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Best tips on Crafting the Perfect Product Roadmap

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Best tips on Crafting the Perfect Product Roadmap

A roadmap is a vital strategic tool that product managers use to fine-tune their product idea. After that, they convey it to colleagues, management and customers, and other stakeholders.

A well-structured roadmap often spells the difference between creating a successful product with a truly user-centric approach and producing a humdrum piece of software that consumers criticize.

Today, a quality roadmap is more crucial than ever before in this age of agile product development.

As a result, it’s critical to ensure that you’ve created a roadmap that reflects the consumers’ requirements.

Fo that reason, here are the best tips on crafting the perfect product roadmap!

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Get Acquainted With Types of Product Roadmaps

A product roadmap is used by each workgroup for different goals. At the same time, this material can significantly help team members.

For example, developers plan new features and releases while sales managers prepare everything needed to launch a product or update its version.

Whatever form of roadmap you establish should focus on the big picture and the difficulties that need to be solved.

We may identify the different types of product roadmaps. The main criteria are the audience the product is aimed at, as well as its elements and production purpose.

One can distinguish between:

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  • Strategy roadmap. Focuses on high-level efforts and market conditions, and it provides information on how product development milestones connect to overall business strategy.
  • Technology roadmapThis is a visual representation of the company’s technology strategy, which allows for decisions on the IT infrastructure required to accomplish business goals.
  • Features roadmap. It is a strategy for adding new features to a product. It can be implemented as a simple action sequence or with the help of a timeline.
  • Release roadmap. The document outlines a series of tasks that must be completed in order to bring a product to market. It can help organize the activities of cross-functional teams by displaying what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and to who each task is assigned.
  • Platform roadmap. You can use it for product releases that are available on numerous platforms (iOS, Android, or Web).
  • Portfolio roadmap. It depicts the scheduled releases of numerous products from the same ecosystem group in one diagram, as well as how they relate to one another.
  • Internal roadmaps. They are intended for a certain company team or department. Figures, precise information on objectives, timelines, and other related information are included.
  • External roadmaps. This is a “light” form of the main document intended for external stakeholders such as investors, partners, or new clients.

How to Create a Quality Product Roadmap

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Define the strategy

Stakeholders need to understand what business goals your product will fulfill in order for your organization to invest in its development.

They also want you to respond to inquiries like: Who will use the product? What issues will the product resolve?

You should also add important product unique features that distinguish this product from similar products already on the market.

To do this effectively, use a Product Requirements Document – it will be of great help when communicating with your stakeholders.

Define your main goals

To answer the question “what will you develop?” provide a clear picture of the future product.

At the same time, it’s advisable to set a time restriction, such as a few quarters or months, because no one knows how the market will develop over time.

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Align with your internal teams and stakeholders

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A product roadmap is a collaborative process. The paper will be used by several departments for both internal and external purposes.

To minimize misunderstandings, you should discuss and agree on specific topics during the creation process.

Rather than being static, your roadmap should act as a reader board, providing an up-to-date snapshot of project progress.

Track metrics and product goals

On a daily basis, you should focus on tracking your progress and your product manager metrics.

This is a tried-and-true method for assisting your team in making more consistent development and pursuing continuous improvement.

Define all the features and requirements

Once you figure out the stuff you have to do, you need to ask yourself what you need to accomplish it.

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Make a list of the features you’ll be implementing. You’ll need to write user stories and descriptions with specific needs required for giving development teams the context they need.

Enhance your customers’ journey

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Be sure to offer helpful and interesting content throughout your site that does more than strictly sell your product.

Thoughtfully designed non-product pages will add value to the customer’s journey, communicate your brand story, and assist in winning the sale.

Present a visual roadmap

A good product roadmap will also show you a simple, accurate visualization of your ideas and how they relate to the company’s objectives.

In addition, your roadmap should be simple to follow and appealing. There are numerous popular software alternatives that make it easier to generate visually engaging product roadmaps, in addition to PowerPoint and spreadsheets.

Have different versions

If a sales team and a development team share the same roadmap, Sales may commit to a feature to seal a contract without consulting the developers.

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This is only one of many issues that might arise if only one party is making modifications or if there is no method to monitor who is making changes.

Create a flexible roadmap

All product roadmaps should include the phrase “SUBJECT TO CHANGE.” Maintaining flexibility in your timetable and goals will allow your team to respond to setbacks productively and modify your plan to new requirements.

Take into account, however, that a product roadmap should have a single owner.

Categorize tasks into epics

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The next step is agreeing on a timeframe and dividing down activities into smaller, more manageable epics.

This phase can be completed with the help of an excel sheet or any similar tool. Putting the final plan together into a sheet entails grouping all of the epics into a chronology.

Large projects may require an advanced story mapping tool, enabling you to understand user needs, and prioritize the right ideas. For smaller projects, however, three tiers are frequently sufficient.

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Make your decision based on the product’s maturity and size.

Set up your SaaS growth correctly

When it comes to SaaS analytics, precise retention data takes years to collect, and you can’t wait for the results to see how well your product is doing.

You don’t have a lot of time to study. To demonstrate that you have product-market fit (PMF) that is ready to scale, you must develop quickly. You must consider your customers and their overall experience carefully.

Web-based Tools to Help You Create a Product Roadmap

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While you can absolutely build a physical product roadmap that specifies your product’s goals, there are a number of online tools that help make the process go more smoothly.

Online tools could save time and improve productivity in a variety of ways.

For example, live, shareable documents enable collaboration while also making history and versioning easy to follow. Many programs also come with pre-built templates. Therefore, you can use pre-defined templates that can be immediately popped-up on your website or inside your product.

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Here’s an overview of some of the most widely used roadmapping software:

  • Aha! – offers a number of features to assist you in managing a product’s lifecycle.
  • Craft assists in the creation of epics and stories, as well as their translation into a visual roadmap.
  • With a simple user interface, Lucidchart allows for real-time collaboration.
  • Onedesk aids in the identification and prioritization of requirements.
  • Drag and drop features in ProductPlan allow you to explore many roadmaps in a master plan.
  • Shipyard – a platform for data engineers to orchestrate the creation of a reliable data infrastructure.
  • TrendsRadius analyzes gathered customer data from many channels before turning it into useful insights.
  • Smartsheet includes a Gantt chart with several views, color and symbol customization, and real-time cooperation.

Happy Roadmapping!

When you use a product roadmap to represent the intended development process, all stakeholders will have quick and easy access to critical strategic insights.

With the help of our blog, you can create effective roadmaps that explain your visions and assist your company and customers in achieving their objectives.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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