AMA: Nextdoor Head of Product Marketing, Brianne Shally on Influencing the Product Roadmap

There are various inputs into the product roadmap that Product Marketing can provide, beyond data and customer anecdotes. Where Product Marketing can be most valuable is in connecting the dots across the various insights to share a point of view and answer the question 'why this matters'. For instance, you can share competitive trends but take the analysis a step further to share 'why this matters'. Additional inputs into the product roadmap: * Competitive Analysis: Understanding key competitors, including primary competitors, competitors in verticals, and global competitors to understand where competitive advantages and disadvantages across the marketplace. Incorporate win / loss reporting and interviews into the process as well. * Market Trends: Analyze market trends to understand macro themes that will have implications on the product, marketplace, geos, verticals, and customers. This will especially be helpful for longer term planning. * Prospects: What got you here, won't get you there. It's vital to understand the broader prospect customer base beyond current customers to identify what wants and needs you aren't solving for, but need to in order to have step change growth. * Customer Insights: Triangulate across qualitative, quantitative, and behavioral input to shape point of view, especially since not intentionally customers say one thing and do another. For instance, explore behavioral data to understand engagement and adoption trends. Additional inputs to include NPS, win / loss reporting, case volume, and themes, Sales input, social media listening, research results, customer advisory board insights, etc.

Product Marketing should closely partner with product and other cross functional teams (Eng, Finance, etc.) to inform and develop the product roadmap, including: * Insights: Provide key insights and synthesis from competitive intelligence, market trends, analyst insights, customer and Sales input, research / NPS, etc. Go beyond pulling all the information together to analyze it and provide recommendations. * Storytelling: Product Marketing brings the roadmap to life through telling the story of the Product Strategy to take it beyond just a roadmap and shipping products, but why you are bringing these products to market. This is a valuable story to tell internally to gain alignment and buy in on the vision. And also tell the product strategy story externally to prospects and customers to get them excited about your vision and bring them along for the ride. * Target Audience: Identify the target audience to help inform and prioritize the roadmap. Identify who is the core audience you are building for. 

Since PMM is the voice of the customer, it is vital to always be talking to customers. Here's a couple of approaches: - Schedule "Voice of Customer Day": Have day full of customer calls with a specific theme. Bring in cross funcational stakeholders (e.g. Product, Eng, Design, Product Ops, Brand, Comms, etc.) to participate and sign up for roles: notetaker, interview key takeaways, interviewer, etc. Host a kick off in the morning with interviews through out the day and and wrap up at the end with key takeaways and then formalize the insights and recommendations to broader audience. - Have a OKR each quarter that focuses on talking to the customer: A research project, feedback on a recent launch, etc. - Offer incentives if it's hard to get customers' participation, such as a $25 Amazon gift card. I've seen it increase conversion rate. Also, personalize outreach to customers, using their name in the email and share why their feedback is important. - NPS interviews: Run NPS and ask participants in the survey if they are available for a follow up convesation. Follow up with these individuals to identify deeper qualitative insights, and the rationale for their answers to form deeper insights and stronger recommendations. 

Here are a few of my approaches to influence product leadership on the product priorities: * Work cross-functionally across UX, research, Data Science, Product Operations, Sales, etc. to incorporate everyone's input so Product Marketing's list represents all input and is the source of truth. One of the challenges Product faces is distinguishing signal vs. noise with all the input that comes to them. Product Marketing can take a leadership role to collect, analyze, and synthesize the input to provide one source of truth. * Prepare synthesize a list of Voice of Customer to help inform the planning process, so it is timely. For instance, if your company invests in 2H and annual planning, ensure that the cross-functional synthesized Voice of Customer report is finalized before planning starts so it is top of mind as planning begins. A reminder planning always begins informally before the formal 'kick off' on the company calendar, so be earlier rather than later. The first time I did this, the meeting was standing room only as everyone was excited to hear the insights. * Quantify the impact of recommendations. For instance, if you know from win/loss reports that a specific feature will drive $1M in revenue capture it or there are 5K monthly cases on a specific bug. * Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. A list should always be prioritized based on the impact. * Identify both tactical recommendations (bug, feature requests) and strategic recommendations (new vertical entry, etc.) so you address both short and long term and prioritize each list separately. * Include insights to validate recommendations, including customer quotes, 3rd party data points, internal data including usages, win/loss reports, case volume, etc. * Create a 1 page executive summary that captures top recommendations and why. I've done this historically where I see the one page printed and on PMs desk as a reminder of the top opportunities. Make is memorable, clear, concise, and impactful. * See other questions on the inputs into the process. 

Sharing the product roadmap externally is a great way to share the company's vision, investment in innovation, and upcoming features to get prospects and customers excited about the potential. It can be a strong selling tool to get prospects on board and a resource to get current customers to invest more. What's important is that the roadmap isn't standing on it own, but partnered with an overall vision to show how product efforts later up to a great vision. This is where Product Marketing can play a strong role in storytelling and positioning to bring it all together. I've seen this executed successfully at customer events, executive briefings, and executive prospect closing meetings. Side note, also a great recruiting tool to close potential candidates. All that said, you need to be thoughtful in sharing the roadmap to avoid any implications to press from product launches, have customers / prospects sign NDAs when needed, and align when, with who, and how you share the information. Your legal and comms teams will thank you.