Tips to influence the product roadmap with none-to-little budget?

Interestingly enough, I've started using Perplexity AI with Google Notebook LM to pull together market research for me (for free). Here are some prompts I've been playing around with: Start with Perplexity: Use it to scan recent insights from industry news, forums, and reports. Frame the response by asking it specific questions like: "What are the key trends in [your industry] for [current year]?" "What are customers saying about [competitor product/feature]?" Iterate Query Focus: Narrow down to ...Read More

There is a tremendous amount of research that you can get done with limited budget, it just requires taking initiative, being scrappy and prioritizing what research is going to be the most useful and insightful for your team. Aside from finding the time and prioritizing amongst all the other things on your plate, there are a number of ways you can do robust research to help inform product strategy and roadmap. For example: Competitive intelligence and market research, especially for consumer fac ...Read More

In my opinion, budget has very little to do with influencing the product roadmap. Customer insights, understanding of the space, and competitive dynamics are the more important factors. Budget can definitely help with creating more avenues like Customer Advisory Boards, other in-person customer meetings, or some other form of feedback collection. However, in my experience, enterprising PMMs rarely find themselves constrained by these things. There is usually more customer feedback available than ...Read More

Budget is not the only resource at your disposal; I’d encourage you to get creative and find more avenues to contact prospects, customers, partners, and sales. A simple Google form survey can go a long way. There may be many other low-to-no-cost options for outreach, e.g. your company’s email orchestration system, outreach on LinkedIn, direct outreach through sales reps, analyzing support tickets, running workshops and advisory boards on Zoom meetings. You can also sign up for your competitor’s ...Read More