How Marketing Teams Can Use Shortcut to Work Alongside Product Development

Marketing and product teams are often side-by-side. But separate tools make things harder than they need to be with more updates, more meetings, and more chances to miss what’s happening. Instead, we run marketing in the same space as engineering, so when something ships, the GTM work is already ready to roll.

Shortcut shines for product development. That’s what it was built for. But there’s no rule that says marketing can’t use it too. If your startup needs marketing and product working in lockstep, keeping everyone in the same place makes launches smoother, handoffs faster, and visibility clearer.

That’s exactly how we run marketing at Shortcut. We use the same Stories, Epics, Roadmaps, and Docs as our product and engineering teammates, so when something ships, GTM is already in motion.

Here’s our playbook and a few practical takeaways you can copy for your own team.

1. Kick things off with a Story (and let Korey do the heavy lifting)

How do you turn a launch idea into actual work? Start with a Story. We use Korey, our AI Product Manager, to create the Story and break it into Sub-tasks. That gives us a ready-to-go GTM checklist instead of a blank page.

For a feature release, you might have Sub-tasks like:

• Update the Help article with new screenshots
• Draft and publish Release Notes
• Write the announcement blog post
• Create social copy and images
• Build an internal FAQ for sales and support

We assign each Sub-task to the right teammate, and suddenly everyone across marketing, design, engineering, and product can see what’s happening.

👉 Try this: Create a Story for your upcoming GTM initiatives and break them down into cross-functional Sub-tasks. Assign them directly so ownership is clear from the start.

2. Use Epics to organize big launches

Campaigns can get complicated quickly. An Epic is your container to keep all the related work in one spot.

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When we launched our new Stories page, we created an Epic called “New Stories Page GTM.” Inside it, we tracked Stories for things like:

• Announcement emails
• Updated visuals
• Marketing site updates
• Quotes and testimonials
• Social campaigns

Depending on your launch, you might also add a Sub-task for a Google Ad campaign or LinkedIn retargeting.

With everything in one Epic, it’s easy to see progress at a glance and spot blockers before they slow you down. For example, we couldn’t finish our social images until the updated design was ready— the Epic made that dependency obvious.

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👉 Try this: Create an Epic for every major launch or campaign. Link all related Stories so your team has one home base for the initiative.

3. Keep everyone aligned with the Roadmap

Nothing slows marketing down like constant “what’s the status?” pings. The Team Roadmap eliminates that by giving stakeholders a clear view of what’s in motion, what’s next, and how it’s going.

Here’s how we use it:

• Add Epics to the Team Roadmap and re-order them to show priority. Priority isn’t always chronological, sometimes it reflects ongoing effort toward a major launch.
• Add target dates so stakeholders know when campaigns or launches are expected.
• Update Epic health weekly to quickly capture status. For example, our August Product Update Email showed: “Draft completed this week and awaiting feedback, targeting week of 8/26 to send.”

With everything visible on the Roadmap, stakeholders stay informed without extra meetings or updates and the team can focus on the work instead of reporting on it.

👉 Try this: Export your Roadmap as a PNG every couple of weeks and drop it in Slack with a short note on focus areas. That way, everyone knows what’s coming up at a glance.

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4. Plan campaigns in Docs and connect them to the work

Every launch needs a source of truth. For us, that’s Docs, the place where we pull together everything from campaign messaging to emails, FAQs, and briefs.

We draft positioning, write copy, and outline GTM plans in Docs, then link them directly to the Stories they support. That way, execution is never separated from strategy.

When we launched the Shortcut Startup Program, our Doc included the positioning brief, email drafts, and social post ideas. Each of those was linked to Stories for landing page updates, campaign emails, and creative work. Anyone jumping into a task could instantly see the “why” and the “what” in one click.

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👉 Try this: When you create a Story for a campaign, pair it with a Doc for the brief or messaging, then link them so context and execution move together.

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5. Collaborate with design and product in context

Design, marketing, and product teams often overlap on the same launches, but when work lives across emails, Slack threads, and random docs, things get lost. Keeping requests and feedback in Shortcut makes collaboration faster and easier for everyone.

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Here’s how we handle it:

• Add Sub-tasks for design assets like blog illustrations, social graphics, or ad creative so they stay tied to the launch.
• Connect Slack so updates land in the channels where we’re already collaborating.
• Leave feedback in Story comments so context never drifts away from the work.

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When we tackled our marketing site re-design, it was a massive Epic with tons of moving parts for things like new layouts, fresh copy, updated visuals, you name it. Instead of scattering requests across Slack and docs, design Sub-tasks sat right next to Stories for content and campaign work. That way, design and marketing could work off the same plate, keep feedback in comments, and see progress without chasing it down. 

👉 Try this: When you create a Story for a launch, add Sub-tasks for design assets and drop feedback in comments so everything stays tied to the work.

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Why this works for startup marketing teams

Most marketing teams don’t run Iterations the way engineering does. By working in Shortcut, we stay in lockstep with the teams that do. That means:

• We always know what’s shipping and when
• Ownership across teams is clear
• We cut down on duplicate updates and status meetings
• Strategy, execution, and results live together in one tool

For a startup marketing team, that’s the difference between reacting and staying ahead. Shortcut keeps us moving with product so every launch feels like one team pulling in the same direction.

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Pro tips from our team

• Show off your Roadmap: Export it as a PNG and drop it in Slack. We post ours in #marketing so everyone knows what we’re focused on.
• Build Story Templates: Whether it’s a feature release, a customer story, or a blog post, templates make it faster to get moving.
• Use Objectives to connect the dots: Tie your work to company goals so everyone sees how campaigns ladder up to higher-level priorities.

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With Shortcut, marketing doesn’t sit on the sidelines. We plan, build, and ship right next to product, using the same Stories, Epics, Roadmaps, and Docs. 

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👉 Give your team one home for building and launching, get started with Shortcut today.