AMA: Payrix VP of Product Marketing, Charlene Wang on Competitive Market Research

Across multiple product marketing organizations, I’ve used a combination of competitive intelligence tools, win/loss interview and analysis tools, tools to collect expert interviews, industry analysts, and industry news sources. To me, these are the key tools for market research for Product Marketers: * Competitive intelligence tools help automate data collection and analysis of public information on your competitors. These can help automate competitor battlecard collection and enable your team to capture more real-time insights. Popular tools in this category include Klue, Crayon, or Kompyte. I’ve personally used Klue in the past and am in the process of evaluating it for my current organization. * Win/loss analysis vendors help conduct exit interviews with your prospects when they close. They make it easier for companies to get objective feedback from both closed won and closed lost deals, while also providing deeper insights into trends and patterns that are happening across deals. Popular tools that I’m aware of include DoubleCheck (now part of Klue) and Clozd. We are currently evaluating DoubleCheck since it is part of Klue, which help us to reduce the number of vendors to bring onboard for competitive intelligence and win/loss analysis. * Expert interview solutions help you connect with current and former employees of target customers and/or competitors to gain deeper insight into information that may be difficult to find online. Popular solutions include GLG, which helps find and compensate experts to share insights, and more recently, Tegus, which does what GLG does but further aggregates and catalogs insights across every previous expert interview that was conducted. I personally really like the extensive catalog of existing knowledge that you can get out of Tegus without having to set up individual interviews with each expert. Tegus also gives you the option to interview new experts if the insights that you’re looking for aren’t in their existing database. * Industry analysts are also important bucket for market research. These are experts on different market categories and the vendors in each space. They are also an important target audience for Product Marketers, since they evaluate vendors on capabilities and produce reports that are read by your customers. The leading industry analysts are Gartner (the leader in this space), Forrester, and IDC. While traditional industry analysts are popular with buying teams at larger, enterprise-scale companies, SMB companies often turn to review sites such as G2, Capterra (part of Gartner), and TrustRadius instead. For smaller companies, these review sites often serve the role of the industry analyst in providing insights into which vendors are in each category and who’s the leader in those categories. * Industry news sources also help me stay informed on what’s happening in technology and other relevant spaces for my specific company. Sources that I find particularly helpful are CB Insights and TechCrunch for technology news, a variety of topic-specific newsletters, and the blog posts of leading consultancies and vendors in categories that I care about.

There are a few good ways to get relatively unbiased feedback from new customers. The first is to pull a list of recently onboarded customers – these are customers who are newer to your platform and won’t already be intimately familiar with your platform or solution. I’d attempt to reach out to these people first to get their fresh eyes on the feature that you’re launching. If you’re looking for even more unbiased feedback from customers who haven’t gone through your sales cycle yet, then you can leverage an expert network like GLG or Tegus to help you set up compensated interviews with people in your target audience. These expert networks will often already have a roster of people in different levels at different companies who are willing to provide their input for a price. These companies also have staff dedicated to reaching out and engaging additional experts if you can’t find the right people in their existing databases. Another way to get these interviews is to conduct cold outreach to net new prospects. I’ve found that interviews with new prospects that I’ve gotten through cold outreach are some of the valuable sources of feedback (they also sometimes result in a sales down the line). Getting a response from cold outreach can be difficult, so I’d recommend reaching out to many people and expecting most of them not to respond. I find that adding LinkedIn connections and sending a note explaining why you’re connecting is a good way to reach people who aren’t in your existing network. When making the ask, explain that you’re conducting research and that the result could be a new product or feature that they’ll potentially find useful. I’ve also found that having interns or people with senior titles in your organization make the connection request works well for different reasons. Some people love to help others who are early in their career, while others are flattered by outreach from someone with a more senior title. Some companies choose to offer compensation for the interview, though I find that this doesn’t work well for more senior-level titles and can result in more transactional conversations. Finally, when asking clients for feedback on new features, make sure to start with open-ended questions and show genuine curiosity towards the customer’s situation and pain points. Starting with open-ended inquiry allows you to uncover information that might not otherwise surface if you start with pointed questions too early in the interview. Good luck with this!

Effectively communicating market research findings across the organization is critical to the success of any Product Marketing team. Here are some tips to do this well: * Understand the needs of your audience: Begin by understanding which insights are vital to each team or individual and why. For instance, in some cases the product team may be interested in whether a new set of features is differentiated in the market, while the sales team may be more invested in knowing how to speak to the value of these new features to close the deal. Recognizing the nuances of what you need to share for each audience ensures that the insights are relevant and impactful. * Synthesize and tailor information based on the audience: Once you know exactly what each audience needs, now you can distill the research data into digestible chunks that are tailored for that audience. Clearly highlight and present information that aligns with the interests and concerns of that individual and function. Instead of bombarding everyone with all findings, highlight what’s directly relevant to them and only proactively share content that the audience will care about. This makes your insights actionable and avoids information overload (and being subsequently tuned out). * Make it easy to find the latest insights by leveraging data repositories: With so many insights from market research collected on an ongoing basis, it's helpful to have an organized system where this data can be stored, accessed, and referred to with ease. Use shared drives, wikis, or other data management tools to create a comprehensive repository that can be easily searched and accessed by different teams. This not only ensures that your stakeholders have round-the-clock access to the latest insights but also encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing. Moreover, having a single source of truth helps prevent misalignment due to information asymmetry across individuals and functions. * Iterate based on feedback: Communication is a two-way street. After sharing your findings, proactively collect feedback from key stakeholders. Understand which insights proved valuable, what presentation formats were most engaging, and where there were gaps or ambiguities. This feedback helps you to adjust your market research methodologies, focus areas, and how the information is presented to better enable everyone to succeed. By following these steps, Product Marketers can ensure that their market research truly drives informed decision-making to improve outcomes across the organization.

