AMA: Twilio Senior Director, Product Marketing, Vanessa Thompson on Market Research

If you think about what goal you want to achieve, that will help you decide what documents to produce and own. A good goal at this stage is to be a strategic partner to your product team, and be part of the product strategy development. Based on this goal, you could produce a few things. One would be a TAM/SAM (the data). The other would be a document that unpacks details based on the TAM data. TAM - Getting your hands on real TAM data if your market is new or you are a small company with a tigh ...Read More

Competitive Battlecards are the best asset for sales but remember to KISS (keep it stupid simple). Sales are often pressed for time so how can you clearly pick apart your differentiators (vs the competitor), give the rep a compelling reason it matters, and even lay some trap setting questions. Depending on how competitive your market is, you may also want to add some more detailed resources: An objection handling doc. If you have a lot of new reps or a more junior team, you may consider writing ...Read More

The outcome you are targeting with your competitive research plays a role in the efficacy of your research method. So have the outcome in mind before you start, that way you will already be on the path to success! Competitive positioning - There are plenty of tools around like Klue, that scrape the web and sources data and information about your competitors. But you will need to add color and context based on your specific differentiation. You may also want to do some primary research on your co ...Read More

When looking to identify target verticals, I always prefer a data driven approach. I'd work up a detailed analysis exercise and build a vertical based TAM. I have a go-to bubble chart that I like to develop which is based on the growth rate of each (CAGR, y axis) vs the revenue opportunity (x axis). It gives you an easy visual that shows where the optimal use cases/verticals will be - up and to the right.  Here are some other questions you can ask to focus your efforts: Do we know how much reven ...Read More

Build a mutual goal and you will be on a great path to a collaborative partnership. The main difference between the two is that PMMs need to think about the broader market which includes the buyer or the person signing the check (to build a strategic GTM model) and the UX team needs to think about the user of the product and their experience (to build a great product). In smaller companies, that can be the same person, in larger enterprise companies, they are different. Typically, PMMs have a un ...Read More

Personas are the way you bring segmentation and targeting to life by understanding what ‘motivates’ the buyer. If you don't have a good sense of the motivators, needs, and wants of your buyer, then i’d make a bet that your marketing spend isn't optimized and your deal cycle times are longer than they should be. There is a meme going around on LinkedIn right now that compares the demographic information of Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne. They both fit the same demographic category, but they cou ...Read More

You may be looking at a broader trust issue and its likely that the research and the data you are bringing back is likely only a symptom of this. One of the key soft skills as a PMM is to influence without authority. So think about what motivates your product team, and use that to influence them and bring them along with your ideas/perspective. Before you work on your next research project, spend some time working with your product team or engineers and find out what their goals are and what is ...Read More

If your company uses a tool like Gong.io that is the most non-intrusive way to glean insights from sales conversations. It's a great tool that lets you search key topics in an easy way.  If Gong isn't an option to you, then work through your sales team. Be intentional about which customers you’d like to speak to and be clear about why you want to speak to them. Always get permission from your sellers to reach out to their customers. Depending on the stage of the deal cycle the sellers may or may ...Read More

Everyone in your business knows something about your market, and your customers. So its not only important to do the research but to make sure you share it with enough people in your business to validate that you dont have any blindspots or other elements that you’ve missed. You dont need to have all the answers yourself but your work does need to interpret what the research means, so even though there are unknowns, focus on being thorough around the ones your team/business has the most control ...Read More