What are your go-to tools for both for quantitative & qualitative market research as a product marketer?

Nothing beats sitting with a customer and actually listening to them. I can't reinforce enough the importance of this. As companies grow, its easy to lean on reports / reporting to tell you "what the customer thinks & feels". But there is so much nuance in how people communicate -- and as humans, we're all naturally atuned to these signals. So as a baseline, I encourage all my teams to participate in live listening sessions, focus groups, sales pitches, etc at least 1x every quarter to keep their ear to the ground and stay close to the customer.

Of course, the above doesn't scale and we all have lots of things we need to do with our time. So I'm very interested in a few types of data to inform qual & quant: 

• Platforms like Suzy & Feedback Loop have been incredbily valuable tools for my team & product management teams that I've worked with recently. Suzy's Dynamic segmentation tool not only lets you complete a segmentation exercise, refresh it regularaly, and then gives you a mechanism to get feedback from those segments within 48 hours. It saves my team and my product teams tons of time, and ensures that our products & external communications are user-insight driven and optimized throughout the entire process of getting ready to go to market. I like to think of these platforms as Qualitative at Scale.  
• For Quantitative, I've used a lot of survey platforms but I have to say my favorite quantitative mechanism is actual behavioral data. Product Analytics, Web Engagement, Media Engagement, Customer Support Inquiries, etc. Humans don't always do what they say / think, and I think actual behavioral data is the best to assess what customers are actually most intrguied by or interested in. I require my teams to be keeping their ears close to these sources to pick up important themes. When you're listening and watching across these different platforms, PMMs can usually start picking up on important themes to pass back either to product or creative teams to improve the end to end customer experience.

There are a lot of great research tools on the market - QuestionPro, Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, and more that will all ultimately help get quantitative data you need. Whichever you select, make sure to align with other teams cross-functionally on the tools you are evaluating and what has been used in the past. It's possible that another team already has a survey solution you can use without having to purchase any new tool. 

For qualitative research since it's so varied and tends to be longer-form there's no single tool. This could mean listening to calls in Gong/Chorus, having 1:1 conversations with a Customer Advisory Board (which I've typically recorded notes in a Google Doc for), or more. Regardless of the method -- the important parts are a centralized place (folder, or tool) for all this research and sharing with relevant colleagues. The information you collect in research is pretty much always useful to multiple parts of the business so consider how to package and share it accordingly.

Across multiple product marketing organizations, I’ve used a combination of competitive intelligence tools, win/loss interview and analysis tools, tools to collect expert interviews, industry analysts, and industry news sources. To me, these are the key tools for market research for Product Marketers:

• Competitive intelligence tools help automate data collection and analysis of public information on your competitors. These can help automate competitor battlecard collection and enable your team to capture more real-time insights. Popular tools in this category include Klue, Crayon, or Kompyte. I’ve personally used Klue in the past and am in the process of evaluating it for my current organization.

• Win/loss analysis vendors help conduct exit interviews with your prospects when they close. They make it easier for companies to get objective feedback from both closed won and closed lost deals, while also providing deeper insights into trends and patterns that are happening across deals. Popular tools that I’m aware of include DoubleCheck (now part of Klue) and Clozd. We are currently evaluating DoubleCheck since it is part of Klue, which help us to reduce the number of vendors to bring onboard for competitive intelligence and win/loss analysis.

• Expert interview solutions help you connect with current and former employees of target customers and/or competitors to gain deeper insight into information that may be difficult to find online. Popular solutions include GLG, which helps find and compensate experts to share insights, and more recently, Tegus, which does what GLG does but further aggregates and catalogs insights across every previous expert interview that was conducted. I personally really like the extensive catalog of existing knowledge that you can get out of Tegus without having to set up individual interviews with each expert. Tegus also gives you the option to interview new experts if the insights that you’re looking for aren’t in their existing database.

• Industry analysts are also important bucket for market research. These are experts on different market categories and the vendors in each space. They are also an important target audience for Product Marketers, since they evaluate vendors on capabilities and produce reports that are read by your customers. The leading industry analysts are Gartner (the leader in this space), Forrester, and IDC. While traditional industry analysts are popular with buying teams at larger, enterprise-scale companies, SMB companies often turn to review sites such as G2, Capterra (part of Gartner), and TrustRadius instead. For smaller companies, these review sites often serve the role of the industry analyst in providing insights into which vendors are in each category and who’s the leader in those categories.

• Industry news sources also help me stay informed on what’s happening in technology and other relevant spaces for my specific company. Sources that I find particularly helpful are CB Insights and TechCrunch for technology news, a variety of topic-specific newsletters, and the blog posts of leading consultancies and vendors in categories that I care about.

Such a great question because market research is a very important element for product marketing.

There are a number of different tools and avenues:

• Surveys: Always a great way to gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback. Tools out there are SurveyMonkey, Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, Zoho, Qualtrics, Jotform, etc. I personally like Microsoft or Google if I don't have any budget. If I have the budget, I like the tools that have features such as skip logic like SurveyMonkey. (Blog on various tools here: https://www.jotform.com/blog/best-survey-tools/)

• Focus Groups: When you get a group of people together, you are bound to uncover a gold mine of information. I've done both in-person and virtual focus groups. The key is to be very organized. If your company holds an annual customer/user conference, that is a perfect place to host one.

• In-depth, 1:1 interviews: I love sending out a survey, and for those who show an interest, I reach out and conduct a 1:1 interview to gather more insights. If I have the budget, I hire a 3rd party to conduct the interview. If I lack the budget, I or someone else in PMM conducts the interview. And if you can, try and make sure sales is not on the call. They always request to be on the call, but stand strong and say no!

• Prospect/Customer Calls: If there is no time and money, try to be a fly on the wall or at least get the sales call recording to listen in and find out what keeps your prospects and customers up at night.

• Industry Analysts: Industry analyst reports are a great way to gather research. I've used and worked with Forrester/Sirius Decisions, Gartner, SpendMatters, IDC, Markets&Markets, Quadrant Solutions, etc.

• Online Forums/Review Sites: Online review sites and community forums are a great way to gather research as well. G2, TrustRadius, Gartner Peer Insights, Reddit, Glassdoor, and so many more out there depending on your industry.

Lastly, when I conduct research, what tools I use and the depth of the research all depend on time and money (as with almost everything in life). When I had a large budget, I hired an outside firm to conduct the research. Why?

1. Saved tons of time

2. They are the true research experts

3. You will uncover better insights that are unbiased

4. You receive a fabulous, comprehensive report and the research firm usually hosts summary calls for your stakeholders that you can record

A few research firms I've worked with in the past include GLG, Spailey Solutions, and B2B International.

Hope this helps!