job. First, I try to bring the...more
Director Product Marketing at Microsoft
We establish multiple listening channels ranging from our field to direct customer conversations to engagements with analysts. The insights we receive from these channels allow us to then identify the general areas of opportunity which we then partner with engineering on researching further through qualitative and quantitative research. This allows us to priortize the highest areas of opportunity which get added to the product roadmap.
Vice President, Product Marketing at Momentive
It first starts with identifying who your target buyers are, and building a set
of “persona packs” that establish a baseline of key information in understanding
buyer needs and evaluation criteria. This is critical to have so that you can
properly educate your sales teams to have more effective conversations with
prospects. At a high level, they include:
* Distinct buying roles that exist within an organization
* Desired business outcomes driven by each role
* Sample org charts within each function
* Your products/solutions related to their business goals and objectives
* Key customer...more
Director, Industry and Product Marketing at Motive
You must first:
* Identify overall approach for alignment with brand and company priorities
* Identify primary target segments for programs
* Determine program-specific messaging
* Communicate plans to stakeholders
From there an Industry marketer must then define:
* New market opportunities
* Define overall messaging & positioning & personas
* Win / Loss analysis
* Market segmentation and sizing
* Competitive intel gathering + analysis
From there you then execute on the measurement and reporting:
* Training: Messaging by solution and sub-audience
* Messaging: Messaging ...more
7 answers
Director of Pricing and Packaging, Twilio Flex at Twilio | Formerly Narvar, Medallia, Helpshift, Feedzai, Reputation.com
Short answer. When you are more deep than broad. When you like things more than
people.
Long answer.
There are no rules to this. Skills evolve and change over time. You may want to
pursue an option longer term even if the fit is weak today. That being said, PMs
tend to be more detail-oriented than PMMs. They have to be, writing a 6 page PRD
that accounts for all edge cases is something that takes a lot of depth and
intellectual rigor. PMMs have a different challenge, they need to look at the
forest from the trees, and map out strategy. PMMs need to change their focus
constantly, PMs...more
Group Product Manager at Zendesk
It comes down to which aspects of the role excite you the most. Depending on the
company you are working at, Product Marketing and Product Management can have a
lot of overlap. I’ll first discuss some of the similarities and differences in
the roles before summarizing how you should think about making the choice.
Early in my career I found this Medium article instructive in deciding which
path to pursue. Product Marketing really has two sets of functions, “outbound”
activities and “inbound” activities. Put simply, “outbound” Product Marketing
focuses on activities like developing marketi...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
I recently had a member of my team leave Product Marketing to become a Product
Manager. We spent a few months talking through and planning this transition.
During this process, what I learned is that the decision to be a PM or PMM comes
down to where you enjoy spending your time.
PM and PMM are both focused on solving customer problems. They just go about it
in different ways.
The PM works to build a product that solves the problem whereas the PMM focuses
on building the go-to-market strategy required for that customer to know that a
product exists in market that can solve their pro...more
Sr. Director Product Marketing at VMware | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force
A few questions to ask yourself:
Do you want to be the mini-CEO of the product?
Do you have enough experience to appreciate how engineering operates to build a product?
Are you comfortable making major tradeoffs between direct customer requests and company strategic priorities?
Are you savvy enough to navigate tough decisions when requirements or quality are cut to meet deadlines?
Are you excited about documenting product strategy, epics, users stories and low level requirements?
If you answered yes to a majority of these, by all means seek out a role in PM.
Product Marketing Director, AR/VR at Meta | Formerly Mozilla, LeapFrog
Starting in CPG brand management I had the good fortune to wear both of these
hats (and many more!) early in my career. This ignited a love for both
disciplines and started me down a path where I'd jump back and forth between
them for about a decade (thanks to all my incredible managers who never forced
me to choose a lane!). There are similarities in the roles - which sometimes
creates confusion and tension - in the ways they focus on the end user,
influence through storytelling, sweat positioning and facilitate within complex
xfn environments, so it's natural for talented individuals to b...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
Interests: What kind of questions do you want to answer?
This is just my personal take, and probably oversimplified, but if you're driven
by optimization questions like "Who is getting the most value out of this?" "How
do we better articulate what this thing does?" "How do we increase close rates
at the enterprise?" then you're more likely to want to stay in PMM.
If you're driven by value creation questions like, "What would make this product
really exciting and engaging?" "How do we stay ahead of the competition?" "How
do we build world class experiences?" AND you're incredibly comfortab...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
This question hits home for me. In a previous role, I explored the opportunity
to move to the PM org, so I did a bunch of research.
First, at a high level, I love the book "Designing Your Life." If you're into
self-reflection and personal growth books, this one's for you. It'll help you
zero in on the type of work that gives you energy vs drains your energy.
Then, I would do some candid interviews with PMs to understand what a day in the
life is like, because sometimes from the PMM perspective we're only seeing half
of the story.
My own personal takeaway was that a PM's process is ...more
6 answers
Head of Marketing at Instacart
In my experience, the most powerful tool for influencing the Product Roadmap as
a PMM is customer insights. If you can clearly demonstrate customer pain points
and inspire empathy, that tees up the opportunity to be part of the discussion
around how you might meet those needs through product solutions. From a timeline
standpoint, I find aligning on prioritization to be the most effective lever.
One way to approach this is to look at the roadmap, estimate the business impact
of all key initiatives, and assess whether delivery dates should be re-stacked
to address the most impactful projects ...more
Sr. Director Product Marketing at BlueVine
It’s really important to understand your product’s team development process. How is the Product team structured and why? What and when are their sprint cycles. How do new tasks get on the backlog and how is the backlog prioritized. If possible, attend backlog prioritization meetings so you can understand what information PMs look at when making decisions.
