AMA: Square Global Head of PMM and Content Marketing, TIDAL, Agustina Sacerdote on Market Research

1/ always start with what you have. This can include product usage data, user data, customer support calls, sales calls, etc. literally anyone that is customer-facing can provide something of value. 2/ i use research to really undestand that primary motivators and constraints for my audience. the feature or product should fit in that specific context --> your product should solve for the motivation + constraint. qualitative feedback is particularly helpful here.  Many people thinking about st ...Read More

To me, it's about creating a customer-centric culture, not just a "market research" culture. "Market research" is a bit of a stigmatized term - most of it is considered not valuable, not actionable, and an expensive "nice-to-have". I'd encourage you to re-orient around building a habit of listening and talking to customers - often. What I try to do, very tactically is:  1/ help make the case for "discovery" in roadmaps as an official line item. Make sure formal product development time accounts ...Read More

I don't actually use market research for that, is the short answer. If we believe that our solution is well suited for a particular vertical, we have the budget to invest in GTM to capture business in this vertical, and the vertical is fragmented / doesn't have a real clear winner, we will go for it.  Additionally, you should look at your own customer data and overlay it with your product. For example, if Square is has developed a number of features that are suited for Restaurants, we will prior ...Read More

This is a great question. A couple of tips -  The #1 way of making sure that personas will be adopted and used as a resource across functions is to make sure you're including variables that these particular functions care about. So Finance for example, will care about something like Average Revenue or Average Ticket Size. Brand will care about "Key attitudes and motivators". Customer Success will care about "How do they ask for help". Sales will care about "How do they make decisions". Align you ...Read More

The competitive set is defined by your audience, not you. And it changes all the time. At Square, we compete against anything that enables anyone to participate in our economy, not just other POS companies. The "Jobs to be Done" framework is helpful here - anything (tool, company, resource) that enables one of these critical jobs, or COULD, enable it in the future is a competitor. Make sure you look at your audience and what they are trying to achieve from different angles, not just from a "shar ...Read More

This is an awesome question!  I think PMM has a responsibility along several stages of market research development. At a high level, User Research experts know what methodology, stimuli and structure to use for reseach - aka, they should take over once the need for research has been established and agreed upon cross-functionally (PM, PMM, Design).  I expect PMMs on my team lead the following:  1/ Validate the need for research. Do we have this data elsewhere? Have we conducted an extensive audit ...Read More

I absolutely start with behavioral data first - assuming that by "behavioral" you mean product usage data, regardless of the question I am trying to answer. Behavioral data is unbiased (it is users in their "natural" environment with your product), and it is always much more valuable to observe behaviors vs. stated answers. You want market research to confirm or disprove a hypothesis, which you develop looking at the data you already have. After you understand usage patterns (ideally by your rel ...Read More

Most of the cost associated with research is actually the cost of accessing a sample, so if you can figure out that piece, you should be in a much better spot. A couple of ideas:  1/ Talk to your happiest, unhappiest customers, customers that churned, and "prospects", if possible. Use your budget for incentives. This sample will at least give you the "extremes" of attitudes.  2/ There are some helpful online tools that you can sign up for and "trial" them at no cost- Optimal Sort, UserTesting, S ...Read More

Involve these functions in the actual development and execution of the research. the worst you can do is give the impression that research is a "black box" out of which slides with percentages come out!  This means make them part of identifying the key questions, reviewing whatever instruments you are using (to a certain degree, make sure you're not violating any best practices in the spirit of inclusion) and get a sense BEFORE launching what success looks like for a particular research intiativ ...Read More

Frankly, #1 is cost. Industry reports tend to be expensive and often times too generic. I find that they're only worth it when there's a large organizational (wider than Marketing) need for basic industry or segment knowledge, like when the company as a whole is assessing new markets. Start with your research question - what exactly are you trying to answer? You'll realize that often times you can take that report cost and allocate it towards research that can answer your question much more dire ...Read More