Market Research

Head of Product Marketing at Notion • February 4

Here is the competitive intelligence mission statement I've used for several years (repeat from previous post but will add more detail). “Define ourselves based on problems we solve and value we pro

66 Saves

Jameelah Calhoun

Global Head of Product Marketing at Eventbrite | Formerly Amazon, Ex-Amex • March 9

Thanks for asking this question. The exercise of defining your competitive set is a critical, but at times under-emphasized aspect of conducting research. There are three primary modes for competitive

27 Saves

Daniel Palay

Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms • March 30

Interesting question about how I define "compeititor" in and of itself. I tend to look at competitors as barriers that keep people from buying the product I'm selling. Sometimes its a comparable produ

23 Saves

Joe Abbott

Head of Product Marketing at Ramp | Formerly Zendesk, ThoughtSpot, Oracle • June 22

This one is tricky because I think there's a tendency to want to boil the ocean and do everything for every competitor. Some combination of market research and competitive win/loss analysis should hel

Kevin Garcia

Head of Product Marketing at Retool • June 24

I think competitors are important, but developing your own unique perspective of who you are, what makes you different, and who you serve is 10-100x more important. A short-ish anecdote: I used to wo

Vikas Bhagat

Director, Head of Product Marketing at Webflow • July 13

"Competitor aware, customer obsessed" is something that I've internalized when thinking about competitors. Competitors are a good thing - it validates your space, your product-market fit and the marke

7 Saves

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • August 12

Depends on how competitive your market is. You can create a list of competitors and create segments based on different variables that are important for your product or business. For instance direct co

10 Saves

Ambika Aggarwal

Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp • September 23

For smaller teams that may not have a built out CI team or CI PMM it can get tough to manage competitive research, positioning, creation enablement and dissemination of assets on top of everything el

Grant Shirk

Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco Meraki | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few. • April 13

My primary philosophy around competitors is a little different than most: focus 80% of your energy on what makes you great as a product or service, and the rest on what anyone else is doing. I've wo

Harsha Kalapala

Vice President Product Marketing at AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • July 7

There are a few types of competitors to think about: Tier 1: Prime Competition - Those who compete for the same dollars for a very similar product. You often end up in feature battles with them and e

Alex McDonnell

Market Intelligence Lead at Airtable • September 20

The goal of our work is to help our company build and express our competitive differentiation. A competitor is anyone who has a similar value prop for the same audience. Not necessarily the same solut

Sophia (Fox) Le

Product Marketing at Glassdoor • September 27

In the most simpliest terms, a direct competitor is solving a simliar or same pain point as you are. One goal in conducting a competitive analysis as part of your market research is to identify points

Andrew McCotter-Bicknell

Head of Competitive Intelligence at ClickUp • October 18

1. Revenue impact 2. Product innovation I used to only focus on the first point. That's an important one—and if you have limited bandwidth, I'd recommend you start there first. These are the vendors

Adrienne Joselow

Director of Product Marketing at HubSpot • December 6

This is a great question because: fortune favors the focused. In our world, there are thousands of SaaS offerings on the market. Many offer competitive products and capabilities to us. However, only a

7 Saves

Sean Lauer

Senior Director, Product Marketing at MURAL • February 16

A competitor is anything that can be substituted for the value that your product offers. Sometimes, that's a product with a very similar feature set. Sometimes, it's a product that is designed for a d

Greg Gsell

VP, Product Marketing at Attentive • March 23

'I think a competitor is anyone who is in or adjacent to your space. Said another way, a competitor is a vendor that can cause confusion or slow down your sales cycle for some reason. There are a few

How do you create competitive intel that is really beneficial to sales (i.e. they actually read and use it)?

27 answers

Mary (Shirley) Sheehan

Head of Lightroom Product Marketing at Adobe • September 13

I’ve had the best success with easy to digest “competitive battlecards” for sales. The simpler, the better. They should give basic company info, pricing, and how to handle objections. For larger sales

103 Saves

Greg Hollander

VP of GTM & Strategy at Novi • December 20

This is a little meta, but the best advice I have is to treat your sellers as your customers. What would you do to try to understand how to get a customer to use your product? Do some research - via

83 Saves

2 Replies

Fiona Finn

Director of Product Marketing at jane.app • July 5

Timeliness and accessiblity are also key to providing value to your team. Providing a list of month-end/ quarter-end killshots speaking to the most up-to-date intel and positioning you have on focu

