AMA: Tremendous Head of Product and Corporate Marketing, Ambika Aggarwal on Market Research

There are multiple parts to this question so I'll try to address this in 3 parts. For collecting customer feedback I like to break it into two approaches, one is "always on customer listening" and the other is "project or program related research." 1. Always-on is something PMMs should be doing constantly by talking to sales and CS, listening to Gong calls, attending conferences, running customer surveys etc. 2. Project or program related is when you have a specific goal in mind. It could be dev ...Read More

Market sizing, competitive & ICP - What does the market look like? Who are the competitors and who is your core ICP you want to go after? This includes verticals and firmographics. Personas - Who are the personas you want to target within the new market? Are these existing personas or net new personas you need to craft? Market trends - What's going on in your new market that you need to be aware of? Are there specific regulations or industry specific knowledge you need to have? Using the res ...Read More

In terms of creating personas, I would start by defining and aligning on the persona template framework first, and then doing your research and synthesizing accordingly. There are a number of persona frameworks you can use, some of the ones I'd recommend trying: Hubspot (make my persona) tool can help you build a persona template Miro has a persona mapping template as well Canva also has some nice templates. All these templates will have a few things in common Role in the buying committee Demogr ...Read More

In my experience it makes sense to reevaluate your customer segmentation in conjunction with your annual or half year planning in the context of your broader business goals (i.e is your business trying to move upmarket? downmarket? are there new personas or industries you're trying to target) There can also be major company milestones like new product launches or M&A that warrant you to evaluate your customer segmentation. Additionally, if you're looking at segments for your campaigns and pi ...Read More

Market & customer research are critical to Product Marketing's ability to influence product strategy and build effective GTM. I'd say the following types of research are most important. Market & Competitive - This means going deep and understanding the TAM, key competitors, points of differentiation and positioning, and where you stand relative to the competition. This type of research can heavily inform your positioning, messaging, product and pricing decisions. ICP research and definit ...Read More

I love this question because it's SO important to get early signals and validation that your messaging is headed in the right direction. Here are a few things I like to do: Once you have landed on a few value props and benefits you want to test out, run it by the person in your organization who represents the key buyer you're trying to go after (i.e if you sell to HR, run it by your Chief People officer) Test your messaging through focus groups made up of prospects and customers Test your messag ...Read More