How do you define roles and responsibilities around product research between product management and product marketing?

• Understand the strengths of each org and what skills and resources they uniquely bring to the table and understand where the skills and resources overlap. Have a healthy discussion of RACI / RAPID to understand who owns what. If there’s resistance, encourage to explore a pilot for a quarter / half to see what works/doesn’t work and revisit it to further optimize it. Usually, folks are less resistant to a pilot since it’s not set in stone. 

• Capture when to involve who: It’s important stakeholders know how and when to engage with product research, product management, and product marketing. I’ve found it helpful to tie to existing frameworks or processes and identify when it makes sense to loop in key functions in the process. For instance, in the product development process, identifying upfront the segment, JTBD, etc. and for product launch, testing messaging, and positioning.  

• Proactive Research Quarterly Planning: As part of the quarterly planning process get together with key stakeholders (research, design, Product, PMM, finance, etc.) to identify what questions / research you need for the quarter. Then identify based on the questions / hypotheses the best way to approach it across stakeholders (e.g. quant survey, user interviews, etc.) and the owner for each initiative. Some initiatives may be iterative, where you start with qualitative research to inform hypotheses and then quantitative to validate the hypotheses, so there may be different owners based on the approach. I’ve seen too often research done piecemeal without the right stakeholder involved upfront. 

I recommend using an established framework like the Pragmatic Marketing Framework. That being said, nearly every company defines the handoff between Product and Product Marketing differently and it is an ongoing challenge. Ultimately, this comes down to the leadership between both groups to find alignment.

My preference is

Product own research about:

• The Ideal Ideal Customer Profile

• The Total Addressable Market

• The User

• The Competition's product functionality

They define why the solution is created and who it can be sold to.

Product Marketing own research about:

• The Industry

• The Buyer Personas

• The Competition's messaging

They define how to create positioning, messaging, and packaging that will connect with that audience.