Product Marketing involves more than just supporting the Marketing and Product Management teams. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales, and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all play a role in growing the business and serving customers.

Just as Marketing has a plan or brief, Product Marketing does.

Here are nine things to address in a Product Marketing Brief.

1. What does your company do? Does your product offering align with your business goals?
2. What are the features of your product? Do others understand what you are building and why?
3. Does this Product address gaps in the Market? Include an overview of a Competitive and SWOT analysis.
4. Who is your ideal customer or target market? Include an overview of findings of demographic, psychographic, and buyer persona research. Does your product solve customer pain points?
5. How will you measure product success?
6. What are can go wrong? Can failure be anticipated and corrected?
7. What is the roadmap and schedule of the product? Who’s responsible and in charge?
8. Who needs to be included in the project and who needs to approve deliverables?
9. How will goals be tracked? How often will they be monitored? What insights are you trying to glean from the data?

As a Product Marketer, how do you know if you are successful?

Comment and share.

Last week, I covered the Search Marketing Expo in New York City. Search Marketing Expo has is a great event for SEO, SEM, and Digital Marketing professionals. SMX provides attendees with an opportunity to learn actionable techniques in conference sessions and training workshops. Google and Microsoft provided seminars on various SEM topics.

Here is a video of the event.

I enjoyed Moz founder Rand Fishkin’s keynote.

The key insights of the presentation were:

1. Organic traffic has reached its peak and will decline.
2. To keep traffic coming to their sites, Marketers will need to find ways to nudge consumers as Zero click queries continue to grow.
3. Organizations need to shift their investments in product, content, and brand. Decisions on how to redeploy these resources need to be a company-wide effort. 

Here is the link to the presentation.

Google in 2020: From Everyone’s Search Engine to Everyone’s Competitor | SparkToro
I’ve written a lot this year about the shifts we’re seeing from Google — moving from search engine to answer to engine…sparktoro.com

At the end of the keynote, I met Rand and received a signed copy of his new book entitled Lost and Found.

In Google’s Keynote, I learned how businesses can get an edge during the holidays. I also learned of Google’s plan to use Google Images and YouTube for eCommerce. Google is also allowing businesses to use location-based Ads in Google Maps.

The key insights of the presentation were:

1. According to Google most shopping visits start online.

2.When diners search for a great place to eat the searches are probably happening on a smartphone.

3.  When people are online in cars, more than half of them are searching for information on a mobile device making localization and targeting important.

4. . 2/3′s of shoppers say that online video has given them insight and inspiration to make purchases.

5. Shoppers use at least 3 channels or more when shopping.

6. Brands need to provide an omnichannel channel experience all year, especially during the holidays.

7. Sales are happening online and offline. As a result of this shift, Brands need to serve customers on the channels of their choice.

Improving Traffic Safety at the 2026 World Traffic Safety Symposium 

I covered the 2026 World Traffic Safety Symposium at the New York International Auto Show this April. The symposium discussed the holistic safety and mobility of motor vehicles.

Mark Scheinberg, President of the Greater New York Automotive Dealers Association and the New York International Auto Show, opened the symposium.

Guest Speakers included:

John Bozzella, President & CEO, Alliance for Automotive Innovation, Jennifer Homendy, Chair, National Transportation Safety Board, Dr. Jeffrey Runge, former NHTSA Administrator, John Adkins, CEO, Governors Highway Safety Association, Mark F. Schroeder, Commissioner, NYS DMV, Governor’s Representative for Highway Safety, and many others.

Jennifer Homendy, Chair, National Transportation Safety Board, shared that there are 110 deaths per day in the United States from automobile crashes and that 95 percent of all deaths from planes, trains, and automobiles are from automobiles. I was shocked to hear this statistic! Some of the crashes were caused by the NTSB’s safety recommendations being ignored.

To help remedy the situation, the NTSB chair advocated for the implementation of safety technology in automobiles, such as alcohol detection and speed monitoring. Alcohol use while driving accounted for 12,000 deaths in the US. 11,00 deaths are the result of speeding, and 3,000 deaths are the result of distracted driving.

The NTSB chair stated that drug use while driving has skyrocketed with the legalization of Marijuana in some states. The NTSB chair recommended bringing driver safety education back. She said that people don’t read owner manuals in cars, and they don’t know about the operating mechanics of automation in cars. The more you use automation in a car, the more distracted you are. 97 percent of traffic crashes are caused by human factors. Auto deaths have dropped to 39500, but it is still too high! This is a 6 percent decline despite vehicles being safe.

Dr. Runge said that automotive safety is a team sport with automakers, auto dealers, states, law enforcement, and traffic enforcement working together to address the problem.

Jon Adkins highlights that bike lane advocacy in NYC has led to a decrease in bike fatalities over the past 3 years.

Marketing Schroder, NYS DMW Commissioner and CGTSC Chair, shared his commitment to road safety in New York State. He described the various task forces working to make roads safer for drivers and pedestrians. He also shared his work making the NYSDMV more efficient.

A new computer system was implemented at NYS DMV over a 4-year project, replacing 96 data lines. Since the Rockefeller administration, there has been only 1 dedicated data line used to process information and transactions. This also improved the customer experience at the DMV, reducing wait times from 2 to 3 hours to 15 minutes to do a transaction. Auto dealers do 1 million transactions with the NYS DMV.

Marketing Schroder, NYS DMW Commissioner, shared how New York is applying stricter enforcement against dangerous drivers

Alcohol and drug convictions now carry an 11-point penalty on your license, with an automatic suspension; previously, no points were added.

Teaming up with law enforcement and the community to reduce drug and alcohol impaired driving, the NYS DMV, DOT, and NYSP are coordinating and improving traffic safety.

The 2026 World Traffic Safety Symposium highlighted issues, insights, and solutions to improve traffic safety.