Greg Hollander

This one’s all about sourcing. In a survey, I typically ask the “who are you?” question directly, and make sure I get over-sample of each crucial role. In interviews, I try to make sure I’m talking to a mix of “above the line” (only cares about ROI) and “below the line” (product user) buyers, as ...more

I don’t have any direct experience in this sector, but I’d encourage you to start by better understanding the segments of your market.  Whether through interviews, surveys, or product usage analysis (ideally some combination), you’ll need to identify the common threads between segments of your se...more

More than one persona can definitely make sense.  It just depends on the business.  Ideally you want to have one persona per “target audience”.  The balance is having enough to create coverage across the segment(s) that are strategically valuable to the business, and not too many that they become...more

For a full answer, check out my response to the question above about approaching segmentation and personas.   Specifically as it relates to launches, I try to keep of our "business-at-large" target customers in mind (ideally, we've already built product with one of those target customers in min...more

I have NOT found success testing messages out of context, like in surveys. It’s hard for respondents to truly put themselves in a buyer’s mindset. I’d recommend putting messaging into practice, in context, in ways that you can test and iterate.  For example, look at lift in conversion on landing ...more

  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 buying cycle, and currently use a competitor, with the offer of just trying to learn more about...more

I’ve typically seen segmentation and personas fall flat in one of two ways: either they were purely based on readily available internal data (usually, transaction or product-focused), or they were purely based on external interviews and didn’t come with a perspective on how representative they we...more

  If you’re looking for specific titles, I think the approach you laid out makes sense. The screener survey is super important for making sure you’re find representative folks to talk to (based on your customer base or intended customer base), and not wasting your time. For sourcing the initial ...more

As they say, the proof’s in the pudding. If you work with folks who don’t see the value, it’s only once you get people using them and benefitting from them that they’ll be asking for more.  In general I think Product Marketing is about using your customer expertise to place smart bets on the plac...more

The best way I’ve learned to think about it is that as Product Marketers you should be focused on researching the buyer, whereas UX researchers are focused on the User.  Sometimes this overlaps and results in different questions on the same content - for example, we might show the same landing pa...more