36 Saves

Mindy Regnell

Product Marketing Manager at BigCommerce • July 13

Getting sales buy in on what type of information they want early on can be really helpful (it can also be useful if they change their mind later on). Starting with a proof of concept then circulating

60 Saves

Ryan Sorley

Founder at DoubleCheck Research • July 24

Real time competitive insight direct from buyers. Easy way to collect this information is via a win/loss interviews. Simply ask questions regarding who else they considered and why. Dig into areas suc

37 Saves

2 Replies

Benjamin Scheerer

Senior Principal Product Marketing Manager at Red Hat • July 31

Agree w/ comments above. Easily digestible chunks of data presented in a battle card format (2 pages) is very effective. Remember to keep it brief and concise (e.g. 3 bullet points per topic). Ther

47 Saves

Vikas Bhagat

Director, Head of Product Marketing at Webflow • July 13

Great question and one that really hits home for me since I used to do competitive intel while sitting in the sales organization at Medallia. The best approach I've seen is first identifying the top c

27 Saves

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • August 12

As with any other sales content, find out how your specific sales team likes to consume content. This will give you an idea of the format, as well as the channels in which to share this information. T

36 Saves

Ambika Aggarwal

Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp • September 23

This is a great question and one that generally takes refinement over time based on feedback from sales. Here's what you can do to make sure your competitive intel is beneficial and leveraged by your

45 Saves

Vanessa Thompson

Senior Director, Product Marketing at Twilio • December 2

Competitive Battlecards are the best asset for sales but remember to KISS (keep it stupid simple). Sales are often pressed for time so how can you clearly pick apart your differentiators (vs the compe

58 Saves

Marina Ben-Zvi

Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Productboard • December 14

Love this question, because if sales doesn’t use your competitive intel then what’s the point of investing time at the expense of your other competing priorities. A few things I recommend: Work with

20 Saves

Alex Lobert

Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion at Spotify • March 16

When gathering competitive intel, I find the most important thing is to have the goal for it clearly mapped out. Why does Sales (or product) want the competitive intel? What will they use it for? If y

16 Saves

Morgan Molnar

Director of Product Marketing, Global Insights Solutions @ Momentive at Momentive (SurveyMonkey) | Formerly SurveyMonkey, Nielsen • March 23

Hah! You kinda answered your own question here. Create competitive intel that is easy to read and applicable to how Sales will use it! Sales doesn't want a novel about each competitor. They want high

16 Saves

Grant Shirk

Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco Meraki | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few. • April 13

This is a fun one. An aphorism we could coin here is that "Competitive battlecards are just like datasheets. Every salesperson desperately wants a new one, but nobody ever uses them." The challenge

37 Saves

Sherrie Nguyen (she/her)

Director of Product Marketing at Indeed • July 28

I first start with really solid positioning, which should clearly identify how your offering is differentiated from other competitors in the market and lean into that. Second, I listen and shadow sale

Jeffrey Vocell

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • August 4

First of all, it needs to be rooted in the day-to-day realities of sales and the conversations their having. If Product Marketing is coming up with competitive intel in a vacuum without input from Sal

Christina Lhi

Head Of Product Marketing at Square • September 14

Like any good marketer, it's about knowing your end customer and how they would like to consume information. All sales teams are different and finding the right communication methods (format, frequenc

Andrew McCotter-Bicknell

Head of Competitive Intelligence at ClickUp • October 18

Get them involved. Interview them to learn about their encounters with competitors. Here are things that I regularly ask my sellers. Which competitors are coming up most in conversations with buyers

Jennifer Kuvlesky

Director of Product Marketing at Snow Software • November 16

In my experience, the best way to communicate with sales people is to speak with them. They are so busy, and I find they don't read emails from PMMs, especially emails not directed to them personally.

Anneliese Niebauer

Starting something new at • November 20

One practice we had to inform competitive positioning strategy and enablement was analysing Closed Lost reasons in deals where we lost to a competitor. Here's an example (sorry some details need to r

Adrienne Joselow

Director of Product Marketing at HubSpot • December 6

Make it snackable. Make it easy to remember. Make it impactful. Show the impact of reps applying this to amplify awareness and usage. Reps spend their days diving into a multitude of different busines

12 Saves

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • January 18

3 words - length, ROI, searchability. Length: Sales reps and customers alike want things to be short and to the point. I like to keep it to a punchy header with 2-3 supporting bullet points if possi

Dave Steer

Vice President of Product Marketing at GitLab • January 30

I think of competitive intel like product managers think about their product. The first step is to listen to your stakeholders (or internal customers) from sales, product, customer success and marke

