What is the most proven method to convert market research into valuable PMM insights that are actionable?

One of the fundamental skills a Product Marketer must develop is the ability to influence others across the organization. This includes their manager, other Marketing leaders, their Product Manager counterpart(s), and executives. This ability to influence others is highly dependent on one’s credibility within the organization. An experienced and trusted Product Marketer might be able to more easily influence others even without rigorous analysis to back up their point of view–this may or may not be a good thing!

Conversely, a less-seasoned Product Marketer, or one who’s new to an organization, may need to over-index on rigorous research to influence others, even if they truly know the market–again, this may or may not be a good thing!

Either way, you might loosely follow the steps below to convert market research into actionable PMM insights:

• Do the research: Check out the other question I answered about how to do this.

• Derive insights: This will depend upon your goals, but ideally you will have had some hypotheses that you intended to confirm or deny, based on your research. What did you learn?

• Capture your point of view (POV): Write down your findings, using a framework of your choice, to capture the take-aways. Do this separate from all of your research notes, so you have a clean POV that you can share with others.

• Pressure test: Share your findings with someone who can pressure-test your POV. Your manager is (hopefully) the obvious choice here. Depending on your relationship and credibility with your Product Manager, you might choose to start with them instead.

• Share widely: Let’s assume you’ve learned something significant, which needs to be shared broadly to other teams and/or leaders. As a next step, you might advocate to share your findings in a regular Product or Marketing leadership sync, or perhaps a small meeting with some influential leaders, or via email or Slack. The right method will depend on your own organization, but regardless of the forum, the goal is to share your new insights with those who can steer the ship in a new direction (if necessary).