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Raman Kalyan

Raman Kalyan

Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security at Microsoft

Redmond, WA

Content

How does your company define the difference between Marketing and Product Marketing teams and how do the responsibilities differ?

Raman Kalyan
Raman Kalyan

Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security • 4y

We have different types of product marketing teams: Core product marketing - responsibile for working closely with engineering on influencing the product roadmap and developing the value proposition with associated assets to drive awarness, consideration and adoption of our solutions GTM - responsible for training our field and partners to ensure they understand the value proposition and can clearly articulate it to drive consideration and adoption of our solutions  Events - responsible for all ...Read More

32,090 Views

What, ideally, should product marketing's role be in developing the roadmap for a SaaS company?

Raman Kalyan
Raman Kalyan

Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security • 4y

A successful product roadmap is one that is developed in partnership between engineering and product marketing. This allows you to both identify the trends/opportunities that will help you to grow your business and an understanding of how to speak to the value once it is delivered. Product marketing should bring to the table customer insights, market research, analyst insights, competitive landscape and business model implications to ensure that what gets built will allow you to maximize the opp ...Read More

1,360 Views

Can you share advice for the first product marketer at a company for influencing the product roadmap?

Raman Kalyan
Raman Kalyan

Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security • 4y

Focus on developing strong relationships with engineering and bringing a point of view to the table that is based upon data and insights that you gather from both first party and second party research, customer/partner/sales conversations and analyst engagements. You should be the voice of the customer and bring in the prespective of the market. 

691 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?

Raman Kalyan
Raman Kalyan

Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security • 4y

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.  

686 Views

How do you change the culture of your company so that product marketers have more of a voice to influence the product roadmap?

Raman Kalyan
Raman Kalyan

Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security • 4y

We have established a process whereby we partner closely with engineering to condut both qualitative and quantiative market research on areas where we believe there may be an opportunity for growth/or closure of gaps. Partnering closely allows us to leverage the results to both influnce the roadmap as well as our outbound marketing messaging. 

612 Views

How do you hold the product team accountable for delivering on the product roadmap?

Raman Kalyan
Raman Kalyan

Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security • 4y

We focus on specfic moments where we make product annoucements to maximize our PR/AR/customer awareness reach. We share the timelines with the product teams typically 6 months in advance and then work closely with them to both ensure we are staying on track as well as know how to effectively market the value that we are delivering. Since we don't typically do off cycle announcements this allows us to ensure that the items committed to on the product roadmap are delivered in time for our moments. ...Read More

456 Views