When I’m working in product marketing, I love getting into the weeds. I love hearing about a new feature and immediately jumping into content ideas, thinking about how the customers are going to love it and how I can present it to them.
But I only have so much time on my hands. When I’m balancing feature rollouts with sales enablement projects, internal training, and more...I have to be wary of not jumping in too fast and consider my own personal limitations.
I also have to know what my users will get out of this release. It may be worth setting other projects down to focus on, but I need to get a clear picture first!
Here are some questions I always ask before I jump into a campaign:
1) Do my customers care?
When a new feature is getting rolled out, I may think that it’s a HUGE deal to the customer. But after talking to my product manager and customer success team, I find out that they actually care about something that is coming out next month instead.
Why is that? Are they unaware of the value that this feature could bring? Or is it something they already expected to have?
Maybe I should let this one roll out with minimal content, and focus on creating a big push about that feature they do care about instead.
2) What are the goals for my campaign?
Sales goals are usually pretty simple. Get this many leads, have X amount a demos. But Product Marketing goals change constantly.
Is the goal of the campaign to attract new users? Or is it to increase adoption for current customers? Or maybe this feature is leading up to a bigger release, and users need to just understand how it works?
If I understand what the goals are, it will help me determine what mediums I need to use, and how much content I will need.
3) How big or “complicated” is the feature?
If it’s a small feature, or a quick change in product, my campaign may only need to be a couple pieces of content. But if it’s a big change, or a new way of thinking, I will need to plan for more time to become a subject matter expert.
If the feature is still in testing, can I sit in on some product testing with customers? Can I sit down with my Product Manager to walk through why certain decisions were made? Are there any known issues, or plans from iteration in the future?
I want to know it’s limitations, it’s main goals, and exactly how it works. This not only will allow me to build better content, but also allow me to train others on how it works.
4) Will I need to plan for internal training?
Even before my users get to try a feature, I want customer success and sales teams to know how it works, the value it will bring, and basic troubleshooting. On a simple feature, this may not be required, or a quick video demo will suffice. But larger releases...will I need to schedule time to walk through the feature, and build training sessions?
Training sessions can also be helpful to figure out language, the works, and the best ways to explain concepts before I start working on the main content pieces for my campaign.
5) Is this part of a larger roadmap?
This goes hand in hand with “How complicated is it?”. Sometimes a feature is released that is part of a bigger product push. In this case, I might choose to wait on marketing until the full feature set is out.
Not only will this sometimes make it easier for users to understand, but it will also save me time from building content that will need to change in the near future.
Having answers to these questions allows me to create a stronger campaign. It allows me to plan out my work in advance, and know exactly how much time will be needed to complete everything.
Hope these questions help you too! Any other questions you always ask to get started?
