What kinds of market research do you do to shape the product roadmap and build, buy, and partner strategy? And more tactically, what format do you share your analysis?

• Quantitative and qualitative market research. Working with expert market research partners will help you get to solid customer segmentation, customer journey mapping, competitive landscape analysis, market trends, and market sizing, TAM. This can be costly, but always worth it! 
• Qualitative customer interviews. This is probably the easiest and most powerful thing you can do yourself in partnership with product or product design counterparts. You can do 1:1 interviews or even leverage tools like usertesting.com to get qualitative customer insights.
• Most analysis is shared in a very clear slide deck that outlines research goals, key learnings, and implications.
• I highly recommend checking out my former colleague and friend, Sonia Moaiery’s Sharebird AMA on Market Research (https://sharebird.com/h/product-marketing/ama/intercom-product-marketing-lead-platform-sonia-moaiery-on-market-research) as another great resource!

When we’re assisting Product in determining the roadmap, we’re doing all sorts of research to inform the recommendations we make – from both an outside-in and an inside-out perspective. Some useful examples for us have been…

Outside-in: competitive research (recent product launches, press, content, where they’re hiring, what their leadership is talking about publicly), analyst relations (inquiries, formal reports, reading research), customer research ( first-party interviews, surveys answering specific questions, or listening continuously to real sales and customer success conversations, h/t to Gong), market research (what other companies are our customers/prospects engaging with and buying from? How might we tap into that?)

Inside-out: what do our sales reps think about how they can win more? What do our customer success managers feel is the toughest part of renewing a customer? What does our support team get the most inquiries or issues about? How much do these things cost the business?

Synthesizing these inputs can give you a good idea about what opportunities are out there for the business to tackle, at which point you can determine the most advantageous output approach. Generally speaking, Build is a good default with an effective and fast R&D organization and is usually the right choice when seamlessness of the experience matters to users or when taking a differentiated approach to a product space. Buy makes sense when speed to market is the top priority and building would get you to market too slowly or when the product is far enough separated from your core offering that the experience doesn’t need to be perfectly seamless. Partner makes sense when your customer gets the majority of the value from a combined offering and owning the full experience is not strategically important to your company or product.

I work closely with analytic and strategy experts at our company to perform the market research required. At the end of the day, I'm a PMM, not a trained data scientist, nor a researchers, our jobs as PMMs is to help shape the the research, to ensure we ask the right questions, and leverage the results to help find the answers needed to shape the roadmap. For example, I've done a pricing and packaging project in the past around which new products we should build next, how to package them, and what pricepoint they should be at. In order to do this, I partnered with

1) The competitive analysis team and the analyst research to understand the market landscape and our buyers.

2) The UX design team to help us understand the way our current customers use our product and understand what we are lacking.

3) The market insights team to run survey with external and internal users on willingness to pay, and appetite for specific product features at certain pricing points.

3) Strategy Finance team- to run price analysis and stimulate how much ARR would see in return if we priced new products at certain points, over X amount of years, based on current growth rates.

I then take all this information and formatted in a powerpoint presentation, (now a days- Miro boards ofcourse!) to share the information. Throughout the years of sharing information, I've always been a visual sharer. The best way for me to explain things are through charts, graphics, etc. Too many words results in losing the attention of leadership, no one wants to read! Same with numbers on a spreadsheet. However, a combo of this, in easy to digest, step by step format works the best for me. 

For the purpose of this question, lets assume that the PMM team is either directly doing the work or strongly influencing the teams doing the work. E.g. competitive, market strategy, GTM, focus groups, etc. Then you need a few key inputs to help PM make roadmap decisions:

1. Market definition. Which specific market segment(s), market problems are you considering overall for this new product roadmap. This is very important upfront because it defines the common language for both PMM and PM teams.  

2. Market sizing. This refers to how much actual addressable market is out there for you with the new roadmap. Again this needs to be broken out by segment or for each component of the market definition

3. Prioritization. Even if the TAM is great, if the competitive dynamics are nasty or alignment with core competencies are off, then a market segment might not be worth it. This is also where buyer research (focus groups, VoC, etc.) comes into play because it gives a better understanding of actual use cases and needs.

