AMA: SignEasy Former Head Of Product Marketing, Daniel Palay on Market Research

First things first, I believe that a representative sampling of non-customers can actually be a better source of information than current customers, so you're in a good position there. However, I wouldn't start with a survey. I would instead start internally (product and sales) to understand who this was built for, what it can do for them, why they should care and how they react when presented with it. Quality interviews with product and sales should help you figure out your "who" for profiling. When it comes to the interviews themselves, my best advice: Ask colleagues for introductions to whomever they may know that fits your demographic. Warm introductions are sooooo much better for this purpose, and you can get pretty conversational. By the end, you'll likely walk away with insights you didn't even know you were looking for. By the way, this is what I consulted on prior to my current role, so feel free to reach out if this triggers additional questions.

That all depends on the type of research, its purpose and the impact you hope it will have. The most impactful research, for me, has always been primary market research in the form of interviews with a population representative of the intended audience. All that costs is my time ("opportunity cost" is a discussion for another day). On the other hand, sometimes the impact comes from the existence of the research in and of itself. For example, a report commissioned from a big-name research firm meant to drive awareness and credibility. Those become much more difficult to do on a budget. The most important thing is to know what you're looking to get out of the research, and then assess the various options for getting there. And yes, I realize that's a bit of a non-answer...

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 product marketing is responsible for informing, and letting sales create its own materials, then it becomes more complicated. For me, it all starts with the buyer personas (or, as I like to refer to them, stakeholder profiles). I have a particular way of approaching these, leveraging psychographic, rather than demographic, inputs and structuring outputs as stakeholder-specific business cases. They answer the question: "What does this person care about, and how can my product be related to that?" Whenever the relevant inputs change, so too does the output, and when that happens it's time to circulate to sales. These incorporate elements of competitive and market research, too, but in a way that is immediately actionable by sales (rather than a pile of information that a salesperson then has to figure out what to do with). 

I love this question, partly because it allows me to address what I consider to be one of the great misconceptions of product marketing-related research. In my opinion, and experience, your engagements need not be with existing customers and, in fact, sometimes it's better if they're not. When I was consulting, rarely would I talk to my clients' actual customers when helping them build personas. Why? Two reasons: 1. The questions I had applied equally to customers/non-customers. 2. No existing bias to creep into the conversation. Conventional wisdom says that it's important to understand your customers, and their experience with your product. And that's true. But what's more important is knowing what problems are constantly on their minds and figuring out how you can help solve them. Those problems should be universally present, so non-customers that are representative if your target demographic are just as good to talk to. They also won't be subject to the confirmation bias associated with affirming they made the right choice in picking your product in the first place.

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 product, sometimes it's an alternate type of solution and sometimes it's nothing at all. The question driving competitor analysis is always: Why? Why is it that customers are gravitating towards buying/staying with an alternative (including doing nothing new/different)? I hate feature-for-feature comparisons when it comes to competitive analysis and do whatever I can to avoid them. The exception is when one specific feature is clearly a driver for purchase, and only specific players offer it. In general, the ultimate goal is to figure out one of two things: 1. How to have a more important conversation with customers than competitors are having, so my product is associated with solving a more important problem. This is for when customers are choosing a new product and considering two or more options. 2. How to reduce switching costs and justify needed behavior change, so that a move to my product is less unsettling. This is what I need to figure out if attempting to unseat an incumbent. There are any number of ways to get there from a research standpoint, but this is what I'm typically seeking to accomplish.

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 suggest that our customers are seeing something differently than we intended. It may be a single interaction that turns us on to this, but it opens our eyes to alternate interpretations of what we do and how the market perceives us. In short, it's great for hypothesis formulation. 

The problem is that there still aren't too many good entry-level PMM roles out there (assuming you're talking about coming out of undergrad). My best advice (as someone who didn't come to PMM until they were in their mid-30s) would be: Find a role that allows you to develop the skills PMMs ultimately need to bring. Don't worry too much about industry, just make sure it's one where you're curious enough about the products, customers and problems to keep you intellectually motivated. That will serve you well when making that jump to PMM. 

Great question, and I love discussing topics like "unknown unknowns." My primary advice would be: Don't mistake "thorough enough" for "specific enough" when it comes to market research. The most thorough research in the world can still have significant blindspots if it's not specific enough. In other words, it all comes down to the questions used to preface your research. If they're overly broad and vague, the best research in the world won't capture the relevant data. Begin any research initiative knowing what question(s) you ultimately want to answer, and what you will be able to do with those answers. If you start with "I want to know as much as I can about Demographic X so I can better market to it" the outputs may tell you a lot... of the wrong, or least relevant, information. If, on the other hand, you start with: "I want to know how Demographic X evaluates the switching costs associated with enterprise software, so I can justify the necessary behavior change" you'll be able to thoroughly investigate the pivotal issue at hand.

There are two parts to this: That research which I actually conduct, and that which I lean on from elsewhere. Typically, the only research I ever conduct myself are 1:1 interviews with either customers or other relevant stakeholders. This is what I use to build my stakeholder profiles (buyer personas) and is meant to inform what's most often/intensely on these stakeholders' minds and what incentives they are responding to. Other forms of market research I leverage include professional analysts, whether working with them directly or through the reports they write and publish. I also find that colleagues internally, such as sales, customer success and product, know a ton about different aspects of the market, and my job more than anything comes down to putting all of those pieces together to learn a market and tell a story.

The part I am most experienced with is the business case justification. Indeed, I tend to build business case justifications and personas into a single narrative in order to make my story lines speak to the issues most important to each stakeholder. Primary market research (1:1 interviews) is the best way to build personas (that inform what stakeholders think about most/most often, and the incentives they're responding to). The resulting personas/profiles are by far the greatest driver of the ultimate business case. The information in those personas can also inform my colleagues in Content and Growth about what to write/produce and where to distribute it. 

Unfortunately, I'm probably not the best one to query about various tools for this - I'm the guy who still takes all his notes with a pen, has a total of four apps downloaded to his phone and refuses to own a watch with a battery, let alone a touch screen. My market research is similarly very old-school and my interviews are recorded in notebooks and analyzed by laying notes out on my desk... I'll admit, for someone whose job it is to market SaaS, I'm a little like the tailor whose pants never fit right. I'm also living proof of my philosophy that behavior change is pretty much the hardest thing to sell/adapt to...