AMA: Google Product Marketing Lead, Vishal Naik on Market Research

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 a product onboarding deck. Same concept as the source of truth or "bible", but being used as the intro deliverable for all of those joining the project as the first touchpoint they should read. An outlin ...Read More

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 conducting product research: Start by defining your research goals. What question are you trying to answer? What will you do with the information? Sync with your team to see who has the resources and bandwidth ...Read More

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 their problems. Limited Budget: I'd try something scrappy like building landing pages on my site and then creating highly targeted SEM campaigns with a fixed budget so that I could see what segments converte ...Read More

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 way to get around this (which admittedly has its own hurdles) is to pilot a research program from your own cost center and then prove the value of it to XFN stakeholders (and once youve got it budgeted, ge ...Read More

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 cater to your nuanced needs. I personally wouldn't use generative AI to replace research agencies because the chance of a hallucination isn't worth it to me when my goal out of research is to remove potenti ...Read More

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 look for how customers are talking about a product. If my company has any clients who have switched from a competitor, then those are great customers to target to learn from. It's probably also beneficial to ...Read More

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 first call I made was to my preferred research agency. In the companies where I've worked where that budget ask would have not been approved, I've had some good experience with Survey Monkey. While it sti ...Read More

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 around another topic. As in, it's probably not meaty enough to do a study just to understand industry trends, but if you're covering another topic you could wrap this in. Customer Behavior: I worked with a r ...Read More

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/showcased in various marketing channels geared at the right audience? Product: are the features being created/put into roadmap enabling the right type of usage? Sales: is your win rate improving because you' ...Read More

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 probably get better results simply because its the research vendors field of expertise. If you have a limited budget or need results immediately, then doing the research yourself may be the best option. However, ...Read More