Common Ground: Building a Strong Product & Marketing Partnership

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’re getting ready to roll out a new digital product for your company.  You’ve done all the hard work of getting executive buy-in and the team has spent months building the product.  Now you’re finally ready to take your product live! But once you go to Marketing, you’re told they don’t have bandwidth to launch the product for another six (or more) months.

Aligning with Marketing can be one of the biggest drivers to a successful product launch. Many teams are so focused on building the product that they overlook this important step. Below I’ve listed some major points of action to think through in order to help establish a strong partnership with your Marketing team (internal or external).

Align Roadmaps

Product is not the only team that has roadmaps to communicate vision and timeline - Marketing does too. Why not get to know theirs? Aligning roadmaps can be one of the most impactful things both teams can do together.:

1. Schedule regular check-ins to review each other's 3-to-6-month roadmaps. Use this time to communicate changes to budget, product direction, or any other roadblocks that could impact product launch.

2. Get to an ideal state of having a combined Product and Marketing roadmap.  For Product, this helps establish alignment and ensures a go-to-market plan.  For Marketing, this helps to prepare a thoughtful market strategy. 

Common Goals or KPIs

Is your Marketing team striving for the same overarching KPIs that your Product team is?  If not, how do you know whether your goals align?  Chances are that Product and Marketing have different KPIs, but they should align to broader organizational goals.  Find a way to align on goals so that both your KPIs can be met.  This common ground will help you work better together to achieve organizational goals.

Discuss Agile with Marketing

Is your Marketing team still following a waterfall approach or have they adopted Agile?  Having a good sense for how the Marketing team goes about planning and executing their work is critical. Chances are high that developing content is a lot different than building code, so get to know their process while explaining yours. You'll find that both teams will benefit from this exercise.

At the end of the day, Product and Marketing should remember that they’re both part of a larger organization. That can be easier said than done though when both teams have different reporting structure and departmental goals.  However, it all starts with forming a good working relationship and understanding of how your combined efforts can make your organization successful.  As the old saying goes, if you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.