• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, September 23, 2026

Product marketing is often taken for granted, partially because it’s viewed as less creative,  with a rhythm and predictability to it.

The PM Playbook used to be simple.  It consisted of messaging docs, beta programs, a launch email, maybe a webinar, and a stretch of promotion designed to drive trial. After that you sat back, gathered feedback, and folded whatever you learned into the next release.  That process was usually a quarter or two away. The job was to tell people what was coming and get them excited for it. 

AI has accelerated release schedules, and as a result marketers can’t possibly keep up with the rate of announcements.  When you can use AI to help write and test a new feature, a team that used to need a quarter can ship in a week, and in many cases, a day. That means developers push changes daily, no longer waiting for a new playbook. Instead of "here's what to look for," it becomes "here's what we did, and here's how people are actually using it."

Product marketing is no longer focused on announcing things.  Instead, marketers become a team analyzing what’s happening in real time, and reporting back.  Marketing starts to influence product development even more than it did in the past

The playbook of a launch didn't disappear; it changed. It used to sit at the front of the cycle, where you'd promote a release to drive trial and then go gather insight afterward. Now the trial is automatic, and the playbook is about inspiring others based on what you see some of your power users doing.  It becomes about highlighting solutions, rather than simply proposing them.  Marketing actually gets closer to the true voice of the customer if this playbook is executed well. 

If a feature shows up without a big announcement, something still has to tell the user it's there, and increasingly that something is the product itself. A well-placed tool tip, or a short in-product note, is the launch campaign now. It's where someone finds out what's new, and because it lives inside the product, you can watch how they actually use the thing you pushed to production. It’s a real signal, not a hypothetical.

The other thing that matters more is the relationship with your users, and especially your power users. When you're moving that fast, you're going to get some things wrong, and the people who tell you fastest are the ones using the product the most. Those users aren't just an audience now.  They’ve become part of the build as if they’re an advisory board, whether formally or informally. You want them giving you feedback on what shipped last Tuesday, not what's coming next quarter, and you want them to feel like they're inside the process rather than watching it happen to them.

I'll admit there's a limit to all of this. Not every user wants to be a co-pilot; some just want the thing to work the same way it did yesterday. Enterprise buyers in particular still like a roadmap they can plan around. The big announcements probably don't go away entirely, they just get saved for the moments that deserve one, while the day-to-day changes live inside the product and inside the data.

Either way, the core skill is changing. It used to be about crafting the story before the release. Now it's about reading the results after and having enough trust with your users that they'll actually tell you the truth. I'll take that job. Would you?