Do you have any tips for performing market research with limited resources—both manpower and financial?

Question

John Hurley · Accepted Answer

I feel your pain!

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- Prioritize with execs what will drive impact + Set expectations internal

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One other thing to think about...How can you use market research for multiple purposes...so much internal content that gets created can be tweaked and shifted by 20% to become external content that feeds into demand gen efforts or can help influence influencers. It also becomes internal enablement – helps onboard employees, ramp sales, train GTM teams for launches. That can help you justify more time on research.

Dee Dee Wolverton · Answer

It truly does take a team to develop a strong pov on the market - a PMM can drive it, but you'll want other internal subject-matter experts to contribute.

I'd recommend first aligning w/your leadership team, and ask them to dedicate one person to help even if in a limited capacity (a few hours a week). Cross-functional teammates will provide essential guidence, enrich conversations, and distribute important info to different parts of the company in real time.

Secondarily, focus on what you're seeking to learn and the timeline. Try to organize sprints of ~2 months, and plan to do a refreshes ~6 months later. This should allow time to conduct experiments to evaluate anything you have learned, and identify new areas to investigate.

Katie Levinson · Answer

I’ve been there, a few times! Some tips:

1. Prioritize with your key stakeholders. What is truly the #1 problem/question that your leadership team and/or product manager counterparts looking to understand/solve? Spend your time on the projects that benefit these stakeholders.
 2. Hone in on your target audience when conducting your research. This will help limit the scope/breadth of your efforts, and allow you to go deeper with your consumer target that matters most.
 3. See if your company subscribes to newsletters/publications/etc, and get those logins. You’d be surprised what you might already have access to at the corporate level.
 4. Get scrappy with your primary research. Conduct ~10-15 interviews with your target, and make it clear that this is a priority project. You can compensate people easily with a gift card and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. You can use whatever video platform your company uses (i.e., no need to buy user research software).
 5. Use google forms or survey monkey to conduct surveys, which are often free. Personally I like Qualtrics, but you may have to have an enterprise license for it.

Karen Sheffer · Answer

Just like everything with limited resources, it's all about prioritizing. First, your resources. Can you take the time to do one deep dive per month? Per quarter? How vital is the research to impactimg your company's bottom line? If you don't have the capacity, or it's not enough consider hiring an intern part-time to help. I've had great success with this, plus it's a wonderful opportunity to mentor and guide a young person at the start of their professional journey.

🤘 Dejan Gajsek · Answer

Oof. I feel seen. If you're in an early-stage startup or if your department is usually quite small then you will have to rely on tools. If budget is the limit, fret not, there are tons of free options.

In the past, I've used these tools which are still a great way to get started but there are more solutions out there.

The one piece of advice I'd give you is to try not to do the same tasks twice. Document the first research and create a first-team playbook for scrappy research. You'll have a lot of competitors in the field so you'll likely do the research a bunch of times.

Congratulations, you've made your first Competitive Intelligence SOP.

You can always go back and update it to make it even more relevant.

Once your organization grows, you'll have more resources to play with.

Lastly, don't underestimate the power of qualitative interviews. Even if you interview your top 5 clients you'll walk away with insights to update or craft your avatar and start creating assets that matter most - the ones that matter to that avatar.

Good luck!

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