To gain buy-in for a Voice of the Customer (VOC) program, you need to first convince stakeholders of the value of the program. I like to start with a simple proof of concept, which could be as straightforward as conducting a handful of customer interviews to get feedback on areas like NPS or product capabilities. The insights from these interviews can serve as a tangible example to demonstrate the types of insights that can be gleaned from a broader VOC program. Once the organization recognizes the benefits of these customer insights, you can begin to expand the scope of your program as different teams ask for additional insights. Over time, you can start allocating resources to providing more extensive VOC. The evolution of the program could look like this: 1. Start by tapping into the reservoir of existing customer data that's already available in your CRM or other databases. With relatively lower investment in the program initially, this ensures that you're not starting from scratch and are leveraging assets you already possess. 2. From there, transition into setting up additional customer interviews. These will provide more granular, personal insights, deepening your understanding of the customer experience, specific customer pain points, or other areas that you’d like to understand. 3. As momentum builds, you can invest in more extensive customer data collection methods and tools for more comprehensive and continuous feedback. One area that has emerged in the last couple of years is tools that help to gather customer feedback directly in the product. 4. From there, you can implement more systematic ways to conduct customer surveys. This allows you to gather consistent data from a broader customer base on an ongoing basis. 5. Over time, this can be further expanded to include programming, such as user groups that can bring customers onsite or to virtual events to drive further engagement. 6. Finally, to ensure a comprehensive and unbiased perspective, consider engaging in third-party external research. This can fill any gaps in your internal understanding of the customer and provide further validation to your findings. An MVP of a VOC program should be simple to start with and quickly deliver valuable insights. I would start by selecting a few representative customers to conduct open-ended interviews with and sharing the findings from these interviews. Many people are surprised by the level of novel insights that can come from just a number of interviews that are conducted well. In parallel, I would also dive into readily available customer data from your CRM to see if you can synthesize the information in new and insightful ways. Many companies document information on the customer experience and customer feedback in their CRM, but never take the time to parse through this information and share insights across the organization. You’d be surprised by how much this off-the-shelf information can help with identifying patterns, trends, and areas of interest or concern across your customer base. Once you've gathered these insights, share your findings across the organization in a way that really highlights what customers truly think and need. Encourage feedback on these insights from various teams, which not only validates your findings but also helps to refine your VOC process based on what was helpful or not. This will create more interest into what other findings a more extensive VOC program could bring and help set the foundation for a broader VOC program.

Product Marketing plays a pivotal role in market research, bridging the gap between product development and the market's needs and desires. The specific role that PMM plays in market research will vary based on your organization and the different teams that are already in place. In general, here’s a breakdown of Product Marketing’s role in market research: * Defining research objectives: Product Marketing generally leads the work with cross functional teams, especially Product Management and Sales, to define what each team hopes to achieve from market research, whether it's understanding a target audience, understanding competitor trends, assessing market demand for a new feature, etc. This helps target the research methodology and information gathered. In some cases, if another team is leading market research, Product Marketing would then be a strong contributor in defining research objectives. * Targeting the right audience and segments: Product marketers have a keen understanding of the product’s target audience. This knowledge is vital in ensuring that the research reaches the right demographic and that the insights are relevant to the market that the product intends to serve. * Designing research methodology and questionnaires: Product Marketers are often intimately involved in the design of the market research methodology and questionnaires. Their deep understanding of the product and its positioning allows them to craft or guide the crafting of insightful questions. In some cases, Product Marketers will conduct the research and write questionnaires themselves, and in others, this may be done in close partnership with a strategy or market intelligence team. * Interpreting results: Once research is conducted, product marketers play a crucial role in interpreting the results. Their understanding of both the product and the market allows them to glean actionable GTM and product insights from the data, which might be overlooked by someone less familiar with the product or its positioning. * Informing product development: The insights gathered from research often serve as feedback for product development. Product marketers translate these insights into actionable recommendations, ensuring that the product evolves in a direction aligned with the needs of target buyers, the buying process, and the broader market. * Adjusting positioning and packaging: Research results can influence various marketing decisions, from positioning, pricing & packaging, promotional strategy, and beyond. Product marketers use these insights to inform decisions that enhance the product's market fit and GTM effectiveness. Ultimately, whether they're writing questionnaires, setting research objectives, or collaborating on defining a market research program, Product Marketers play a critical role in ensuring that research efforts align with product and GTM objectives and that insights are actionable and relevant.Top of Form