Adina Schoeneman

Senior Product Marketing Professional at | Formerly Aware, Datto • February 6

Battlecards, training documentation, or whatever medium you choose to deliver this information should be built specifically for sales as the audience in mind. A couple quick tips: 1. Keep information

Sean Lauer

Senior Director, Product Marketing at MURAL • February 16

One of the key things to consider with any information provided to a sales team is making sure you answer two questions: Why does it matter? What should they do with it? When it comes to competitive

🤘 Dejan Gajsek

Co-founder of Grow+Scale at Grow + Scale • February 19

If you're banking that your sales teams will use your materials then you ask them first! Start with the top 2-3 sales reps or a sales manager who has a low-down on the biggest objections and reasons

Greg Gsell

VP, Product Marketing at Attentive • March 23

I try to use the Pyramid approach to all content. Start with just absolute essential information, then expand. This way sales reps are able to capture the exact right amount of information in the most

How do you use market research to inform priority verticals to go after in your go to market efforts?

12 answers

Agustina Sacerdote

Global Head of PMM and Content Marketing, TIDAL at Square • March 24

I don't actually use market research for that, is the short answer. If we believe that our solution is well suited for a particular vertical, we have the budget to invest in GTM to capture business i

74 Saves

Jenna Langer

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Solutions at Matterport • December 29

There are a few questions you need to answer to determine if it's worth targeting this new vertical: - Do you have product-market fit? Are you solving a real problem for this vertical? - What is the s

51 Saves

Head of Product Marketing at Notion • February 4

Ensure verticalization aligns well with core competencies, market perception, ability to deliver and differentiation. If you do not clearly understand the definition of the target vertical, the trends

65 Saves

Vanessa Thompson

Senior Director, Product Marketing at Twilio • December 2

When looking to identify target verticals, I always prefer a data driven approach. I'd work up a detailed analysis exercise and build a vertical based TAM. I have a go-to bubble chart that I like to d

12 Saves

Vishal Naik

Product Marketing Lead at Google | Formerly DocuSign • January 25

Market research is a pretty valuable data point in terms of prioritizing verticals (or any other segmentation slice), but so too is your product ownership point of view and your internal usage data. S

14 Saves

Susan "Spark" Park

Head of Product Marketing, VR Work Experiences, Oculus at Meta • February 3

Instead of a "vertical focus" go forward with a New Audience focus so you can leverage the 5A GTM framework , and ensure you're thinking through a consumers' need. Also, if you focus on a new user, y

35 Saves

Harish Peri

Head of Product Marketing - Security, Developer Services & Hyperforce at Salesforce • April 5

Making the assumption here that vertical = industry. Industry definition - which taxonomy are you using. NAICS, SIC, propietary, DUNS, Clearbit? This is important because there is a lot of nuance h

20 Saves

Dave Steer

Vice President of Product Marketing at GitLab • July 13

I believe that market insights are the #1 core product marketing capability. Literally everything – from positioning and messaging to the products and capabilities you deliver to the market – flows fr

12 Saves

Arianna Schatzki-Mcclain

Group Manager, Product Marketing at Lyra Health • August 3

Market research is near and dear to my heart and at the core of any strong product and go-to-market plan. I have many examples of how you can use research to inform vertical strategy, but my first tip

Michele Nieberding 🚀

Head of Solutions Marketing at Iterable • January 11

When we first started to verticalize our solution, we looked at: TAM (total addressable market) and SAM (sellable addressable market--what is realistic that YOUR company can sell in to?) CARR Win Rat

Amanda Groves

Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23

We aim to diversify our revenue strategy with dynamic and compelling GTM campaigns. We use market research from internal and external sources to fuel decisions. Internal market research comes from our

Hien Phan

Director of Product Marketing at Amplitude • March 15

I'm biased. I'm a former consultant and market researcher— market research always follows priority verticals and market efforts. Depending on the stage of your organization, you might not have the

How do I get others (not PMM) bought in on the value of market research?

6 answers

Bonnie Chiurazzi

Head of Market Insights at Glassdoor • September 27

First of all, *hugs*. I've worked on both the vendor and client sides of research, so I've had the opportunity to work with many different teams with varying levels of interest in market research. Whe

Lisa Dziuba

Head of Product Marketing at LottieFiles | Formerly WeLoveNoCode (made $3.6M ARR), Abstract, Flawless App (sold) • September 30

Always come with data insights proving how your research will drive some numbers up.

