What market research activities do you require product marketers who work for you to do? And why?

In all of the places I've worked, I've had the good fortune of having talented Consumer Insights and User Reasearch partners. With that in mind, I tend to focus less on having a prescriptive take on specific methodology knowhow, but I do expect folks to have a strong ability to be thought partners with their research counterparts.

In my experience, that often includes a few things:

• Have an understanding of what data will be convincing to stakeholders across the business
• Have an understanding of what type of research is best between qualitative and quantitative for the current stage of product development and business objectives
• Partner with insights team on creating research briefs and providing feedback on questionnaires
• Understanding which methodologies do or don't pass a "sniff test" (e.g., Does conjoint seem best here? Maybe MaxDiff is better?)

The answer will depend on the size of the organization and the resource network available to PMM teams. Today, my team enjoys dedicated Marketing Insights and UXR teams and so the critical work is writing an excellent brief that clearly defines:

• What we're trying to learn? And why it's important to solving a business problem. The reality of large organizations is often that research teams are getting multiple requests for projects with significant overlap in purpose. Clarity around these topics might allow you jump on board another project that has already cleared organizational hurdles and save your budget for other research.

• The target audience. If this is exploratory research, the audience may be less socialized and understood across teams so defining great personas for research teams to go find is critical.

• Legal, ethical, competitive constraints. We're closest to understanding the challenges research teams may face in getting work into field given limits on what certain teams are comfortable sharing outside the company walls.

• An expected plan for socialization. Who will care about the results of the work and how can we make sure we're tailoring the project to generate the kinds of data that will influence your key stakeholders?