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Role of a marketing manager?

Advice: How do I manage my new role as Product & Marketing manager?

  • I've joined a new startup that operates a site with multiple sections and has +2million hits a month due to its content but the products are in bad shape - the team is chaos with no visibility on any1's role. There is a lot of scope for improvement in processes, marketing strategy, product, UX, UI. With so much work to do/roles to play, I'm finding it hard to structure my thoughts and proceed in a planned manner -  what methods/strategies can I apply to bring the change

  • Answer:

    Some good points raised by Abhinav already. These are my suggestions for you to consider: Learn about the product and your (target) audience (1) - Try to find out what is already there in terms of product and user info. For instance, are there reliable sales figures available or can you derive some useful insights through a web analytics programme? See if you can do some secondary research on what your market looks like, how some of your competitors are doing. Learn about the product and your (target) audience (2) - Once you feel that you have got a better understanding of your products and the market(s) your business operates in, you could build on this by talking to some of your customers directly. You can do this in the form of face to face interviews or focus groups and I feel this could really help you in building up a better picture of what your users think about your products. This kind of customer feedback will also help you in prioritising your efforts. Understand business objectives - In addition to knowing how your product fits with the company's wider product portfolio, I think it would be good if you get a better idea of where your colleagues see the business going. What is the overal business vision? What are key business priorities? Answers to these kinds of questions might help you in creating some direction for yourself: what process needs immediate improvement the most? What constraints are holding us back from achieving our goals? Is our marketing strategy geared towards our business objectives? I'm not by any means saying that you should expect ultra-clear answers to all of these questions straight away or receive definitive user feedback, but going through some of the suggested exercices should at least give you a better starting point from where you can start making sense of things, identify immediate priorities or future improvements. In my opinion, things like user research and stakeholder engagement are never one-off exercises, but will help you to create a picture that will evolve over time and will help you to gain new insights as you go along.

Marc Abraham at Quora Visit the source

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In brief: 1. Know the product. 2. Know the customers. 3. Know the competition. 4. Know how your product fits with the company's larger product portfolio. 5. Know the development team - engineers, UX, QA, Doc, all.

Abhinav Agarwal

I agree with most of what's been posted here.  One observation, though:  this is all very much about the content of the role (ie, the knowledge base) and less about the context - how to function effectively within the startup.  It's no less important to understand the human factors & politics in a small growing firm than in a large enterprise.  I think it's invaluable to understand not only your direct manager, but each of the individuals the management team - what are their priorities, what do they see as key problems, how do they communicate, who has the informal (as well as formal) authority?  Building a clear picture of this will guide you in deciding where to focus your energy.  First focus on driving positive changes that most easily gain strong upper-level support; this builds the credibility and trust you'll need to deal with more contentious issues later.

Barry L Smith

I agree with the comments that have been posted so far, however, I think that "getting to know" the different aspects of the business is not the first step. If the team(s) responsible for these products lack structure, then your first priority should be to propose a project management plan. Your second priority should be to pick and advocate the adoption of a project management tool that will help to facilitate that plan. A project management tool will help facilitate communication between team members and will typically motivate individuals to gravitate toward the areas in the development cycle where they can do the most good. Until the team agrees on a project management methodology, you will continue to face challenges during execution of any new initiatives that are identified while gathering business intelligence and marketing research.

Nathan Brothers

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