Mary Jane Han

A PMM’s success is largely due to how tightly they partner with sales and product. A successful product marketer champions and owns customer voice. Your role is to synthesize all the insights across research and customer feedback to inform sales strategy and product roadmap. You also drive the go-to-market for new product launches which includes defining the target audience, positioning, messaging and the marketing campaign. Target audience, positioning and value props should be defined early in ...Read More

Before putting together any idea, know what the overall business priorities are and what specific goals and KPI’s the company aims to deliver. The stronger you tie your idea to those outcomes, the more likely they will be prioritized. Every company has a different process for prioritizing, but this is generally what they will weigh:   Business impact. First, quantify the size of the opportunity. Companies want to dedicate resources to ideas with the highest impact. Make sure you define the probl ...Read More

I would put yourself in the shoes of your customers and decide whether the feature update matters to them (or not). You can consider different channels/formats that better highlight the more significant ones and others where you keep customers informed but might be more trivial.   Sometimes, no update is fine too if there’s no material impact. People do appreciate it when companies don’t inundate them with every little update. If all the features ladder up to a broader theme, you can consider gr ...Read More

I’d first ask what’s driving this – does the company/leadership not believe in customer insights, is there a lack of prioritization to do this or is it simply inertia of how the company operates today? Your approach may vary depending on the answer but here are some thoughts to consider. Make it a habit. PMMs should be as close to the customer as possible and distill those insights for their teams on an ongoing basis. This can be done thru feedback loops (sales and customer support, user intervi ...Read More

Timelines can move around a bit so unless your team is really good at hitting them or there's important implications to a milestone that must be hit, it's good to keep timeframes slightly vague or not communicating them until you have strong conviction on when it will be ready.  That being said, I’d think about a framework for communication from the perspective of your customers and how significant it is to them. For FYI/No Action Needed, I’d consider integrating message with other content or in ...Read More