AMA: Google Product Marketing Lead, Vishal Naik on Market Research
November 14 @ 9:00AM PST
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Google Product Marketing Lead, Vishal Naik on Market Research
Top Questions
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
My personal view on this is that your personas are effective if youre influencing the conversation around who should be using/buying your product. Some questions you could ask yourself about your personas, based on the teams you may work with: * Marketing: is the way the product is highlighted/......Read More
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How and where do you store your buyer personas, messaging and positioning?
What is the format that you use?
I've recently joined a new company and I'm struggling to find out the best way to share new assets with our teams. I was thinking about putting this into some kind of e-book that would become some kind of "bible" about our products (we have 3). Do you have any other ideas?
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
A product source or truth deck that points to your personas, messaging and positioning is a sound format for this. We use this as a model for hero products. Another approach that we're using for a new product that hasn't yet launched but we have user research, personas, and positioning around is......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
Whether to do user research in-house or hire a vendor is a decision that depends on three key factors: budget, time, and quality. Engaging a research vendor is the more expensive option. It's kind of a you get what you pay for scenario. If you engage a vendor and brief them well, you'll probabl......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
I think the minimum viable approach to MVP feedback would Beta programs or limited release priority user programs where the user is under NDA and can provide product feedback that you can iterate off of. I tend to like to do some research in advance to find target use cases and areas that users ......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
Honestly I don't. I tend to view frameworks as templates to help guide a business plan. In my experience, no two business questions have been met by the same research plan. If you had a recurring business problem around each product launch, then you might want to seek specific frameworks for the ......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
I see generative AI helping marketers understand what options they have for research so that they can ask agencies better questions around what methodologies to use. Generative AI can also help you with desk research as it can point you in the direction of the studies and analyst reports that cat......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
I'll break this up into two parts: Industry trends: I tend to look to public information here. Press pickup, analyst reports, what's going viral online (for a consumer product). If I were to turn to research for this, I'd suggest a qualitative study where I wrap this into a line of questions a......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
I'd start with my preferred search engine and read up on anything i can find, and look for industry reports or stats that paint my product in the right light. As for competitive intelligence, I'd also start with a Google search, but also look for review forums (think like a G2 type site) and l......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
The right agency. Yes it costs money so that does limit whether or not you can leverage an agency, but an agency can be leveraged like an outside consultant giving you the insights you need based on your business strategy. At my last role, regardless of the business challenge that faced us, the f......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
In my opinion, its a valuable proxy for interest and demand. I've seen, and used, Google Trends data to measure interest. But would note that its probably best to use search volume to compare interest and demand. For example compare vs another point in time or compare vs competition.
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How can a marketing leader at an early-stage startup effectively gather insights from new market segments when the company has limited resources and no existing relationships with potential customers in those segments?
Company has 100 clients in same segment but wants to venture out into others. So I can interview current clients but I am more interested in how to get info from new segments you don’t have access to (and don’t have a budget to hire an agency / research team).
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
Based on your budget, ranging from zero to small, I'd consider the following options: Zero Budget: I'd do a combination of desk research on the industry and listening in on prospecting calls from SDRs and seeing how those prospects in different industries resonate with your messaging/describe th......Read More
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How do you manage market research efforts? For example, for a GTM, do you do market research in-house or with an agency?
How do PMMs work with MKT researchers or data scientists if it's in-house? Can you briefly describe the process from briefing to interpreting research work if it's external?
Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
At my current company, we have three main ways to conduct product research: in-house with our UXR team, with an agency synthesized by our Insights team, or with an agency fully managed by PMM. We choose the right path based on resources, budget, and research goals. Here are a few tips for conduc......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
There are specific roles that are research based, but usually tangential to PMM (aka might sit in the PMM team, might sit elsewhere)--such as competitive intel or research and insights. But speaking frankly, the volume of PMM roles that focus on GTM likely outweigh--by some order of magnitude-......Read More
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Vishal Naik
Google Product Marketing Lead • November 14
The challenge if your company doesnt always do market research is that you have to prove that there is a gap in your foundational knowledge. Which is always tricky because you're effectively saying that the company has been doing something inefficiently (and potentially "wrong") in the past. A w......Read More
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