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Courtney Craig

Courtney Craig

Head of Retail Product Marketing at Shopify

Phoenix, AZ

I have 15 years experience in Marketing & Communications, with eight spent leading Product Marketing for tech companies such as Shopify and GoDaddy. I specialize in growing and accelerating product lines post product-market fit and have led many areas of marketing including pmm, lifecycle, content, and customer marketing.

Content

I feel like Product marketing is in a similar place where Product Management was 15-20 years ago. With that said, how do you see Product Marketing growing over the next 5 years?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 1y

I think Product Marketing will shift beyond product launches and research to a craft that focuses on business and product growth strategy. Meaning, PMM will take more ownership over revenue targets, setting the strategic direction of a business line and product, and then providing the strategic plan that other cross-functional teams will execute. Many companies already do this (like Adobe) and I think others will soon follow.

5,708 Views

When you were mid-level in your PMM career (~10 years of experience), how did you think about your career development? What goals did you have at that time?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 1y

At about 7-9 years into my career when I was mid-level, I knew I was at a crossroads and it was an important time to assess what I wanted to do next. I made a strategic decision to work at a different type of organization than I had before. -->Up to that point, I had worked in news, PR, online media/marketing, and customer success, then finally PMM, and decided I liked Product Marketing the best. However, I was mainly self-taught as a PMM, doing it at smaller companies. I wanted to see how ex ...Read More

5,033 Views

How do you get sales people more engaged and paying attention during enablement sessions?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 2y

Find ways to make it interactive. For example, if you are training them on a new pitch deck, ask a well-respected sales rep, coach, or the sales team lead to actually do a real pitch with the new deck during the enablement session. The reps will pay attention to how another rep makes a pitch/uses a deck. Or, if you are leading a roadmap enablement session, ask reps to share which customers requested these features and why before diving into the benefits of a feature. This gives context on the cu ...Read More

3,280 Views

How do you increase the Product Marketing function's ability to be a more strategic player in the company and not just the launch arm of the feature factory?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 2y

This is always a tough one, depending on how PMM has been historically viewed within the organization, and how experienced the Product team is at working with PMMs. Many times they just don't have experience working with strategic PMMs, and we need to show them what that looks like. Here are some ideas on how to tackle this: Get involved EARLY in the product development process and bring insights to help shape the roadmap strategy. When PMs are just starting to think about new features/how to ad ...Read More

2,503 Views

What creative ideas have you come up with for product launches that are terrible and/or really dull?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 2y

First of all, if it's really dull and doesn't add value - don't market it! It's ok to not market every single feature launch. Develop a tiering system or criteria for when you put effort into marketing a feature launch. You don't want to burn out your audience on features that are small. Save a collection of small features for a larger launch centered around a common theme at a later date. If it's a developer-facing product/feature - hack days or dev workshops! If it's a feature that's hard to e ...Read More

2,099 Views

How do I create value for Sales to encourage them to want to include me in the prospect discovery calls?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 2y

Tell them you want to sit in in order to prepare better sales enablement materials for them for future calls, including objection handling documents, pitch decks, feature one-pagers, pricing calculators, and social proof. Tell them you will take detailed notes on what prospects ask for/care about, and tailor future materials to better address those things. This will save Sales lots of talking and provide a better tool box for scaling their own strategy.

1,628 Views

What tactics do you use to effectively incorporate new, creative aspects into product launches that can so easily become routine and mundane?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 2y

Two things:

  1. Always be getting inspiration from other brands... I have a coworker who likes to look to brands like McDonalds and Nike, and it always inspires new ideas.

  2. Take a step away from your work, clear your head, and come back to it with fresh eyes. And ask yourself - is there a way to make this fun? What would a kid do to promote this?

  3. Stay on top on new marketing trends, tools, tactics by following blogs/newsletters/communities like Marketing Brew, Sharebird and PMA.

1,251 Views

What's the most effective way you've found to introduce/launch new features within the product UI?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 2y

Intercom - I love their product! You can create announcements on the bottom right of your UI, or as large nearly full screen overlays... but it's not intrusive and looks separate from product notifications. A guided tour using an external tool like WalkMe.... or develop something similar internally Butter bars within the UI that sit at the very top of the screen and hyperlink text that goes to a blog post This one is cheating because it's not technically the UI, but create a personalized log in ...Read More

1,222 Views

What are your thoughts on specializing as a PMM leader versus branching out to other types of Marketing to set yourself up for exec positions in the furure?

Courtney Craig
Courtney Craig

Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing | Formerly GoDaddy, ClearVoice, AppBuddy, Scripps • 1y

If you want to be an exec, you need to understand other areas of marketing (even as a Product Marketing exec). Period! But, you have choices in how you do that, and it doesn't necessarily mean you need to take a role in a different specialty. 1. Work very closely with other marketing specialities, especially the ones that contribute heavily to growth KPIs. Create pods/rituals/interlocks with Demand or Growth Marketing to understand their strategies, results, and best practices. Also do this with ...Read More

1,146 Views
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