ProductCamp Boston May 12 2018

1. The Agile Product Marketer
Session Notes 5/12/2018
Session Leader: Steve Robins s.robins@solutionmkt.com
Notes Captured By Erik Mansur (Thanks Erik!)

2. There’s a hole with regards to
“agile product marketing”
It may not exist right now, but it will
need to exist in the future.

3. Why Agile Product Marketing?
˜ With fortnightly releases, there’s a need to educate customers at the same speed
˜ The market changes quickly, so there’s a need to ebb and flow with the market
˜ We now have an unprecedented amount of data coming in - we need to be able to
use that data to be nimble and transformative in real time
˜ In many cases, there’s content and materials that can be turned around quickly,
while other elements require a longer term strategy that has connective tissue
˜ Customer feedback comes hard and fast, so being more active is important
˜ Transparency is an excellent knock-on effect of agile product marketing - you’re
delivering information to the customer as soon as you have it

4. What is Agile?
˜ Customer-focused (Steve says that this is the most important thing)
˜ Transparent (Steve says that this is another most important thing)
˜ Incorporates learnings - both by listening and by doing
˜ Responsive to change - often rapidly
˜ Accepting of change
˜ Iterative
˜ Cross-functional
˜ Collaborative - no one person is responsible
˜ Inertia-breaking

5. What are the characteristics of Agile Product Marketing?
˜ Standardization: being able to have a standard operating process for when
something new comes down the pipeline
˜ Multi-functional: PMKT + Engineering + Sales + Content + PM needs to be a
part of the process
˜ Buy-in: Everyone in that room needs to feel like an owner of their part of the
process
˜ Communicative: Everyone in the room needs to listen to one another and share
their own ideas, building consensus through communication
˜ Iterative: One thing should build to another, with changes that make sense; an
MVP approach, with the bare minimum delivery items ramping up the massive
product launch once the feature is “done”

6. What are the characteristics of Agile Product Marketing?, cont’d
˜ Aware: Understanding your audience and being aware that some audiences may
desire a new feature even before it’s “perfect"
˜ Integrated: Aligned with most/all aspects of the development stack to better
communicate to audiences, but to better deliver feedback back up to the key
stakeholders; plus there’s a ton of learning the can happen from this type of
structure
˜ Problem-solving: A deeper integrated PMKT team within the development stack
helps get the Product/Engineering org get closer to the customer - injecting direct
feedback into the development cycle to help address customer issues in real-time,
and to make rapid adjustments to features that are still MVP

7. What are some of the challenges to Agile Product Marketing?
˜ Getting started - if you’re not agile now, how do you get agile?
˜ Distance (physical, et al) - Engineering/Development in a different location than
PMKT
˜ Understanding the voice of the customer - using their words in your messaging
˜ Recognizing what the MVP is - knowing when is a feature “good enough” to
market
˜ Responsiveness from other stakeholders - Not having SLAs from other teams
that you need to work with
˜ Budget constraints - not having enough $$$ to market the way you want to
˜ Communication from customers - a lackluster feedback loop could make it
difficult to address customer concerns
˜ Resources - having the right people in place in order to be agile

8. What is the timing around Agile Product Marketing?
˜ One of the first pieces of collateral - sales enablement; they’ve gotta
be ready to roll it out as soon as it’s done
˜ 411 vs. 911: Can it wait (information), or does it need to get out right now
(urgency)
˜ Get customer to minimal level of satisfaction - can it be now or later?
˜ Core documents don’t change as fast as the new feature messaging
- bread-and-butter stuff can stay golden, but new features may need
rapid development of materials
˜ Messaging may very - MVP could get a blog post, Feature Complete
could get a full-court press