Services for tech product organizations & startups

​I help product, research, design, and engineering work together for the user, your company, and advertisers.

​I help product, research, design, and engineering work together for users, your company, and advertisers.

I most often work formally under the product marketing manager (PMM) function, but I also function as product manager, researcher, and (very) low-fidelity designer for startups.

As a product strategist, I live between these functional roles so that business goals are defined, roadmaps are fully informed, the right research inquiry is developed, and designers have the information they need to create products that customers love. Moving between these roles helps me guide operations and improve processes.

For many companies, product marketing operates quite independently of the product creators. This sometimes causes a breakdown between marketing goals of attracting new users versus the product team's goals for keeping users happy and the business thriving. I dig into (sometimes) competing metrics of signups and churn and make them play well together.

The highest quality product marketing not only gains new users, it brings the right users and takes responsibility for them understanding the product so they stick around. This requires the PMM to have a close relationship with designers. I collaboratively create user flows from first exposure, to signup, to casual use, to in-depth engagement. After all, that's how users encounter your products. I help your broader product organization function the same way.

Market Sizing
I work with global marketing and product teams to revenue potential for various markets. By applying local user insights to local business to an existing product roadmap, product teams may make more informed decisions about which markets to enter. For broad-based Internet product companies with many interdependent offerings, we can also expose loss-leader products that feed users into highly profitable ones. Platform business decisions are bigger than any one product marketing plan.

Research Planning
Having a research background allows me to work closely with staff researchers to ask the right questions, recruit the right users, and glean the best actionable design insights. My involvement can uncover efficiency by combining marketing and product questions, which in turn inform broader market-to-use insights. For strategic marketing, typically I seek out UX Research partners for qualitative segment insights as a foundation for my recommendations. It is important to me that marketing carefully consider not placing too much energy and resources to attract users the product wasn’t built for. Sometimes there’s a good business rationale for doing so, but typically is not the case.

Product Marketing Planning and Execution
My background mixes agency marketing and advertising strategy with on-the-ground PMM and product experience with large tech companies like Google and Yahoo!. I can assess the current tactical marketing mix, consider others, make a plan to budget, and execute the production and distribution of marketing and communications. I communicate clear user benefits for your latest releases. I also manage internal resources and external agencies so they execute with polish.

Product Strategy and Roadmaps
In cases where I'm not serving as a product manager, I work with PMs to help determine feature groupings; business, design, and technical requirements; and development and resource plans. If I am working in a PM capacity, we develop a high level product roadmap that describes user experience across multiple platforms (browser, mobile, client), revenue, and a realistic release schedule that attracts investment.

Design Facilitation and Design Review
I'm a mid-fidelity wireframe designer, but know when to get out of the way of design leads who rely on my information to arrive at the best possible (and viable) user experience. Like design teams, I'm an ally of the user who can also speak for business interests. I respect your struggles with less familiar users, extant design patterns, and platform limitations or technology debt. I will go to the mattress with you for the sake of your customers. I do so to challenge the business model to support the best experience. I bring new ideas and approaches and avoid non-actionable criticism. There's work to be done here. Let's figure it out together and have some fun along the way.

Mergers & Acquisitions
Companies acquire others for a variety of reasons. These include complimentary product visions, user bases, or a need to build out product teams--even competitive reasons. I've helped companies sort this out before. Instead of focusing exclusively on the P&L sheet, I'll look out for your users and your business model, partnering with the right subject matter experts along the way.