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Market Research
Market Research
11 answers
Global Head of PMM and Content Marketing, TIDAL, Square • March 24
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 "share of wallet" or "share of mind" standpoint. In my
experiences, these blindspots are big opportuni...
Vice President Product Marketing, Amplitude • February 4
Here is the competitive intelligence mission statement I've used for several
years (repeat from previous post but will add more detail).
“Define ourselves based on problems we solve and value we provide, not your
competition. But also equip ourselves to stand out from competition and win
against them.”
Sales: Equip teams with knowledge and tools to win against the competition.
Product: Equip teams insight into competitive product sets so we can build
better, differentiated product.
Marketing: Deep knowledge of competitive brand, message, and product so we can
raise above with best in c...
Global Head of Product Marketing, Eventbrite | Formerly Amazon, Ex-Amex • March 9
Thanks for asking this question. The exercise of defining your competitive set
is a critical, but at times under-emphasized aspect of conducting research.
There are three primary modes for competitive research: 1) optimization, 2)
growth and 3) exploration.
1) Optimization is the most narrow mode. This is meant to identify how you are
positioned relative to direct competitors, who are in the same industry and
product family as your company. This is where your win/loss interviews become
important.
2) Growth mode is where you would look at direct and indirect competitors, who
may share an in...
Head Of Product Marketing, 3Gtms • March 30
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 comparisons when it comes to competitive analysis and
do whatever I can to avoid them. The exception...
Head of Product Marketing, Ramp • June 23
This one is tricky because I think there's a tendency to want to boil the ocean
and do everything for every competitor. Some combination of market research and
competitive win/loss analysis should help you create a few different tiers of
competitors. My rule of thumb is no more than 3 competitors should be in your
first tier and this is where you should really focus your efforts and train
sales.
Everyone else can fit into a category of competition, and if your core
brand/product positioning is differentiated enough, you can position against
them more generically. Super important to be o...
Head of Product Marketing, Retool • June 24
I think competitors are important, but developing your own unique perspective of
who you are, what makes you different, and who you serve is 10-100x more
important.
A short-ish anecdote: I used to work at AdRoll, which helps small businesses
advertise on Google, Facebook, and everywhere else (e.g. Bing, Forbes, etc).
Advertising is one of the most competitive markets ever, with Google and
Facebook on an endless conquest for power.
And yet, AdRoll was able to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
How? They had a unique perspective: some small businesses don’t care where the...
Director, Head of Product Marketing, Webflow • July 11
"Competitor aware, customer obsessed" is something that I've internalized when
thinking about competitors. Competitors are a good thing - it validates your
space, your product-market fit and the market opportunity. The key is balancing
the focus on competitors and the focus on customers. It can be really easy to go
down competitive rabbit holes and chase every organization in your space but the
best way to prioritize top competitors Is by looking at the impact they are
having on your organization's growth (I.e. sales growth, win/loss rates, etc.).
I've found attributing dollar amounts of co...
VP of Marketing, Builder.io • August 12
Depends on how competitive your market is. You can create a list of competitors
and create segments based on different variables that are important for your
product or business. For instance direct competitors vs indirect competitors, Or
competitors by vertical, or competitors by use case, etc.
Secondly, If you have a LOT of competitors, I would do a prioritization exercise
to identify the top 3-5 that you track more regularly vs others that you
passively track, as needed. For instance, prioritize the ones that come up
during sales deals most often! Or if this competitive intel is to drive...
Director of Product Marketing, Culture Amp • September 22
For smaller teams that may not have a built out CI team or CI PMM it can get
tough to manage competitive research, positioning, creation enablement and
dissemination of assets on top of everything else that you're doing as a PMM.
This is why my philisophy is to really prioritize your top tier competitors and
maybe even limiting it to the top 2 or 3 max. That doesn't mean you shouldn't
stay on top of your industry and trends and what other players are doing, but
that does mean that you aren't going to dive as deep or create as many assets
for the majority of competitors in your space. Some t...
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki, Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few. • April 12
My primary philosophy around competitors is a little different than most: focus
80% of your energy on what makes you great as a product or service, and the rest
on what anyone else is doing.
I've worked in duopoly markets (speech IVR in the contact center), highly
fragmented markets (enterprise content and collaboration), and mature markets
(enterprise networking). This approach works in all of them, because no matter
how many competitors you have, you'll never have enough resources to properly
track every move your competition is making. And that's a good thing, because if
you spend al...
Vice President, Product Marketing, AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • July 7
There are a few types of competitors to think about:
Tier 1: Prime Competition - Those who compete for the same dollars for a very
similar product. You often end up in feature battles with them and eat each
other’s lunch. They look very similar to your offering in the eyes of prospects.
