In 2009, I’d already had 15-year career in the tech industry, mainly as a product manager at software companies like Microsoft and Adobe. But that year, I decided to take the plunge into physical products, launching KOR Water with my partner Eric Barnes. Ultimately we did reach some pretty lofty heights, but as tech industry folk we were on a steep learning curve in order to achieve success in this very different world of physical products. MORE

Product. Product. Product Marketing. How can specialization and product-level focus marry up with the overlying objectives the company has defined and is measuring itself against? The North Star Metric (NSM) is the single metric that best captures the core value that your product delivers to customers. For example, Amplitude’s North Star Metric attempts to see how many users are realizing true value from their product on a frequent basis. Support. MORE

As a product-first company, new product launches are a core part of Intercom’s DNA – which means there’s always an abundance of juicy launches for us product marketers to work on. Given our cadence of launches and updates, we’ve developed a pretty well-oiled launch machine over the past few years. Our go-to-market teams have grown immensely, meaning more specialists and larger cross-collaborative teams for each launch. MORE

It was launched in 2011 and went broke in 2013 because people didn’t buy the product. The authors relied on their intuition or professionalism, and didn’t account for the most important factor in product creation?—?the the product/market fit. Everpix and Google Wave didn’t satisfy the market. In this situation, it doesn’t matter who creates the product, whether it’s two fellow developers or a corporation giant like Google?—?or Launch your product. MORE

Product marketing is one of the newest and most impactful roles within an organization. As a product marketing manager (PMM), you influence most areas of the organization including product, design, sales, support, and, of course, marketing. Given how new and versatile the role is, product marketing management is also probably the least standardized role in tech companies, which makes the process of becoming a PMM quite obtuse and vague. MORE

How do you create a cohesive approach to product methodology when working with cross-functional teams? Neal Watkins of BAE Systems gives us his advice based on his five year experience with his product team at BAE and describes his newly defined processes, the importance of a universal language within a company, and how he’s learned that the correct input drives the correct output in regard to creating products that customers love. Marketing. MORE

Hello and welcome to the Pragmatic Live podcast series where we tackle the biggest challenges facing today's product management, product marketing, and other market and data driven professionals with some of the best minds in the industry. I'm Rebecca Kalogeris, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Pragmatic Institute, and your host for this episode. I'm a principal product marketer here at HubSpot. We try and benchmark our launches. MORE

Hello and welcome to the Pragmatic Live podcast series where we tackle the biggest challenges facing today's product management, product marketing, and other market and data driven professionals with some of the best minds in the industry. I'm Rebecca Kalogeris, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Pragmatic Institute, and your host for this episode. I'm a principal product marketer here at HubSpot. We try and benchmark our launches. MORE

“You’ve got a cool product, but nobody understands it. They compare your products with those that are nothing like it.” From page 1 of Obviously Awesome: How To Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It , it was clear that the team at Business of Software needed to read April Dunford’s new book. As an executive consultant, April Dunford brings 25 years of marketing experience to the table with this book. MORE

In this third post in his series on product management for manufactured products, Dustin Levy looks at how you prepare for launch. Often, these prototypes will demonstrate selected features or subsystems of the final product you intend to launch. Once all features and subsystems are developed, you will begin to prepare for production readiness. In some organizations, production readiness and launch are synonymous. Setting the Launch Date. MORE

How do you create a cohesive approach to product methodology when working with cross-functional teams? Neal Watkins of BAE Systems gives us his advice based on his five year experience with his product team at BAE and describes his newly defined processes, the importance of a universal language within a company, and how he’s learned that the correct input drives the correct output in regard to creating products that customers love. Marketing. MORE

If you’re a SaaS company that wants to grow faster, you should definitely be thinking about Product Activation Rate Optimization: raising the percentage of users who stick around long enough to experience the value of your product. What is Product Activation? MORE

Managing the Interrelated Roles and Responsibilities of Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers. Product Management and Product Marketing Management are complementary roles. Regardless, both of these distinct roles are essential to product success. It’s often said that a Product Manager has a more inbound focus, while a Product Marketing Manager has a more outbound focus. What Does a Product Manager Do? MORE

It’s heart-breaking that, after all the effort that goes into developing and launching a new Product, from so many different people, 40% of product launches fail. Markham’s landmark study showed [1] and this is what we learned about at the latest Product Talks in Sydney. Kent Weathers knows a bit about Product success, and failure. So, why does Kent think product launches fail? lack of effective product marketing. MORE