WRITTEN BY Tom Crist, Principal at Fluvio
As a product marketer, a keen understanding of your target audiences is pivotal to your success. One of the best ways to build your function’s Voice of Customer expertise is through market interviews.
These conversations can be held with customers, prospects, industry experts, and channel partners to provide a wealth of information to inform the strategy and decision insights you bring to the broader team at your organization. In this article, we'll walk through proven approaches to planning and executing market interviews.
Using this post, you’ll be able to:
Identify the types of market interview goals and interviewees.
Approach interview preparations based on your goals.
Know how to identify, set, and run effective interviews.
Maximize actionable results from your efforts.
PUT INTERVIEWS IN CONTEXT
PMMS ARE UNIQUELY POSITIONED TO OWN MARKET INTERVIEWS
Make the most of this opportunity by designing your interview strategy to align to the greatest needs within your organization. Market interviews are essential conversations outside the “four walls” of your business. As product marketers (PMMs) are one of the more objective parties in your organization – i.e. your conversation isn’t tied to revenue targets or enhancement requests, you’re far more likely to get unvarnished feedback from clients. So, you’re in the driver’s seat – if you’re able to keep interviews 1:1 and exclude other team members, do so.
MARKET INTERVIEWS DRIVE MARKET INSIGHTS
Skipping or conducting ineffective market interviews can have serious consequences. This includes over-reliance on other teams for insights, incomplete data, and, ultimately, less-impactful messaging. According to the 2023 PMA State of Product Marketing Report, 70% of product marketers speak with customers at least once per month. If you’re not regularly hearing directly from your buyers and other industry leaders, how can you expect to be confident in making recommendations to your team?
REMEMBER: QUALITATIVE DATA IS JUST ONE INPUT
It’s also important to note that market interview programs are rarely standalone; they are typically part of a broader market research program to better understand your target market. Ideally, qualitative interview data should be combined with qualitative product and CRM data, third-party research, surveys, and internal stakeholder interviews to produce outputs such as market research reports, Voice of Customer (VoC) reports, Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), personas, buyer journeys, competitive analyses, or simply to stay informed.
EFFECTIVE PRE-WORK = PRODUCTIVE CALLS
BUILD A PROSPECTUS
Don’t drive straight into conversations without putting in the pre-work needed to get the most from your efforts. We find it best to create a research prospectus in written format, making it simple to both reference the goals of your program and socialize/validate them with core stakeholders in your organization
What should a prospectus help you do?
Define the project. In plain language, explain why you’re embarking on this effort, and what outcomes you aim to inform.This project will most likely require other teams to assist you in securing interviews. Ensure they understand what’s at stake.
Outline hypotheses to test. Write out the 1-3 hypotheses you want to validate, and triple-check with stakeholders to ensure these assumptions are in line with their reality. Effective hypotheses can be answered with a clear "YES" or "NO" after the interviews.
Determine audiences. Take a first stab at your target outreach of this program – considering the right percentages by segments, revenue, expertise, level, and more – and then validate with revenue and product teams. A critical question to ask: will this mix help you answer your hypotheses?
Detail outstanding questions to answer. What are supporting items the business needs to know more about? Capture them here and let them help inform the structure of your interview calls. These may or may not overlap directly with your question guide, but are intended to be more general.
Establish a defined timeline. Predicting interview volume and velocity can be difficult. Make your project time-bound to drive clarity and encourage urgency from other stakeholders.
EXAMPLE HYPOTHESES:
Perception. We believe SMB prospects perceive our offering as among the top 3 solutions to consider in the market.
Ecosystem. We believe current customers are filling gaps in our marketing functionality with other point solutions.
Buyer behavior: We believe prospects are unlikely to buy without clear ROI, but also struggle to reliably generate supporting metrics.
SOLIDIFY QUESTION GUIDES
Now that you’ve aligned on the general goals and approach, it's time to create question guides to run streamlined, effective interviews. Depending on your interview target audience, you may need multiple guides tailored to each interviewee type (current customer, prospect, market expert, or partner). A guide sets the tone for the call, removes ambiguity, builds trust, creates continuity, and flexes to accommodate unexpected insights. If you have multiple interviewee types, consider question variants.
START SOURCING EARLY – AND DON’T STOP UNTIL YOU’RE DONE
When it comes to sourcing interviewees, leverage multiple channels to hit your goals. While the following are common ways to build your interview meeting pipeline, your organization may offer unique methods of outreach.
