Katie Levinson

First, stakeholders should be involved in your market research before it is even started. Get their buy-in on what the goal is, key learning objectives, and the questions you’ll be asking / data you’ll be uncovering. If you are doing any qualitative interviews, ask stakeholders to be notetakers or just listen in; I’ve found creating a google sign up sheet and then inviting people to the calendar invite has been pretty helpful. Once your research is done, share it out and set up time to discuss it all together. It can also be helpful to give certain stakeholders a preview first to get a sense of implications from different teams. Encourage people to ask questions/make comments in any documents you produce.

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.

Any VoC insights/data should be shared internally, along with the “so what.” It’s not enough to just share results from a survey or what you’ve heard from your consumers - you have to package it up in a way for stakeholders to understand why it’s important, and what should be done with the information. More practically, we use data like this to help inform strategic roadmap/planning decisions, in board decks to help bring company goals and results to life, and to develop positioning, messaging and go-to-market plans.

First, it’s important to understand what the product team’s goals (and really the company level goals) are, to help you 1) focus in on the insights you need to gather and 2) package those up in a way that is meaningful to the organization. As a PMM, you would own any competitive landscape and market research, and foundational research with your target audience. The main components that you’d want to present include: * Target audience(s) and opportunity size(s), including any qualitative data you might have * Problem that you’re trying to solve * Value propositions/differentiated solution, and why they matter to your audience * Use cases (bring to life how your solution will be used by your audience) * Business goals/outcomes that might be achieved through the launch

I’ve been there, a few times! Some tips: 1. Prioritize with your key stakeholders. What is truly the #1 problem/question that your leadership team and/or product manager counterparts looking to understand/solve? Spend your time on the projects that benefit these stakeholders. 2. Hone in on your target audience when conducting your research. This will help limit the scope/breadth of your efforts, and allow you to go deeper with your consumer target that matters most. 3. See if your company subscribes to newsletters/publications/etc, and get those logins. You’d be surprised what you might already have access to at the corporate level. 4. Get scrappy with your primary research. Conduct ~10-15 interviews with your target, and make it clear that this is a priority project. You can compensate people easily with a gift card and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. You can use whatever video platform your company uses (i.e., no need to buy user research software). 5. Use google forms or survey monkey to conduct surveys, which are often free. Personally I like Qualtrics, but you may have to have an enterprise license for it.

Sure do! I like to start with some qualitative research first to help get at any nuances in messaging, especially across different audience segments. Then, run a survey (max diff is a great technique) to understand what resonates most with your different segments. If you also have the budget and/or time, running your messaging by focus groups is another good option, so you can get a deeper understanding of their reactions and sentiment.

I have found that people who come from a customer-facing role in the past, or roles that combine the analytical with the creative, make for good hires. Specifically, I look for: * Consumer-centric mindset and empathy: when thinking about problems to solve, do you put your audience at the center? How does that come to life within your role today? Have you ever pushed for something on behalf of your target audience because you cared deeply about building or communicating something to them that would help them? * Analytical skills: are you comfortable with data and research? How have you used data in the past to come to conclusions and recommendations? * Communication skills, both verbal and written: you have to be a decent writer to be a good product marketer. This does not mean you’re a copy writer, but you have to be able to clearly communicate things like value propositions, go-to-market plans, strategies, etc. You will also be managing up and out a lot in meetings, so being clear in your verbal communications is also important and what I watch out for in interviews (don’t be verbose!). * Creative thinking/problem solving: can you overcome obstacles? How do you take on challenges?

One of the things I love most about product marketing is the opportunity to help shape the consumer experience, both in product and through various marketing channels. It’s a true end-to-end lifecycle role, starting with research, developing positioning and messaging, and setting GTM strategy that all influence the success of your product and business. I also love that in order to be an excellent product marketer, you have to really understand and empathize with your target audience. A key part of the role is having conversations with your target audience, understanding their pain points and needs and translating that for your cross-functional partners. Last but not least, it’s probably one of the least silo’d roles. In order to be successful, you have to work with pretty much everyone, from of course product and other marketers, but also data science, research, business operations, analytics, and even engineering.

I'm going to focus on just the messaging piece, but within your framework you should also be teeing up your messaging with who your audience is, their key pain points/issues your product and/or company solve, and quick context on what you're launching and why (if this messaging framework is for a specific launch). In my messaging template I include: * High-level positioning * Key value propositions (usually about 3) * Reasons to believe (RTBs) i.e., product proof points that support your value props (also usually about 3) I wish I could copy and paste or upload my template here, but I can't seem to! Feel free to ping me if you'd like to take a look.

Since I work in B2C organizations, we don't actually have a B2B PMMs (or any other b2b marketers). I've seen consumer product marketing organized in a few different ways: * By vertical/business unit * By audience (if there are multiple different consumers the org serves that are different enough) * By KPI/goal * By product team (about 3:1 PM to PMM) There's no wrong or right way to do it, it depends on the size of your organization, your revenue model, and how robust the product platform is.