Richard J Pickul

Hard metrics like clicks, views, linger time, or sign-ups are invaluable for gauging campaign performance. However, relying solely on these quantitative indicators to judge the success of your messaging often falls short. Metrics can tell you what is happening, but they rarely explain why—and in the world of Product Marketing, that “why” is critical. The real insights emerge when you move closer to your target customer. Conducting qualitative interviews, presenting your messaging, and listening to how it resonates is the only reliable way to measure how well your messaging is understood. During these interviews, you can present multiple options and ask customers to share their interpretations. This approach allows you to assess not just the effectiveness of your messaging but its clarity and relevance. Successful messaging goes beyond provoking a positive response, such as sign-ups; it must also be clearly understood. After all, sign-ups from prospects who misinterpret your offering often lead to disappointment, frustration, and churn—issues that can damage your reputation quickly. By focusing on understanding and alignment, you ensure your messaging attracts the right audience for the right reasons, setting the stage for long-term success.

It’s often said that communicating with customers is crucial, and while this is true, engaging with ex-customers and prospects can be just as important too - if not more so, in some cases. Consistently speaking with a diverse set of individuals across your funnel provides a broader and deeper understanding of external perspectives on your products or services. What can happen, however, is that this is a once and done sort of affair - to be really valuable, it needs to be consistent and shareable amongst your key stakeholders. Consistent quantitative research plays a foundational role in gathering insights. Tools like automated or scheduled programs, including NPS surveys, win/loss analyses, and statistical reviews of call logs or Salesforce notes, generate rich datasets across a considerable length of time period. These datasets can reveal patterns in customer behavior and perceptions, providing actionable insights into trends, gaps and challenges. To complement this, qualitative methods allow us to dive deeper into the findings from quantitative analysis. By exploring the nuances behind the numbers, qualitative approaches foster a shared understanding of how people think about and interact with your product or service. Together, these methods create a comprehensive view, enabling data-driven decision-making and informed strategies. The key takeaway is that this should be consistent over time - knowing what your customers think today is valuable, but understanding how this changes over time is invaluable.