What makes a product strategy truly effective? In this webinar hosted by Jonmichael Moy, Bazaarvoice SVP of Global Product Marissa Jones speaks on creating a durable product strategy. Product strategy is critical to helping your organization make short-term roadmap decisions and long-term investments. Learn about key elements in building and executing a product strategy that will set you and your team on the road to success. Gain actionable advice on aligning your strategy with organizational goals to maximize impact and achieve success.
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Show Notes:
- Bazaarvoice has grown through acquisitions of companies like Curate, Affable, and Granify.
- A product vision describes the future the company is trying to create, typically 2-5 years out.
- The purpose of a product vision is to communicate and inspire teams, stakeholders, investors, partners, and prospective customers.
- A simple framework of learn, think, decide, and act was used to approach developing the product vision.
- The learning phase involved market research, understanding market trends, and analyzing market sizing.
- The thinking phase involved workshopping ideas with the product leadership team and getting external expert feedback.
- The product vision statement for the company was “to be the platform to share authentic product experiences.”
- An inspirational presentation was created to bring the product vision to life visually.
- Creating a durable product strategy starts with identifying key capabilities and market opportunities.
- Mapping out capabilities, categorizing them, and assessing execution was part of the strategy.
- Analyzing total addressable market, serviceable available market, and serviceable attainable market was important.
- A new product introduction process with defined stages was used to evaluate and prioritize ideas.
- The annual product strategy focused on 3-4 key initiatives grounded in the long-term vision.
- The product team was encouraged to think about customer value and business metrics, not just features.
- Balancing investment in the core business versus growth opportunities was a challenge.
- Cross-functional stakeholder input was gathered through design sprints.
- Communicating the rationale behind strategic decisions to the product team was important for alignment.
About the speaker
As Senior Vice President, Global Product, Marissa leads Bazaarvoice’s product organization focusing on product management, UX, and product strategy. With over 18 years in the technology industry, Marissa has a wide range of global experience, pertaining to product management and go-to-market execution. Marissa has been with Bazaarvoice for 12 years, during which she led the platform, client experience and consumer experience portfolios before moving into the overall organizational leader. She served as the main product lead through the acquisition of Curalate, which expanded the social commerce capabilities of Bazaarvoice up-funnel. She most recently served as the executive sponsor of the acquisition of Granify, adding contextual commerce capabilities to help drive consumer conversion. Prior to Bazaarvoice, Marissa spent almost five years with Microsoft. She served as the product management lead for launching infrastructure-as-a-service on Windows Azure, and helped manage product launches while measuring global success of Microsoft’s web platform. Prior to that, she spent just under two years at Accenture as a consultant for clients in the communications and technology industries. When she’s not working Marissa enjoys playing tennis. Marissa earned her undergraduate degree from the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon, holding a Bachelor of Science with a double major in Business (Accounting) and Journalism (Advertising).
About the host
Toronto Chapter Head for Products That Count I am a digital product executive with over 20 years of experience in retail, digital media, and e-commerce. I’ve held both strategic and operational leadership roles at Canadian Tire, Torstar, Postmedia, eBay, and PayPal as well as start-ups. I am a servant leader who is humble, self aware, always learning, and excels at collaborating with stakeholders. I am a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, a father of two, pancreatic cancer awareness advocate, moved to Canada 13 years ago, and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. I currently sit on the Product Management Program Advisory Council for York University which offers Canada’s first post-secondary product management program.