Should product marketing decisions be data-driven or more so data-informed? Should PMMs lead with intuition and use data to back up their assumptions?

I love the data debate. A couple of my favorite quotes: "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything" - Ronald Coase. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" - maybe Henry Ford I dont think it's an either-or answer. Data is obviously incredibly important, as it can be the objective source of "truth" and the rise of machine learning and AI have made data more powerful and helpful than ever. But as you think about how data is used in decisi ...Read More

Data driven! You can use intuition (re: what you're hearing from prospects, customers, reps, analysts etc) to create a shortlist of assumptions, but you must validate that with data. If the data doesn't support it, it doesn't mean it's not important, but you need to clearly call out the discrepancy of what you're hearing vs seeing in the data (and perhaps dig more into why this is happening -- or give it another quarter or two of data to track any changes) If you lead with just data informed, yo ...Read More

The highest quality PMM decisions are ones where the data and customer anecdotes align. Skilled PMMs often bring a strong perspective to a conversation, but are willing to be wrong and change their recommendations in light of new or better information. A strong POV can come from either data or your intuition, but one alone is never enough. You can state a hypothesis and then seek to validate this through both direct customer feedback and qualified data. You should always be suspicious when the d ...Read More

I'm not sure the distinction you're making between data-driven vs data-informed but I'm going to say that you should be data driven. There's some narrative about PMM that says PMMs don't need to be analytical, or comfortable using data and I don't agree with that at all. Instead of intuition, you should have strong hypotheses - grounded in a customer insight - that you want to use data to validate. Intuition is super subjective and very hard to defend, but almost no one will refute a hypothesis ...Read More

The voice of the customer should be what drives your decisions as a PMM, and it reaches you through various channels. In some instances for OkCupid, that is completely data-driven. For example, when Roe vs Wade was overturned in 2021, we saw an 18% increase in users stating they are pro-choice on their profiles, so it was clear that finding a pro-choice partner was increasingly important to our users. Therefore, we launched our I’m Pro-Choice profile badge so users could filter for other users w ...Read More

Marketing measurement has been, is, and will likely continue to be imperfect - attribution in particular is so tricky. So you can't always rely completely on data. Same thing with revenue pipeline metrics - the quality of pipeline depends on sales discipline. Revenue is a good measure, but it is often a lagging metric, especially when the buyer journey can span several months to a year. And often times you don't have sufficient data and have to make decisions, make bets, allocate marketing budge ...Read More

Good product marketing is a mix of art and science. While data is crucial for validating decisions and measuring success, you can't rely on numbers alone. The best PMMs start with informed intuition (based on experience and market knowledge), then use data to validate or adjust their thinking. Being purely data-driven might make you miss opportunities that aren't yet showing up in the numbers, while going purely on gut feeling is too risky. The sweet spot is being data-informed - using your inst ...Read More

I really like the term you used here: "data-informed". At SurveyMonkey, we strive to use the best data we have available to inform our decisions. But you don't always have data, so that's where a PMM's intuition comes into play. I'll also challenge you that it's not always hard "data" that you need to inform a decision. Sometimes it's sources like: Conversations - with those on the frontlines like sales & success managers, or with customers themselves Qualitative interviews / ethnographies I ...Read More

All PMM decisions should be driven by user research, available data, market knowledge, and product expertise, topped up with an understanding of the company's long-term strategy. Amen. 🙏 To add on decision-making: avoid following the "Highest Paid Person's Opinion" (HiPPO). It's when PMM decisions & initiatives are being prioritized based on - past HiPPO experiences in larger popular companies, - successful frameworks used previously,- and "strategic vision"However, such PMM prioritization d ...Read More