Question Page

How do you prioritize your research - Buyer vs User?

Sonia Moaiery
Sonia Moaiery
Skilljar Director of Product MarketingMay 6

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, time spent, L21+/28 - percent of users are active more than 20 days of the month) 

Prioritzing research with buyers may be more helpful if sales if you're exploring a new sales/GTM motion like moving up market to enterprise, or down market to self serve, targeting new buyers outside of your core buyer, landing/expanding, cross-sell etc. It also can make sense to do research almost exclusively with buyers but also sprinkle in some power users who know your product really well and are a big champion of yours. 

1022 Views
Jeffrey Vocell
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product MarketingDecember 14

Prioritizing buyer vs user research I think ties into broader business goals. Do you need to power acquisition efforts and broader brand teams? Then I'd prioritize buyer research. On the other hand, if you have an acquisition machine that is generating plenty of sales but retention could be improved, then I think looking at user research needs to be prioritized in this case.

As with almost anything the answer is a bit grey, because there are plenty of examples where both types of research can help. If you work for an established software company, you may have a UX team which does some user research as well which can naturally help prioritize.

If your company does have a UX team doing this research, I'd recommend building a strong relationship with that team and sharing all the research you are doing to help inform all the efforts across Product Marketing and UX.

440 Views
AI and Product Marketing
Thursday, August 22 • 12PM PT
AI and Product Marketing
Virtual Event
Bina Amin
Allison Recker
Nisha Bagepalli
+139
attendees
Karen Sheffer
Karen Sheffer
Hibob Director of Product MarketingFebruary 8

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.

307 Views
Top Product Marketing Mentors
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing
Jasmine Jaume
Jasmine Jaume
Intercom Director, Product Marketing
Alina Fu
Alina Fu
Microsoft Director, Copilot for Microsoft 365
Jeffrey Vocell
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing
Mary Sheehan
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing
Jenna Crane
Jenna Crane
Klaviyo Head of Product Marketing
Priya Gill
Priya Gill
SurveyMonkey Head of Global Marketing
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Enable VP of Product Marketing
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Enable VP of Product Marketing
Jiong Liu
Jiong Liu
Wiz Senior Director of Product Marketing