AMA: SignEasy Former Head Of Product Marketing, Daniel Palay on Market Research

In the "real world" this is a function of whose responsibility sales collateral is. If it's product marketing, the answer is simple: Supply new collateral when it's time for an update. However, if product marketing is responsible for informing, and letting sales create its own materials, then it becomes more complicated. For me, it all starts with the buyer personas (or, as I like to refer to them, stakeholder profiles). I have a particular way of approaching these, leveraging psychographic, rat ...Read More

Interesting question about how I define "compeititor" in and of itself. I tend to look at competitors as barriers that keep people from buying the product I'm selling. Sometimes its a comparable product, sometimes it's an alternate type of solution and sometimes it's nothing at all. The question driving competitor analysis is always: Why? Why is it that customers are gravitating towards buying/staying with an alternative (including doing nothing new/different)?  I hate feature-for-feature compar ...Read More

That all depends on the type of research, its purpose and the impact you hope it will have. The most impactful research, for me, has always been primary market research in the form of interviews with a population representative of the intended audience. All that costs is my time ("opportunity cost" is a discussion for another day).  On the other hand, sometimes the impact comes from the existence of the research in and of itself. For example, a report commissioned from a big-name research firm m ...Read More

First things first, I believe that a representative sampling of non-customers can actually be a better source of information than current customers, so you're in a good position there. However, I wouldn't start with a survey. I would instead start internally (product and sales) to understand who this was built for, what it can do for them, why they should care and how they react when presented with it.  Quality interviews with product and sales should help you figure out your "who" for profiling ...Read More

I love this question, partly because it allows me to address what I consider to be one of the great misconceptions of product marketing-related research. In my opinion, and experience, your engagements need not be with existing customers and, in fact, sometimes it's better if they're not. When I was consulting, rarely would I talk to my clients' actual customers when helping them build personas. Why? Two reasons: 1. The questions I had applied equally to customers/non-customers. 2. No existing b ...Read More

The part I am most experienced with is the business case justification. Indeed, I tend to build business case justifications and personas into a single narrative in order to make my story lines speak to the issues most important to each stakeholder. Primary market research (1:1 interviews) is the best way to build personas (that inform what stakeholders think about most/most often, and the incentives they're responding to). The resulting personas/profiles are by far the greatest driver of the ul ...Read More

There are two parts to this: That research which I actually conduct, and that which I lean on from elsewhere. Typically, the only research I ever conduct myself are 1:1 interviews with either customers or other relevant stakeholders. This is what I use to build my stakeholder profiles (buyer personas) and is meant to inform what's most often/intensely on these stakeholders' minds and what incentives they are responding to. Other forms of market research I leverage include professional analysts, ...Read More

The problem is that there still aren't too many good entry-level PMM roles out there (assuming you're talking about coming out of undergrad). My best advice (as someone who didn't come to PMM until they were in their mid-30s) would be: Find a role that allows you to develop the skills PMMs ultimately need to bring. Don't worry too much about industry, just make sure it's one where you're curious enough about the products, customers and problems to keep you intellectually motivated. That will ser ...Read More

Great question, and I love discussing topics like "unknown unknowns." My primary advice would be: Don't mistake "thorough enough" for "specific enough" when it comes to market research. The most thorough research in the world can still have significant blindspots if it's not specific enough. In other words, it all comes down to the questions used to preface your research. If they're overly broad and vague, the best research in the world won't capture the relevant data.  Begin any research initia ...Read More

Unfortunately, I'm probably not the best one to query about various tools for this - I'm the guy who still takes all his notes with a pen, has a total of four apps downloaded to his phone and refuses to own a watch with a battery, let alone a touch screen. My market research is similarly very old-school and my interviews are recorded in notebooks and analyzed by laying notes out on my desk...  I'll admit, for someone whose job it is to market SaaS, I'm a little like the tailor whose pants never ...Read More