They end up copying your features or vice versa.
Tier 2: Patrial overlap - They have one or more similar products, common
verticals, or solve the same problem in different ways. They are sometimes point
solutions if you have a more comprehensive offering, or maybe your product is
the point solution - w...
2 answers
Group Product Marketing Manager, Amplitude • March 2
Yes!! Product Marketing isn't doing it's job properly without it. Also, it's a
lot of effort, but doesn't always have to be a lot of money. It doesn't cost
anything but time to get on the phone with customers, or listen in on sales
pitches (these are some of the places you can get the most early stage
information from).
One of my best outcomes of really digging into customer issues, was when I was
working on a product that had something really weird going on in the customer
base. Half of the customers loved and embraced the product, and half of the
customers hated it. Also when I looke...
VP Marketing, Matterport | Formerly Peloton, Uber, Microsoft, Entrepreneur • June 23
Absolutely worth the effort! A great example of where extensive qual and focus
group research really was worth it was when we launched Uber Pro. In initial
product strategy discussions, the internal team was exclusively looking at
financial upside or discounts as rewards. But what we learned through
qualitative research was (a) that they really wanted to feel appreciated for all
their hard work and (b) their primary motivation for the hard work was providing
for their families.
After unlocking both insights, those two became critical to the product,
program, and marketing design behind ...
1 answer
VP Marketing, Matterport | Formerly Peloton, Uber, Microsoft, Entrepreneur • June 23
It's a healthy balance of both. We do smaller, qualitative user feedback
sessions mostly internally -- especially with customers who are in beta programs
for our new features.
But broader market research initiatives that require greater scale, we often
bring on great partners like Forrester, YouGov, Suzy, and other survey/analytics
tools to get us the level of responses we need.
2 answers
Product Marketing, Intercom | Formerly Glassdoor, Prophet, Kraft • May 3
It depends on the company and if you have a formal research function or not!
I've done everything from recruit participants, write discussion guides, field
surveys, moderate research, synthesize insights. Or, I've given a researcher
objectives and key questions and then sat in on a few interviews here and there.
I think every PMM should have the experience of running their own research at
some point - it keeps you close to the customer, helps you empathize with them
and develop relationships with strategic customers (like if you run a CAB).
But, as an org grows, you won't always have th...
VP Marketing, Matterport | Formerly Peloton, Uber, Microsoft, Entrepreneur • June 18
In my view, the goal is to
1. help define the objectives of the research based on business & user needs
2. support research as they execute the research plan to ensure the research
methodology & questions deliver on the objectives
3. Once research is complete, help narrow and refine how to apply the findings.
I can't emphasize this one enough. We live in a world where data is
everywhere. Most reports I see come back with 20+ pages of insights, and as
a PMM, you're looking at results from multiple different sources. One of the
most important things a PMM can do is ...
3 answers
Sr. Director, Product Marketing, hims & hers | Formerly Lyft, American Express • August 18
Starting a new project can certainly feel daunting, especially when you don't
feel you have the right tools or budget. But there's good news: When you have to
be scrappy, there's data all around you.
Step 1: Wrap your head around the problem as best as you can
Whether it's bringing a new product or feature to market or developing a new
marketing campaign, I like to start with an unbiased hunt for existing
information because it may trigger ideas you wouldn't have if you defined scope
too early.
To best wrap your head around a market, audience, or category, start with
desktop resear...
Director of Product Marketing, Momentive | Formerly SurveyMonkey, Nielsen • March 21
When you have no budget:
If you already have a survey platform in place, conducting interviews and
surveys of your own lists (customer & prospect databases) is free! You just need
a way to recruit them. For interviews or smaller sample sizes, you may want to
go directly through your customer success team who has relationships with your
customers. For larger sample sizes, you may want to send a few emails to invite
people to take your survey.
When you have a small budget:
You may not be able to afford a consulting or research agency, but there are a
ton of software tools out there that...
VP Marketing, Matterport | Formerly Peloton, Uber, Microsoft, Entrepreneur • June 18
Absolutely! There is a ton of incredibly important data & insights in what
you're probably already doing related to your product:
* Web - Look where people are spending their time, dropping off, what is
getting the most clicks
* Ads - Same as above. Target multiple groups with multiple creative, and see
what drives the most engagement.
* Customer Support - Your users are telling you what they need help with.
* Product Analytics -- Retention & Happy Customers - Identify your most
engaged, and happy customers, and do look back analysis. Where did they come
from? How are th...
