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Alex Lobert

Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion, Spotify

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What are mistakes product marketers make when trying to influence the roadmap that end up damaging their relationship with product managers?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • August 27

Two mistakes I've seen are: (1) Not getting on the same page as to the goals for the product. If you don't have a shared undersatnding with your PM / your product team as to what you are building and who you are buidling for you are likely going to provide insights that miss the mark. More hurtf......Read More

762 Views

How do you get product management to focus more on customer problems and solving them, and less on shipping features that customers don't need?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • August 27

I suggest that you start by taking a step back to really diagnose the problem. Why is it that the team wants to ship so many features? I try to always assume good intent. With that in mind, the team's actions are probably logical, but there is either mis-alignment on the goal they are optimizin......Read More

738 Views

What's your best practice for making sure competitive, personas, and market research info is always up-to-date, moving from product marketing to sales materials?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • March 17

I'm big on updating information based on actions that need to be taken / decision that need to be made. When it comes to market research and personas, clarify what decisions you need to make based on the information and the cadence to which you will make them. If you use market research to in......Read More

733 Views

What are common mistakes that you see product marketing teams make when starting a VoC program in their company?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • March 17

The two biggest mistakes I see are (1) not having a clear goal as to what you want to learn from customers and how this will inform product / go-to-market strategy, and (2) not truly prioritizing or resourcing the effort. With regard to (1), I find it's really important to be clear about what......Read More

693 Views

How do you create competitive intel that is really beneficial to sales (i.e. they actually read and use it)?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • March 17

When gathering competitive intel, I find the most important thing is to have the goal for it clearly mapped out. Why does Sales (or product) want the competitive intel? What will they use it for? If you start from a clear understanding of how the intel will help, it is easier to provide useful in......Read More

562 Views

What ways do you use your Voice of Customer insights / data internally?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • March 17

We use voice of customer insights to inform messaging and positioning as well as our product roadmap. At Spotify, we have monthly syncs with our partnerships and sales team to just discuss feedback from customers. This helps us to understand if our product and / or go-to-market strategy is workin......Read More

539 Views

How can you prove to hiring managers in the interview process that you can hit the ground running as someone transitioning to product marketing?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • August 27

I find diverse experiences to be valuable to product marketing. When I think about research and influencing the roadmap, what is most important to me is: * Can this person create a data-driven argument for change? That could be getting a client to adopt a product or changing an internal proc......Read More

516 Views

How do you figure out how to segment your market?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • March 17

First, it's important to know why you need a segmentation. Is it about go-to-market and creating more effective messaging? Is it about changing your channel / sales strategy? Is it about product development? Media Targeting? Once you have an objective or objectives, a method for segmentation ofte......Read More

507 Views

What research goes into informing Product what they should be delivering and what is the tangible output of that research?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • August 27

The first piece of research is typically WITH the product team - aligning on the key things that we don't know, but need to know to make better product or feature decisions. Upfront you should lay out that we will try to learn X in order for us to decide whether or not to do Y. If you do thi......Read More

504 Views

How does your team establish and standardize researching audience/segment needs and how do you then leverage your findings systematically to influence the product roadmap?

Alex Lobert

Spotify Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion • August 27

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......Read More

496 Views

Credentials & Highlights

Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion at Spotify