Lisa Dziuba

Head of Product Marketing at LottieFiles | Formerly WeLoveNoCode (made $3.6M ARR), Abstract, Flawless App (sold) • September 30

Always come with data insights proving how your research will drive some numbers up.

Pete Schott

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Zenput • October 4

Why do you want to do the research? For marketing content/reports? Show the CMO and CEO all of the ways that you'll be able to get value out of it e.g. packaging up into a report for demand gen, web

Randi Lee

Head of Product Marketing at Fundbox • October 25

Make key stakeholders part of the process before you launch studies, and afterwards, leverage internal communications channels and technology to bring the voice of the customer and your learnings aliv

Shideh Rahmanian

Senior Product Marketing Manager at AppDirect • February 21

Try to understand where any resitance might be coming from and be sure to tie your research to business outcomes. Digital transformation in market research A variety of self-serve tools exist today

What's your best practice for making sure competitive, personas, and market research info is always up-to-date, moving from product marketing to sales materials?

14 answers

Abdul Rastagar

GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach at • May 7

This really requires a dedicated effort and should be owned by Product Marketing. Different industries change at different paces – in some cases, a quarterly review process is needed, in other case, i

44 Saves

Roopal Shah

Head (VP) of Global Enablement at Benchling • May 18

Your CMS (content management system) should have some sort of archiving parameters in place that should remind the PMM team when things get stale. With that said, all the reminders in the world won't

70 Saves

Head of Product Marketing at Notion • February 3

Align on needs and get buy-in on the program from key stakeholders upfront, otherwise, you will just be reactive and the expectations will be that every request is handled and every asset is up to dat

51 Saves

Daniel Palay

Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms • March 30

In the "real world" this is a function of whose responsibility sales collateral is. If it's product marketing, the answer is simple: Supply new collateral when it's time for an update. However, if pro

22 Saves

Charlene Wang

Vice President & Head of Marketing at Fin.com • April 7

There's two parts to keeping all the above content up to date, including content creation and content delivery: Content Creation: This is all about capacity planning of the Product Marketing team on

30 Saves

Kevin Garcia

Head of Product Marketing at Retool • June 24

Make it jointly owned. Your team will (almost certainly) not grow as fast as sales, success, support, etc. Even talented PMMs struggle to keep these things relevant and useful for every season of the

Rajendran Nair

Vice President Product Marketing at Medallia • July 20

This really depends on your product and industry. Let me outline a framework with four elements: The customer perspective The competitor perspective The technology perspective, and The marketplace p

11 Saves

Jessica Scrimale

Senior Director of Product Management at Oracle • August 17

This is tough, but you can prevent foundational PMM assets from going stale by having (1) defined processes (e.g., establishing which components of your market intelligence are most important to updat

11 Saves

Alex Lobert

Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion at Spotify • March 16

I'm big on updating information based on actions that need to be taken / decision that need to be made. When it comes to market research and personas, clarify what decisions you need to make based o

17 Saves

Nikhil Balaraman

Senior Director Product Marketing at Roofstock • March 21

Starting with the customer insight is always the #1 job of a product marketer. Ideal customer profile, target verticals, buyer personas, etc these are things that aren’t going to change on a weekly or

11 Saves

Jennifer Kuvlesky

Director of Product Marketing at Snow Software • November 16

The good news is sales people notice when materials are out of date, and will let you know it is time for a refresh. :) Joking aside, here are some proactive tips on how to keep materials up to date.

Daniel Kuperman

Head of Core Product Marketing & GTM, ITSM Solutions at Atlassian • December 20

You have to establish a cadence of updates for different assets, which will vary based on how they are used and your market dynamics. Personas don't change often, so revisting them every 6 months migh

19 Saves

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • January 18

Talk with at least 1 customer a week and you'll never be surprised by any changes! I like to follow Gartner and Forrester for changes in the market, as well as keeping a pulse on new PLG companies who

🤘 Dejan Gajsek

Co-founder of Grow+Scale at Grow + Scale • February 17

Outdated information is almost worse than having no information since you might be making decisions from data sources that are no longer relevant or valid. To make sure this doesn't happen to you, c

Do you have any tips for performing market research with limited resources—both manpower and financial?

We don't have enough people to conduct lots of interviews or the money to hire a research firm or pay for reports they've already created. How can a one-person PMM team best spend their time and efforts to do effective market research that informs product, marketing, and sales strategies?

