What's the best way to partner with product on market research to help with gathering insights and buy-in?

Here are the top areas I focus on to partner with product on market research and gathering intel:

Alignment:

• Align Goals: Ensure both teams understand what questions need to be answered and what outcomes are expected.

• Define Success Metrics: Agree on what success looks like for both teams, whether it's obtaining specific insights, validating hypotheses, or developing actionable strategies.

Collaboration:

• Joint Research Plan: Develop a research plan together, outlining the methodologies, target audience, and timeline. This plan should integrate both market and product perspectives.

• Regular Meetings: Schedule regular check-ins to discuss progress, challenges, and findings. This keeps both teams engaged and aligned.

Share:

• Shared Expertise: Utilize the product team's deep knowledge of the product and the market team's understanding of customer needs and market trends. This combination can lead to more comprehensive insights.

• Data Sharing: Share data and insights openly. Market teams can provide customer feedback, competitive analysis, and market trends, while product teams can share user data, feature usage, and technical feasibility.

Co-chair surveys & instrumentation:

• Surveys and Interviews: Collaborate on creating surveys, interview guides, and other research instruments to ensure they capture relevant information for both teams.

• User Testing: Work together on user testing sessions, where market research can observe and gather qualitative data while product teams can focus on usability and functionality.

Joint analysis sessions:

• Joint Analysis Sessions: Conduct analysis sessions together to interpret data. Different perspectives can lead to more nuanced insights and a deeper understanding of the findings.

• Actionable Insights: Focus on synthesizing findings into actionable insights that can inform product development and marketing strategies.

Targeting/Tailored Comms:

• Tailored Communication: Tailor communication of research findings to the needs of different stakeholders. Ensure that insights are presented in a way that highlights their relevance to both product development and market positioning.

• Storytelling: Use storytelling techniques to make the data more compelling and easier to understand. Highlight the implications for both product and marketing strategies.

There are a ton of great tools out there to help with the aforementioned. Some of my favorites include: loom, prodpad, typeform/survey monkey, clozd, notion, fullstory - to name a few.