Lean on customer teams. Leverage targeted asks to Customer Success Managers (CSMs) using CRM data and NPS scores to narrow down your requests. If you haven’t overtaxed insights from Customer Advisory Boards, these may represent easier “gets” to jumpstart your process.
Use your existing databases. Use targeted emails to gain interest from appropriate leads and customers in your database, making sure to employ thoughtful segmentation and consulting with demand generation and customer communication teams.
Ask well-connected team members. For customers, experts, and partners, connect with your cross-functional stakeholders and leaders, who often have relationships with valuable buyers and thought leaders.
Roll up your sleeves and send those InMails. Consider utilizing LinkedIn for reaching out to prospects and experts.
Sourcing is almost always the most difficult part of any market interview program, but don’t be discouraged! Continue to leverage multiple channels, don’t say no to new interviews until you’re closed, and know that no-shows are part of the process.
If you source early and often, you’ll minimize interview pipeline woes and might even surprise and delight your teams with early results. And always use a consistently-updated shared spreadsheet to track interviewee status, maintain organization, showcase team contributions (or highlight who hasn’t helped yet), and make access to recordings and notes easy.
Still having trouble with sourcing? Try:
Using the last question in qualitative surveys to ask for an in-depth interview with your team
Simplifying the booking process with tools like Calendly
When appropriate, offering token cash or gift card incentives to participate
GET THE MOST FROM EACH INTERVIEW
DON’T IGNORE THE DAY BEFORE
To ensure you’re productive in each call, you’ll need to do your homework ahead of time. Research demographic and firmographic attributes of the interviewee by exploring their website, review sites, CRM data, LinkedIn profiles, or other available sources. Additionally, consult their Customer Success Manager (CSM) or stakeholder for valuable insights that can be verified during the interview.
Maximize your show rate by sending a friendly email reminder to the prospect. This serves as a gentle nudge to keep the appointment top of mind. If you’ve used a tool such as Calendly to secure the meeting slot, be aware of overlaps with automated notifications and adjust your reminder timing accordingly.
As a final preparation step, customize your question guide in advance. Have your call guide document pre-filled with your interviewee-specific research elements and ready for reference during the interview. This ensures a smooth and organized conversation.
DURING AND AFTER THE CALL
There’s no secret sauce to interview day. If you’ve completed the pre-work, effective conversation will come naturally. You’ve put in the effort, now it’s time to extract the value.
Focus on getting the basics right:
When the call starts, always request the right to record the conversation. If they agree, be sure to also activate transcription functionality, if available.
Take copious rough notes during the call. You can focus on refining and cleaning them up following the interview.
Ensure you are in a quiet, distraction-free environment to facilitate a clean, crisp call
And, of course, let the conversation guide you – your question guide is there to make the experience as consistent as possible across interviewees, but don’t pass up opportunities to dive into unique, valuable insights and tangents in depth.
Once the interview concludes, don’t put off getting your thoughts together. Instead, summarize your findings immediately. Update your call notes, update your interview tracker, capture the recording on a shared server (so that it can’t expire), and share snippets of any notable insights with your team. Lastly, express gratitude to any relevant CSMs or stakeholders that helped set up the call, and inform them that the interview is complete.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Market interviews are one of the most powerful information-gathering tools available to product marketers. They give you the ammunition you need to contribute to roadmap development, critical business decisions, and gauging product-market fit. While the interview day itself is crucial, remember: for good programs, 90% of the work is in the preparation, goal setting, targeting, and sourcing of the right interviewees.
Don't hesitate to conduct more interviews until you’re satisfied with the insights you’ve gathered. Just like with sales opportunities, building a healthy pipeline of scheduled interviews is essential. Be persistent until you've met your goals, and don't be discouraged by the inevitable no-shows.
When will you be ready to wrap up the project? Trust your instincts. You'll know you've gathered enough insights when you start hearing similar answers repeatedly.
Communication is key throughout this process. Keep your cross-functional counterparts informed about when you need their assistance, when interviews they helped source are complete, and when you uncover major insights. They’ll thank you for it, and you’ll build anticipation for the fully-formed insights you’ll deliver to the team.
NEED RELIABLE, TRUSTED MARKET INSIGHTS?
Fluvio product marketing consulting engagements are rooted in leveraging market insights that matter. Reach out to our expert team and let’s discuss how we can help.
Or, learn more about how we’ve consulted for leading tech organizations to tackle their thorniest hypotheses and implement best-in-class product marketing frameworks.