1 answer
VP Marketing, Matterport | Formerly Peloton, Uber, Microsoft, Entrepreneur • June 18
Nothing beats sitting with a customer and actually listening to them. I can't
reinforce enough the importance of this. As companies grow, its easy to lean on
reports / reporting to tell you "what the customer thinks & feels". But there is
so much nuance in how people communicate -- and as humans, we're all naturally
atuned to these signals. So as a baseline, I encourage all my teams to
participate in live listening sessions, focus groups, sales pitches, etc at
least 1x every quarter to keep their ear to the ground and stay close to the
customer.
Of course, the above doesn't scale and we ...
1 answer
VP Marketing, Matterport | Formerly Peloton, Uber, Microsoft, Entrepreneur • June 18
It always starts with the business objective, and then moves into user needs.
What I find is that happy, satisfied customers most often move the business
forward. So, I like to start with a long-arch view of what we are trying to
achieve, quickly followed by what we hope our users will say / feel when using
our product. If we can align on those two objectives and the time horizon, then
market research is usually a great tool to help us work backward and figure out
what steps it will take for us to create that experiecne for the customer.
1 answer
Product Marketing, Intercom | Formerly Glassdoor, Prophet, Kraft • May 3
Understanding the market landscape and how it breaks down is a good first step.
For example, within the broader category of "customer engagement" there are sub
categories like marketing and advertising tech, support/enagement channels, call
analytics and contact centers and CRM. And then there are even more categories
or sub jobs under each (read about the jobs to be done framework if you havent).
To help create this 'market map' you can look to industry analysts or the
Forrester / Gartner Magic Quadrants but I encourage you to not take these as
boilerplate as it's really individual to your...
2 answers
Think about where the bigger pain is for your organization. In product marketing
lack of resources is usually the case, so you need to prioritize based on the
needs of the company. you have major issues with churn I'd suggest starting with
user personas, on the other hand, if sales are struggling to close deals, the
buyer personas should be your priority.
Product Marketing, Intercom | Formerly Glassdoor, Prophet, Kraft • May 3
It really depends on the stage/GTM motion your company is in. You might want to
focus on the user if you are really focused on product-led-growth (PLG) and
reaching that point of 'activation' - aka the aha moment when a new user gets
the value of your product and why they need it. If you have no idea what I'm
talking about I'd suggest exploring this article/site from the product-led
collective- https://www.productled.org/foundations/product-led-growth-metrics.
Other scenarios where you may want to focus on the user is if you're seeing
typical product usage metrics declining (DAU, WAU, MAU, ...
5 answers
Data should always inform decisions, though it’s OK to supplement it with some
qualitative insights driven by observations of market trends. It’s not good
enough to simply let the most senior person define the segmentation.
Segmentation is relatively easy if you are focused on one specific vertical but
gets much more complex for companies that serve across horizontals. This is
where the value of data comes in to drive your decision.
VP of Marketing, Qualia • September 15
This is largely industry specific. Definitely research your market and listen to
the data. An extremely important data point that should come your way is from
your sales motions and how your plays work with each audience. It's important
though to resist the tempation to over segment - that's a rabbit hole that is
hard to get out of.
In a vertical marketing strategy the most basic of segmentation comes from which
audience in the ecosystem you're speaking to. The most basic example would be if
you're marketing a Marketplace you'd segment based on Buyers and Sellers.
However, segmentatio...
Product Marketing Lead, Creator Promotion, Spotify • March 15
First, it's important to know why you need a segmentation. Is it about
go-to-market and creating more effective messaging? Is it about changing your
channel / sales strategy? Is it about product development? Media Targeting? Once
you have an objective or objectives, a method for segmentation often becomes
more obvious.
When thinking about messaging or product development, I often find it helpful to
segment customers based on common needs. In B2B organizations figuring out what
types of customers have common needs might mean talking to experts on your
customers like sales people, doing d...
Director of Product Marketing, Momentive | Formerly SurveyMonkey, Nielsen • March 21
There are many ways you could segment your market for your marketing and sales
motions: from industries to personas to company size to geographies (and for B2C
companies, major demographics like age, gender, etc come into play). The
questions you need to ask are "Do these groups of customers have fundamentally
different needs for our product?" and "Would we acquire these groups of
customers in different ways?". Wherever the differences are greatest, you'll
want to start there.
Another key consideration is resourcing: do you have enough people to create
focus areas among your marketing/sa...
Product Marketing, Intercom | Formerly Glassdoor, Prophet, Kraft • May 3
I believe the best way to segment your market is to do initial high-level
qualitative interviews to get a broad understanding of the market, followed by a
robust quantitative segmentation, and then follow up with in-depth qual with
what you believe are your priority segments.
A quantitative segmentation leverages a cluster analysis that considers:
* company/customer demographics and technographics
(size/industry/revenue/region etc.)
* Attitudes - how they think/feel/pain points and perceptions of you and your
competitor set
* Behaviors - what they do, how they buy, purchase journ...