This will help you be much more strategic in how, when, and why you add on the backlog. Also it’s key to develop a close relationship with a few PMs so they can champion for you during the prioritization process.
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
My biggest advice is be customer-focused.
I am a big believer in PMM being a strategic partner to Product Management.
Beyond this simply being my belief, it is hard to build a strong PMM
organization unless the business sees the function as strategic. One of the ways
in which I've helped Product Marketing to be viewed as an important and
strategic function of the business is by influencing the product roadmap.
Each PMM on my team - including myself - is involved at Product Discovery. The
reason we're involved is that we come into the discussion with a strong
understanding of the...more
Global Head of Product Marketing at Grammarly | Formerly at: GOOG, MSFT, AMZN, SFDC + startups
I have always loved this quote by Robert Johnson (notably a musician, not a
product marketer!):
“Leadership is the ability to influence people and motivate them to do what
needs to be done to accomplish a goal, vision or mission.”
Those last three parts: goal, vision, and mission, are the keys to influence.
Know what you are trying to accomplish (the goal), the vision of where that
accomplishment will take you, and the why (the mission).
I always like to have a stack-ranked list of requested features/needs from
customers for priorities. Stack-ranked by impact. For timeline, I find th...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
As noted in a similar question above—DATA. But I don't think the word
"influence" is quite right. I really don't think PMMs should have an agenda when
it comes to roadmapping. I think our role is to represent the needs of users,
and bring data to PMs to help them navigate that decision making process.
We can provide:
* NPS score trends
* Customer interview themes
* Data on win/loss rates
* Insight into competitive investments
* Product feature usage by differnet personas
* Data on where folks get stuck in using the product
* Top questions asked in online forums and in support ticke...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
One area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of value is with 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 narrow down on their target user, pain points, and finally
solutioning.
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 ...more
10 answers
VP, Product at Barracuda Networks
IME this should sit in engineering, but it's generally not a bad idea for the copy writer to solicit PMM feedback. PMM needs to be hyper focused on strategic tasks. This is a good example of a tactical distraction.
VP of Marketing at Spekit
If your company has the resources, I would advocate for there to be an in-app copy writer that sits under design. By putting them with design, they will have the shortest path to where the product is actually being made. That being said, they should be very aligned with both product management and product marketing.
In one of my past roles, it's been a combination of product management and product marketing who were responsible for it.
Director of Product Marketing at ClearVoice
We like keeping this with the PMM or a Product Manager/Owner, as the person writing this copy needs to be super familiar with the product and user experience. They need to be power users, IMO. Occasionally, I've leveraged Support or Customer Success Managers for this as well, becausr they are so familiar with the ins and outs of the user experience.
Another solution would be to have someone is design or engineering draft the basic copy and have a copywriter make it sound better.
Global Director, Business Strategy and Comms at TripActions
It depends on how big your company is! At large companies, there’s often a Content Strategy or Product Writing person or team that sits under Design. The PMM should ensure the in-product copy aligns with overall positioning, but is not the directly responsible person for that.
Absent a product writer, a PMM should work with a PM to deliver the right in-product copy.
Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Handshake
For my company, it's currently shared between product, product marketing and
design, but that's mostly a factor of being a startup and in the process of
building out each of those functions. I think about it in two ways:
1. Is the in-app copy descriptive of the product itself? Things like feature
names, onboarding wizard copy, CTAs make sense to cut across the three teams
I mentioned, with product and design having a heavy say in those decisions.
2. Is the in-app copy meant to drive conversion activity / sales conversations?
To me, this fits more with product marketing.
Ulti...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
In-app copy typically falls under Product Marketing. If it is something you do
not own today, my advice would be to work with the Design/PM team who is
currently owning this to understand how you can contribute/collaborate. For
technical products, I often find PM/Engineering actually choose to own the copy.
There may be some bias that they understand the customer better than you do.
There is no rule for ownership but if it is something you want to do then I
would talk to your extended team and show them why PMM owning in-app copy is the
best plan for your business. Ensure you understand the...more
Sr. Director Product Marketing at VMware | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force
In my opinion, PMM has a better vantage of customer needs and command of customer voice to produce best in app copy, product naming nomenclature and in-product guidance. This responsibility can be shared with UX and PM to ensure everyone is on the same page. Engineering and PM usually need a lot of help in this department as it is not their forte.
Senior Director Product Marketing at Fivetran
In-app copy does fit with Product Marketing - and Product! So technically, our
PM team owns the in-product experience but PMM has full access to the tool. We
have a slack channel for all in-app messaging and anyone who wants to do one
posts in there following a format that says the purpose, how long it will run,
to whom it will be shown, and a preview. Folks can ask questions, offer
suggestions, and then we give the approval to set live. The results of these go
into our quarterly retros.
If it is on our website itself - we use a Drift bot. That mostly lives with our
Demand Gen team but ...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
A few answers here, based on use case!
Naming inside the product (like features, tabs, or experiences) would be handled
by PMM during the launch process. PM is likely to have ideated an
internally-referenced name early on, but as we get past the beta and understand
what value users actually derive from the feature, PMM adjusts to better match
what the user would expect to see, for the task they want to complete.
Other copy in the product UI that describes what a function is, or does, in the
shortest and sharpest way, is handled by our design team (which sits inside our
product org).
...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
This is always a gray area :)
At Gong, most UX copy is owned by the product writing team, except for naming
"Tier 1" products. Together with that team, we established a list of criteria
that qualifies features or products as "Tier 1;" such as, the feature/product
changes core product pillar messaging, or requires customer change management,
or changes how we sell or demo the product. These are really dependent on your
business.
For in-app cues (like announcement banners/modals, etc), we've established a
RASCI model based on the objectives of the copy / in-app cue. I highly recommend
s...more