This all assumes breaking into new markets. The equation changes when you're thinking of increasing existing market penetration. In that case, the prioritization is about segmenting existing customers based on need and shaping the roadmap to address unmet needs in those customers.

I find that there are two times when it makes sense to truly invest in deep market research like what you mention: 

• When you're considering starting a company or building a completely new product
• When you're a very mature company (public, large revenue, growth slowing) and you need to evaluate options for a next growth trajectory

In those situations, you're trying to learn something completely new, identify risks, and plot a course forward. You don't have product yet, you don't have customers, and you might not have expertise.

The rest of the time, particularly in high-growth markets, doing all these things is just spinning wheels. The one thing that will drive successful adjustments to your roadmap is customer knowledge and interaction. It's a continual process - captured through sales calls and customer success engagements on a daily basis. These converations are also great times to vet ideas early. Questions like, "What if we..." or "What if you..." can rapidly validate or invalidate ideas. 

Finally, the best format is a concise format. Pages and pages of details, data, and quotes will not make your argument, in the same way that 20-page "messaging brief" is a waste of everyone's time. They won't read it. 

Treat it like a messaging exercise. What are the 3-4 pillars of your argument? What are the best proof points to substantiate your point of view? What invites the best discussion.

Your goal in shaping the roadmap is not to win an argument or dictate feature priorities. It's to invite a deeper discussion of customer needs and arrive at a better solution for the market, together. 

I use both primary and secondary research. Here is a non-exhaustive list of research sources to help you get started: customer interviews, customer surveys, customer usage data, recorded sales calls (or interviews with sales if recorded calls are not available), sales data or win-loss reports, analyst research notes (Gartner, IDC, Forrester, Omdia, and 451 are the first ones I’d go to, but there are many others out there).

Once I gather all of the data, I look for themes or trends. If I need more quantitative findings, then I might build a market model in excel. Once I have all of my findings, I outline everything in a slide deck.

Considering your task at hand, I would put together a slide deck that outlines your research findings. Your takeaway slide should be a 2x2 matrix showing your company’s ability to execute on all of the potential strategies. The X axis should show all of the potential strategies to invest in to increase success in that market. You need to quantify them by dollar amount. Your company’s ability to execute (also show this in dollar amount) on the Y axis. There are many ways to determine the Y. I would find a similar market for which you have sales data and use that. Important note: you may need to use a scale or calibrate X and Y in a way that makes it easy to plot the numbers in quadrants. Obviously this isn’t a crystal ball 🔮 but it should give you a directionally accurate view and a nice visual as a discussion point with your stakeholders. Bonus points when you can compliment this graph with a customer story or a few customer quotes. 😉

Big question! I think a well-rounded perspective involves:

• Pulse checks from field teams (CS/Sales)

• Customer feedback (surveys)

• Market feedback (analyst relations/reports) + closed won/lost reports

• Competitive intelligence (win rates + general intel for direct competitors and status quo)

If you cover those bases you're prepared to influence with gusto!

Tactically sharing this information can look like:

• Slides

• Brief (word doc)

• With referenceable material embedded throughout

“Product Roadmap” sounds to me synonymous with Product Strategy (PS).

In order to support the statements of a PS, marketing research explores its three pivotal elements: Technical performance, Design, and Acceptance.

Technical performance is what the product does. It is typically tested in comparison to direct competitors and it aims to support product superiority or equality.

Design is how the product looks and works.

The Acceptance is measured to confirm the selected customer is willing to try, buy, or rebuy the product.

I synthesized in a few words a broad and multifaceted topic. Read also this article to get a better grasp of what a Product Strategy is, how it is created, and how it integrates with the other strategies: https://www.marketingstat.com/how-to-create-a-marketing-strategy/

Once the brand strategic pattern is set and validated, it will be much easier to answer operative questions that, without a solid strategy deck, may sound complex and challenging.

More about brand strategies can be read at: https://www.marketingstat.com/10-key-elements-brand-strategy-plan-tree/