AMA: Matterport Vice President Marketing, Ali (Wiezbowski) Jayson on Market Research

Nothing beats sitting with a customer and actually listening to them. I can't reinforce enough the importance of this. As companies grow, its easy to lean on reports / reporting to tell you "what the customer thinks & feels". But there is so much nuance in how people communicate -- and as humans, we're all naturally atuned to these signals. So as a baseline, I encourage all my teams to participate in live listening sessions, focus groups, sales pitches, etc at least 1x every quarter to keep ...Read More

Absolutely! There is a ton of incredibly important data & insights in what you're probably already doing related to your product:  Web - Look where people are spending their time, dropping off, what is getting the most clicks Ads - Same as above. Target multiple groups with multiple creative, and see what drives the most engagement.  Customer Support - Your users are telling you what they need help with.  Product Analytics -- Retention & Happy Customers - Identify your most engaged, and ...Read More

It always starts with the business objective, and then moves into user needs. What I find is that happy, satisfied customers most often move the business forward. So, I like to start with a long-arch view of what we are trying to achieve, quickly followed by what we hope our users will say / feel when using our product. If we can align on those two objectives and the time horizon, then market research is usually a great tool to help us work backward and figure out what steps it will take for us ...Read More

Absolutely worth the effort! A great example of where extensive qual and focus group research really was worth it was when we launched Uber Pro. In initial product strategy discussions, the internal team was exclusively looking at financial upside or discounts as rewards. But what we learned through qualitative research was (a) that they really wanted to feel appreciated for all their hard work and (b) their primary motivation for the hard work was providing for their families.  After unlocking ...Read More

I absolutely love working with UXR teams. And I completely understand the reason for the question. The truth is, yes it can be confusing. Fundamentally, I do think they share a macro goal -- which is to understand humans, their motivations, etc. But the ways in which we evaluate these can be slightly different.  The best UXR teams I've worked with can also present different UI/UX/Product Design experiences and gauge a customers response to that design. In my experience, thats an incredibly valua ...Read More

In my view, the goal is to  help define the objectives of the research based on business & user needs  support research as they execute the research plan to ensure the research methodology & questions deliver on the objectives  Once research is complete, help narrow and refine how to apply the findings. I can't emphasize this one enough. We live in a world where data is everywhere. Most reports I see come back with 20+ pages of insights, and as a PMM, you're looking at results from multi ...Read More