Involving Product Teams in Your Virtual Conference: Best Practices

·Jun 17, 2024 04:26 PM

Hey all! Another question (I am clearly in new program startup mode 😅). We're planning a virtual conference. This will be the first time we do something where we highlight our product updates publicly. CEO wants to do a bit of a product showcase/keynote. I'm planning to weave in some product-agnostic content & customer highlights as well. We'd like to involve our PMs, and this is where my question comes in: For folks who have done this type of event, how have your product teams been involved? I've been thinking: deep dives/demos of functionality, having them lead a customer spotlight session, etc. But curious what others have done/found to be effective.

13 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Todd E Jones
·
a virtual conference that highlights your company only?
Zylo - Amanda Peacock
·
who is the audience for the event? customers? prospects? both?
Shannon Howard
·
Good questions. Agenda still in process. Will highlight our product updates, yes. Plus some industry content (product-agnostic) and customer spotlights. Hoping to also release a new research report during this event. 🤞 Audience: Both customers & prospects
👍1
Zylo - Amanda Peacock
·
so we had PMs focused on our customer day or customer track -- they show detailed overviews of things announced earlier in the day on product roadmap. have also used PM to host sessions with customers who were part of EA/Beta for recently announced features. the biggest thing though is that these were customer sessions .. have found the PMs are very smart and detail orented which is better suited for people already using the tool
👍1
Todd E Jones
·
This might be off the wall, but use case stories. How various customer used your product/service to solve a problem in their business, tell that story.
Shannon Howard
·
Zylo - Amanda Peacock totally. I was initially picturing these sessions more customer-focused. I think the hope is we can create something more prospect-facing.
Zylo - Amanda Peacock
·
if its prospect facing then id say go with the beta/ea route so there is an existing relationship -- PM talks about why they've built this new feature and then customer shares how they're using it
💡1
Joe Kevens
·
At PartnerStack's customer conference, we had our Director of Product Management present recent product developments and what's ahead on the roadmap.
Shannon Howard
·
Love that, Joe Kevens
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Asking a peer from Lattice to see if they’d be open to chatting with you since we did this at our annual virtual conference — RfH Virtual — Shannon.
1
Lauren Stefano
·
In addition to the great ideas above, I've seen a lot of value having PMs available to answer questions and respond to feedback or ideas that come up across different sessions. Even sessions that aren't explicitly about the product will often get customers saying things like "how can we do xyz" or "it would be cool if xyz" and having a product person there to answer those questions or assure the customer that their feedback was heard can go a long way
👍1
2
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Love that lesson learned, Lauren Stefano!!
Taylor Page
·
We run a summit annually for our customers, prospects, and community — I manage our customer speakers but am heavily involved with the whole event and am happy to share my learnings.

Involving Product Teams in Your Virtual Conference: Best Practices | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

Todd E Jones
·
a virtual conference that highlights your company only?
Zylo - Amanda Peacock
·
who is the audience for the event? customers? prospects? both?
Shannon Howard
·
Good questions. Agenda still in process. Will highlight our product updates, yes. Plus some industry content (product-agnostic) and customer spotlights. Hoping to also release a new research report during this event. 🤞 Audience: Both customers & prospects
👍1
Zylo - Amanda Peacock
·
so we had PMs focused on our customer day or customer track -- they show detailed overviews of things announced earlier in the day on product roadmap. have also used PM to host sessions with customers who were part of EA/Beta for recently announced features. the biggest thing though is that these were customer sessions .. have found the PMs are very smart and detail orented which is better suited for people already using the tool
👍1
Todd E Jones
·
This might be off the wall, but use case stories. How various customer used your product/service to solve a problem in their business, tell that story.
Shannon Howard
·
Zylo - Amanda Peacock totally. I was initially picturing these sessions more customer-focused. I think the hope is we can create something more prospect-facing.
Zylo - Amanda Peacock
·
if its prospect facing then id say go with the beta/ea route so there is an existing relationship -- PM talks about why they've built this new feature and then customer shares how they're using it
💡1
Joe Kevens
·
At PartnerStack's customer conference, we had our Director of Product Management present recent product developments and what's ahead on the roadmap.
Shannon Howard
·
Love that, Joe Kevens
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Asking a peer from Lattice to see if they’d be open to chatting with you since we did this at our annual virtual conference — RfH Virtual — Shannon.
1
Lauren Stefano
·
In addition to the great ideas above, I've seen a lot of value having PMs available to answer questions and respond to feedback or ideas that come up across different sessions. Even sessions that aren't explicitly about the product will often get customers saying things like "how can we do xyz" or "it would be cool if xyz" and having a product person there to answer those questions or assure the customer that their feedback was heard can go a long way
👍1
2
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Love that lesson learned, Lauren Stefano!!
Taylor Page
·
We run a summit annually for our customers, prospects, and community — I manage our customer speakers but am heavily involved with the whole event and am happy to share my learnings.