How do you delineate the responsibilities of market research between Product Marketing and User Research?

This is an awesome question! 

I think PMM has a responsibility along several stages of market research development. At a high level, User Research experts know what methodology, stimuli and structure to use for reseach - aka, they should take over once the need for research has been established and agreed upon cross-functionally (PM, PMM, Design). 

I expect PMMs on my team lead the following: 

1/ Validate the need for research. Do we have this data elsewhere? Have we conducted an extensive audit (covering competitors, experience, etc.)

2/ Define the sample. Who should we talk to? Current users? Churned? A representative sample of who we're trying to target? 

3/ Help User Research develop the research guide. What pain points are we wanting to evaluate? What do we want to confirm / disprove?

4/ Turn research findings into implications for messaging and general GTM strategy and execution.  

PMM can bring the perspective from beyond the user. What are the markets, influencers, our executives, analysts, and competitors saying. If PMM is the subject matter expert – if they have a mind map for all the places where knowledge lives inside and outside the organization, then PMM again is the hub enabling a team of researchers. 

An example I recently had was for a maturity model. An internal research was tasked to create a maturity model for our customers. I knew of several other maturity models create by industry experts (some good, some lame) – and had a few customer journey models that we'd been experimenting with for various campaigns and customer pitches. That got her started, and then when she had a solid first version she came back to our team for feedback. Once she got to a final version, we then brought that to other teams to use it for customer success and onboarding, turned it into a thought leadership campaign, worked with community teams to share it with users, and shared to analysts that had create those originals thanking them for their contribution. Hub. Spoke. Flywheel. :)

I focus on creating a collaborative environment with market research, user research, and analytics teams as they provide critical inputs for product marketing to function. PMM owns defining the research objectives and the business questions, while the research and analytics teams are the subject matter experts on defining the specific methodologies and taking the lead on execution. There is of course input throughout from PMM, but we leverage the expertise of our research teams to ensure we get high quality results from our efforts. 

Build a mutual goal and you will be on a great path to a collaborative partnership. The main difference between the two is that PMMs need to think about the broader market which includes the buyer or the person signing the check (to build a strategic GTM model) and the UX team needs to think about the user of the product and their experience (to build a great product). In smaller companies, that can be the same person, in larger enterprise companies, they are different.

Typically, PMMs have a unique view across the business so they can see across products, across customers, and across the market. PMMs can bring ideas to UX about what group of users you need insight into. Example questions you could work with UX on: Do we need to know more about early adopter customers? or laggards? Does the business need more insight into a specific target user group? Do we need a focus group to test new product naming?

UX can also bring back information about user behavior that helps validate your positioning and competitive differentiation. There may also be information here that informs your GTM strategy.

Great question, and one we’ve been discussing at Handshake. It’s important to establish a strong collaborative partnership with UXR, ideally with shared goals. Every company is different, but at a startup with limited resources and a lot of work to do, we would outline our needs for the quarter, and figure out who was best to tackle the research needs. We would then share each other’s research briefs and ask for input on learning objectives as well as questions.

While both PMM and UXR work on foundational research, UXR also has some pretty specific skill sets that PMM generally does not, such as developing concept tests, creating questions/discussion guides that take users through a product flow, and a keen eye for how research impacts design. UXR typically partners closely with design and PM on research while PMM partners closely with PM and market research - if that function is up and running at a company.

PMM will generally also bring in the lens of the market and competitive landscape, as well as conduct quantitative research when there isn’t a market research team in place. A market research team can really help bring quantitative rigor to an organization.

Before we answer this one, here’s a little context about market research at Glassdoor. Our market research team is called “Market Insights” and it sits on the PMM team. Market Insights projects almost always have a strong PMM lead.

1. Before product built, PMM/Market Insights takes it; once built, UX takes it. There are some exceptions, but the reason for this criteria is that market research is more in tune with the attitudes, wants, and needs of the total audience, which helps us identify opportunities for growth. UX is especially helpful when you’re looking for opportunities to deepen engagement with specific products and experiences that already exist.
2. When UX and PMM work together, they can paint a clearer picture of who the target audience is and how they will experience your product. Some best practices that have worked well for us as we collaborate with our UX colleagues:
1. Meeting regularly to review quarterly research agendas and recent insights
2. Inviting each other to report share-outs
3. Including each other in insights-driven workshops
3. Bonnie’s pro tip: Map out your organization’s product development lifecycle and highlight key areas for research. Then determine which research team has the expertise and resources to tackle that phase of research and how they can package it up for the perfect handoff when it’s time to tag in the other team.
4. Sophia’s pro tip: As you’re considering which team should lead the research, consider which team is best positioned to level up the product offering and activate the insights gleaned from the research.

Great question. 

PMM and UXR are equal partners. Typically PMM is responsible for drafting the project brief which provides context and the learning objective. UXR recommends the research approach, the tools, and designs the execution brief. PMM will review the questions to ensure it aligns with our goals. UXR will run the studies, synthesize the data, and present the findings, most often to the extended team. 

With that - I want to share credit with Kris Tyler. In addition to refining my responses in this AMA, Kris has been my co-lead on all other projects this year: be it Market Analysis, sentiment tracking, surveys, conjoint - you name it. She's a Star among Stars.