5 answers

Head of Product Marketing at Notion • February 4

I feel your pain! - Templates - Prioritize with execs what will drive impact + Set expectations internal - Google alerts One other thing to think about...How can you use market research for multiple

58 Saves

2 Replies

Karen Sheffer

Director of Product Marketing at Hibob • February 7

Just like everything with limited resources, it's all about prioritizing. First, your resources. Can you take the time to do one deep dive per month? Per quarter? How vital is the research to impactim

Dee Dee Wolverton

Product & Instructor Marketing, Director at Udemy • December 15

It truly does take a team to develop a strong pov on the market - a PMM can drive it, but you'll want other internal subject-matter experts to contribute. I'd recommend first aligning w/your leadersh

Katie Levinson

Head of Marketing at | Formerly LinkedIn, Credit Karma, Handshake • February 3

I’ve been there, a few times! Some tips: Prioritize with your key stakeholders. What is truly the #1 problem/question that your leadership team and/or product manager counterparts looking to understa

🤘 Dejan Gajsek

Co-founder of Grow+Scale at Grow + Scale • February 16

Oof. I feel seen. If you're in an early-stage startup or if your department is usually quite small then you will have to rely on tools. If budget is the limit, fret not, there are tons of free options

What's your experience with getting participants to speak to you for win/loss interviews?

1 answer

What ways do you use your Voice of Customer insights / data internally?

7 answers

Abdul Rastagar

GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach at • May 7

VOC is used in a wide variety of ways. Some examples include guiding product development, building personas, message refinement, content development, targeting campaigns, sales training, educating cus

34 Saves

Daniel Palay

Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms • March 30

Voice of Customer insights are a great way to 1) see trends among customers (if enough are saying the same thing) and 2) check our own collective understanding of what we do. Sometimes, VoC will sugge

19 Saves

Dee Dee Wolverton

Product & Instructor Marketing, Director at Udemy • December 15

Ideally, in everything :) Product Marketers should aim to approach our work from the perspective of the consumer, and frequently bring that view into internal conversations. This is why we closely eva

14 Saves

Katie Levinson

Head of Marketing at | Formerly LinkedIn, Credit Karma, Handshake • February 3

Any VoC insights/data should be shared internally, along with the “so what.” It’s not enough to just share results from a survey or what you’ve heard from your consumers - you have to package it up in

10 Saves

Alex Lobert

Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion at Spotify • March 16

We use voice of customer insights to inform messaging and positioning as well as our product roadmap. At Spotify, we have monthly syncs with our partnerships and sales team to just discuss feedback fr

10 Saves

Jennifer Kuvlesky

Director of Product Marketing at Snow Software • November 16

I've used VoC insights to improve marketing messages, campaign focus and customer experiences. Here are some examples. Customer onboarding: Analyzing support case trends and feedback from product re

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • January 18

The best use of VoC is usually with informing the product roadmap with PLG companies. I find that customer advocacy programs are better for more Enterprise-level roadmapping and selling. Great examp

Any tips for recruiting good enterprise decision maker interviewees for persona interviews? Where do you hunt? Do you compensate them?

3 answers

Sherrie Nguyen (she/her)

Director of Product Marketing at Indeed • July 28

I love this question. I've done this in a really scrappy way at a start-up and then approached this with significant budgets at a larger company. The scrappy way was to identify a couple leads, reach

7 Saves

Jeffrey Vocell

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • December 13

A few tips to get to the right decision makers: Look in your own database and reach out! Existing customers, as long as they're happy with you, are generally low-hanging fruit and fairly easy to reac

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • January 18

Compensation will depend based on the size of the organization and their role. For example, a Director of Product at a 25 person company will be a lot easier to get a hold of and compensate than a Dir

Can you share your experience or advice about buyer research? I'm thinking of what you could learn from decision makers before they've become customers.

3 answers

Greg Hollander

VP of GTM & Strategy at Novi • December 20

This one’s a sensitive one, since it’s tough (and not necessarily good for the business) to get in the middle of a sales process. I’ve found most success reaching out to folks cold who are not in a

22 Saves

Sherrie Nguyen (she/her)

Director of Product Marketing at Indeed • July 28

Such a wonderful question. I'm a big proponent of doing this. First, identify your target market and job titles of your target buyer. Then interview them to get a good understanding of the problems th

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • January 18

Buyer research comes in two forms - existing customers and prospects. Tap into your existing customers to learn what really sticked during the sales cycle and what their 'aha' moment was in the prod