Back to Your Feed

How can PMMs get involved in the early stages of Product development, and how much influence should a marketing strategy have on the overall vision for a product?

3 Answers
Sangita Sarkar
Sangita Sarkar
Immutable Head Of MarketingNovember 12

As a representative of the consumer voice and market demand, PMMs' involvement in product development from the early stages is critical to success. More specifically, Product Marketers can make themselves an invaluable stakeholder to the process by

1. Conducting and synthesizing early market research to identify the product's core target audience and user profiles and



2. Becoming subject matter experts on the industry landscape to identify a differentiated positioning from competitors



By doing so, PMMs can represent the consumer's needs and interests at the table and influence the overall vision for the product.

My belief is that marketing’s influence on product roadmap is equal and continuous to product’s influence on marketing's roadmap. This type of ongoing feedback loop allows product and feature development to respond quickly to evolving consumer needs.

1643 Views
Mandy Schafer
Mandy Schafer
Mastercard Director of Product MarketingJuly 14

As the PMM, you often may know more about the product that the product may know. This is due to the nature of PMM having a birds eye view across the entire company with how your features fit in with the rest of the solutions. As the eyes and ear on the market, you are also know your competitors, the market landscape, and what your customers are expecting. All of this knowledge is key to help with the early stages of product developement. A lot of times, product spends so much time focusing on the core use problem, that they sometimes forget to "zoom" out, and that's where PMM comes in. Being involved early helps influence how the product should be built and ensure it fits in with the overall marketing strategy and vision of the company.

368 Views
Harish Peri
Harish Peri
Okta SVP Product MarketingAugust 2

Ideally, very early on. If your org uses an agile methodology, its best if PMMs get involved at the release planning or 'epic' phase to help shape the bigger direction. Its not ideal for PMMs to get involved at the story level because that tends to be about technical tradeoffs and can lead to PMMs stepping on PM toes for no reason.

If there is a clear hypothesis of target market/buyer/segment, then PMM can provide useful input on what capabilities and use cases should be prioritized.  

PMMs should have a strong POV on the overall vision since they can provide the voice of sales/customer success in addition to the voice of customer (which PM usually has access to). A successful product (at least in enterprise B2B) doesn't just satisfy customer use cases, but is also 'sellable', priced correctly and is easy to implement - all of which PMM can provide input on.

717 Views
Related Templates
Developing Better Messaging
Thursday, April 18 • 12PM PT
Developing Better Messaging
Virtual Event
Nabeel K. Adeni
Natalie Mackay
Bárbara Manarelli Vieira
+45
attendees
Top Product Marketing Mentors
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing
Tanya Khakbaz
Tanya Khakbaz
Stripe Head of Product Marketing
Sarah Din
Sarah Din
Quickbase VP of Product Marketing
Sherry Wu
Sherry Wu
Gong Senior Director, Product Marketing
Mary Sheehan
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing
Jeffrey Vocell
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing
Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & Commerce
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing
Abdul Rastagar
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing