Is your product roadmap leading the way – or are you following the crowd?

Happy January, cluckers!

The first month of the year always feels like a good time to hit pause and take stock of where things are heading.

So here’s a question to kick things off:

Is your product roadmap leading the way, or are your existing customers leading it?

Here’s a common scenario I’ve seen play out in SaaS:
An ambitious team keeps adding features to stop churn or keep current customers happy. But the reality is, those customers don’t always represent the kind of sales pipeline you want in the future.

Over time, what happens? The product starts to feel bloated – packed with features that were added to solve short-term problems but don’t work together seamlessly.

And to justify all those additions, you end up in a features war with competitors, where the focus shifts from delivering value to simply keeping up and highlighting the range of ways you can use your tool.

On the surface, this sounds great – my product can do all the things the other competitors can do, but better.

But it’s a false sense of security. While your G2 profile looks great, with nice solid tick boxes next to each of your features against your competitors measly crosses, it can genuinely have a detrimental underlying impact that can prevent you scaling later.

It creates a ripple effect, and suddenly your marketing team is stuck too.

Because, instead of building campaigns to attract your next wave of customers, they’re left promoting a product designed for the last one (often, I might add from C-Suite pressure – don’t be that guy!) They’re forced to constantly react to the past instead of focusing on the future.

This cycle can look like this:
🔁 Adding more features to stop churn.
🔁 Attracting more of the same feature-demanding customers.
🔁 Diluting your product positioning even further.

Does this sound familiar?

If it does, January may just be the perfect time to break the cycle.

Here’s how to reset:

1. Get crystal clear on your future ICP – who they are and what they value (I talk more about how you can validate your target personas in this short video here!)

2. Align your roadmap to meet their needs, not just the loudest voices from the past.

3. Focus on delivering value over features. A focused, cohesive product will always outperform a bloated one.

Bloated products and features wars don’t lead to long-term success. A focused roadmap, aligned with where you’re going, does.

So, what’s one thing you’re doing this year to keep your product and marketing aligned? I’d love to hear your thoughts on my post below.

A quick heads-up: I’ve decided to make these posts a bit more regular – shorter, more direct soundbites that I hope will help to make the tips more practical, actionable and easier to digest. If that’s not your thing, no worries, feel free to hit unsubscribe. And as always, open to hearing your thoughts.

Until next time,

Tania

P.S. Got a marketing challenge you’re wrestling with this year? Reply to this email with a bit of info and I’ll send you a tailored email response.