WRITTEN BY Daniel Thai, Senior CONSULTANT at Fluvio
As a product marketer, you're the driving force behind product launches. Your success hinges on building a deep understanding of three critical areas: the market, the customer, and your product. To maintain a pulse on the market and facilitate cross-functional collaboration, you need to have comprehensive market research.
The Importance of Market Research
Without thorough market research, you're working with outdated information or, even worse, unverified assumptions. According to PMA's “State of Market Research 2023” report, 70% of B2B product marketers note competitor analysis, customer analysis, and product research as the primary motivations for diving into market research.
While third-party data can offer a high-level view of the landscape, conducting your own market research brings unique benefits:
Understand your target audience: Uncover your customers' needs and behaviors to shape a compelling message and solution.
Identify your competition: Spot your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and differentiate your product and gain a competitive edge.
Mitigate your risks: Validate ideas before launch and reduce the risk of failure. Assess the market’s readiness for new offerings, shaping a robust go-to-market strategy – or if it’s not ready, redirecting resources to a more profitable venture.
Sharpen your messaging: Crafting a compelling communication that matches your target audience’s needs becomes easier with market research.
Make more informed product decisions: Gain insights about customers’ needs and your competition that guide decisions about product features, pricing, and positioning.
Building Your Market Research Foundation
SasS industries can move at breakneck speed, so the market is always in flux. Consequently, market research should be an ongoing part of the go-to-market process. Here are some steps to help you stay ahead:
Define impactful objectives: Set measurable goals for market research projects. Regularly liaise with partners across functions to identify knowledge gaps and propose research projects to address these.
Design a consistent methodology: Choose research methods that provide the insights you want, maintaining a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. Instead of ad-hoc projects, commit to a regular research cycle – ideally monthly or quarterly – to ensure timely data.
Streamline your research processes: Continuous research can be demanding and resource-intensive, but you can save time by automating surveys and subscribing to industry newsletters to keep up with trends.
Socialize your findings and create buy-in: Translate data into actionable insights and present them to key stakeholders. They’ll become champions for research projects once they see how research can accelerate their work.
Creating Long-Lasting Impact
In an increasingly competitive SaaS landscape, thorough market research isn't a luxury — it's a necessity. It empowers you with the knowledge and confidence to make bold strategic decisions and positions your product for success across its lifecycle. The intel you gather from diligent research should inform your product's development, shape your brand’s narrative, and determine your product’s trajectory post-launch.
Research provides you with a roadmap of customer behavior and market shifts, keeping you one step ahead to adapt and respond effectively. This could look like enabling the sales team with a clear value proposition or providing the marketing team with the necessary insights to adjust campaigns to engage the right audience.
In short, market research ensures your product not only survives in a competitive market, but thrives. By making it a pivotal part of your go-to-market process, you're laying a solid foundation for success, not just for your product, but for your entire organization.