How do you delineate the responsibilities of market research between Product Marketing and User Research?

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

PMM can bring the perspective from beyond the user. What are the markets, influencers, our executives, analysts, and competitors saying. If PMM is the subject matter expert – if they have a mind map for all the places where knowledge lives inside and outside the organization, then PMM again is the hub enabling a team of researchers.  An example I recently had was for a maturity model. An internal research was tasked to create a maturity model for our customers. I knew of several other maturity m ...Read More

I focus on creating a collaborative environment with market research, user research, and analytics teams as they provide critical inputs for product marketing to function. PMM owns defining the research objectives and the business questions, while the research and analytics teams are the subject matter experts on defining the specific methodologies and taking the lead on execution. There is of course input throughout from PMM, but we leverage the expertise of our research teams to ensure we get ...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

Great question, and one we’ve been discussing at Handshake. It’s important to establish a strong collaborative partnership with UXR, ideally with shared goals. Every company is different, but at a startup with limited resources and a lot of work to do, we would outline our needs for the quarter, and figure out who was best to tackle the research needs. We would then share each other’s research briefs and ask for input on learning objectives as well as questions. While both PMM and UXR work on fo ...Read More

Before we answer this one, here’s a little context about market research at Glassdoor. Our market research team is called “Market Insights” and it sits on the PMM team. Market Insights projects almost always have a strong PMM lead. Before product built, PMM/Market Insights takes it; once built, UX takes it. There are some exceptions, but the reason for this criteria is that market research is more in tune with the attitudes, wants, and needs of the total audience, which helps us identify opportu ...Read More

Great question.  PMM and UXR are equal partners. Typically PMM is responsible for drafting the project brief which provides context and the learning objective. UXR recommends the research approach, the tools, and designs the execution brief. PMM will review the questions to ensure it aligns with our goals. UXR will run the studies, synthesize the data, and present the findings, most often to the extended team.  With that - I want to share credit with Kris Tyler. In addition to refining my respon ...Read More