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?

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 s ...Read More

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.  ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 wh ...Read More

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, a ...Read More

“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 ...Read More

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 mor ...Read More