How often do you talk to customers, or do qualitative + VOC research?

This is a fantastic question! In my experience, for competitive research/marketing, it is critical to spend time with your customers and frontline sales teams. In my previous roles, I've built voice of customer programs to help support quant and qual research. This has come in a number of formats - a win/loss VoC program for enterprise sales deals, an annual customer survey and a churn surey. I've typically used survey tools like Medallia, Qualtrics and Gainsight. The key is being able to build ...Read More

All the time! It is so critical for PMM teams to talk to customers to understand their pain points, their jobs to be done, their delighters, motivations, etc. It's also important for GTM teams to have a pulse on customer feedback via customer success, sales and account management in order to understand potential barriers or blind spots that you may have from a PMM perspective. But it's not just enough to have a consistent flow of insights and information - it's really important to synthesize all ...Read More

Customer listening is a critical investment in any product marketing program. For us, we've taken a number of different approaches to customer listening in my time here. From direct customer conversations, to focus groups, to ongoing market research (qualitative and quantitative), listening to our customers is critical for our success (and, more importantly, theirs!). One thing we've recently explored and will continue to build into is to draft off of an existing organization wide program - the ...Read More

I think every PMM benefits from talking to customers. In some cases, it helps polish what you already know. In others—like in my case—you’re marketing to an audience you do not belong to, and talking to customers helps you see the world in a way you normally wouldn’t. I’ll speak to my preferences, but please note that this is specific to someone who markets a technical product to developers without necessarily being one myself. I think it’s important for me to never stop learning how developers ...Read More

I hate to say it, but my answer is...it depends. I typically like using "prescheduled" customer interactions like CAB meetings as a forum to get feedback, but there are times when you need answers sooner (i.e. informing a roadmap, important beta programs, needing customer involvement for an event and/or case study). To make things more personal, I also like to follow our top advocates, partners, and CAB members on LinkedIn so that I can also celebrate and elevate their wins and share in their su ...Read More

Ideally, I think this should be systematic and conducted on a weekly basis in order to keep research fresh. Something Shopify does amazingly well is setting up time with the merchants and listening to support calls. We also enjoy connecting and meeting in-person with local merchants to hear about their experiences directly. In fact, we have a program that allows us to connect with merchants locally and learn more about their experience with Shopify first-hand. At our last team offsite we were ab ...Read More

The language of love at Udemy is Data. As such, we're always looking for more, and consumer insights are a constant. Research is conducted on an ongoing basis by our incredible User Research group. This includes longitudinal research where we would like to track progress over time such as for upper-funnel brand metrics like recall and awareness, as well as campaign specific research related to things like message testing and feature promotion. We use a combination of survey tools like SurveyMonk ...Read More

Staying in touch with customers/propsects directly is not an option for product marketers, IMO. There are passive ways to do it by being a listener - listen to sales/CS calls, attend talks by your audience on relevant topics, follow notable people on linkedin and read the content they are posting or engaging with. In my experience the best insights come from the most unexpected conversations involving customers and prospects. So my team always invests in time engaging with our audience every cha ...Read More

Multiple times per month. It varies though, depending on bandwidth as a one-person CI team.  The most important thing is that, as a whole, ClickUp's Product Marketing team speaks to customers all the time for different reasons. I focus my conversations more around competitive intel, or win/loss info. Our persona PMM directors speak with customers that fit our ICP so we can better understand our strengths, weaknesses, and what their jobs-to-be-done are. Our Customer Advocacy leader speaks with po ...Read More

At the core of my approach as a product marketer is the belief in staying connected with customers through ongoing research and conversations. I consider it essential to have a deep understanding of their needs, pain points, and aspirations. This understanding lets me to make informed decisions and develop products or positioning that truly resonate with our target audience. I regularly engage with customers through various channels- from informal "get to know you" calls with new customers to mo ...Read More

Frequency: Marketers (not just PMMs) should aim to be their company's experts on their target customers. That means you should talk to customers as frequently as you need to. If you need a measurable benchmark, aim for a weekly conversation. You'll naturally find projects and time periods where you far exceed that frequency. Campaign design, refining segmentation, conducting win/loss following a product launch, and onboarding marketers all create a greater need for this customer insight, so expe ...Read More

I must admit, customer conversations are a regular part of my work. I don’t see them as something you do once in a while, but it is more like an ongoing loop of feedback, but avoid over contacting. In my current work, even before we launched our product, we shortlisted and spoke to prospects to validate our hypothesis. Those conversations gave us clarity on which problems were actually worth solving and also helped us drop a few things that only looked good internally. We recorded those conversa ...Read More

It’s often said that communicating with customers is crucial, and while this is true, engaging with ex-customers and prospects can be just as important too - if not more so, in some cases. Consistently speaking with a diverse set of individuals across your funnel provides a broader and deeper understanding of external perspectives on your products or services. What can happen, however, is that this is a once and done sort of affair - to be really valuable, it needs to be consistent and shareable ...Read More