AMA: Instacart Former Director, Retailer Product Marketing, Nikhil Balaraman on Analyst Relationships

I think the mistake here is making it too long. I’d suggest an inverse triangle approach, and keep it short depending on the length and purpose of your briefing, probably no more than 5-10 slides. My typical lay out is: Company slide (founded in, team, key logos, etc) Market context (TAM/SAM/SOM as needed) Problem statement: Key persona & pain points Unique perspective: What’s your thesis/why you Product overview: Perhaps a traditional marchitecture slide to start and then some screenshots o ...Read More

It is important for all functions across the company to build empathy for users. Regardless of your segment, small advisory boards are helpful for this, and can be set up to feature 10-20 key customers who meet quarterly (or more or less often) to review roadmaps and provide feedback on either new initiatives or existing products. The key here is getting leadership buy-in across the exec team, as they will likely be the main headlines to actually get key customers to attend these sessions. Depen ...Read More

I think the mistake here is making it too long. I’d suggest an inverse triangle approach, and keep it short depending on the length and purpose of your briefing, probably no more than 5-10 slides. My typical lay out is: Company slide (founded in, team, key logos, etc) Market context (TAM/SAM/SOM as needed) Problem statement: Key persona & pain points Unique perspective: What’s your thesis/why you Product overview: Perhaps a traditional marchitecture slide to start and then some screenshots o ...Read More

Starting with the customer insight is always the #1 job of a product marketer. Ideal customer profile, target verticals, buyer personas, etc these are things that aren’t going to change on a weekly or monthly basis. However, as part of routine planning cycles – perhaps every 3, 6 or 12 months depending on your market or industry, it’s always good to re-evaluate with sales and CS leadership and understand if we’ve been seeing any shifts in user base or even with the demand gen team to understand ...Read More

Analyst relations programs are best run as a partnership between PR/Comms teams and PMM. The PR and Comms teams will be helpful in driving longer term thinking and time horizons. How do we start to influence the narrative in the market today for the future, how do we position the company today for where we want to be in 3-5 years, those type of questions. For PMM, the value is in getting feedback on how you’re positioning products for buyers today, and driving awareness especially for enterprise ...Read More

Honestly, this is a GREAT problem to have. If there’s no Wave or MQ for your category, then all the more reason for you to be in the top right quadrant once one comes out :) The first thing I would recommend is identifying which analysts are covering your space generally. Whether or not it’s specific to your category matters less, but having a mapping of who the 2-5 analysts are who might care about your space, and ultimately who might be the ones to create a Wave or MQ is what matters. Next, un ...Read More

I think the easiest thing to miss when setting up Voice of Customer programs is alignment cross-functionally on the purpose of these programs. As product marketers, it’s easy to drive towards your goal of turning your customers into heroes and heroines via case studies and testimonials for your site. However, a strong VoC program needs to do more than just build a pipeline of case studies. You need to be able to infuse the customer voice back through all facets of the organization. So I think th ...Read More

Well first of all, it’s always tough to be a team of one. You are definitely going to have to ruthlessly prioritize and as a team of one, it can be easy to get stuck as the sales content/collateral & product launch factory. So with the spare time that you have, I think a few things that can help you understand the customer a bit better perhaps in order of ease: Sign up for daily newsletters from the industry trades that you’d want to cover your launches In those newsletters sign up for the w ...Read More

Customer advisory boards are great ways to bring product, leadership, and your customers face-to-face to really help everyone understand if what is being built will really solve customer needs. Along the entire product development journey, there are ways to involve customers that aren’t just focused on getting people to use a beta version of a product. I have found that customer advisory programs that meet semi-regularly and ideally at least once a year in person are helpful in building rapport ...Read More

Depending on your target marketing and how active they are on these type of review sites, you may end up finding that G2 and TrustRadius are actually more effective than analysts. This is more likely to be the case if your economic buyer and your user personas line up more often than not, as it is not uncommon for buyers, especially of single seat tools or point solutions, to buy that software similar to how one might choose a restaurant for dinner in a city they’re visiting. As you start to mov ...Read More

These things are bound to happen, but the good news in today’s world is that customers are likely getting their information from multiple sources. If I were in rapid response mode, I’d probably start by lining up some blog posts and customer testimonials that address the perceived weakness. Perhaps even hosting a webinar and running a counter narrative that goes directly in the face of the report…something like “Analyst X says we’re terrible at this…attend this webinar to find out why they’re wr ...Read More

At a B2B company PMM and Product cannot function without each other. There’s simply not enough time in the day for either team to do the other team’s job. I think the best way for PMMs to stay connect as a valuable partner to product is to help Product with understanding the market context and customer needs in a way that goes beyond just the job to be done or the pixels on the screen. A great product marketer will help set a vision and narrative for everyone – sales, product, engineering, the w ...Read More