How can you research customers for product marketing?

1 Define your research goals and questions

Before you start collecting data, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to learn from your customers and why. What are the key assumptions or hypotheses you want to test or validate? What are the specific questions you want to answer? How will the insights inform your product marketing strategy and decisions? Having a well-defined research goal and question will help you choose the most suitable research method, design your research plan, and analyze your results.

2 Choose your research method and tools

Depending on your research goal and question, you can use different methods and tools to gather customer data. For example, surveys are a quantitative method that allow you to collect feedback from a large number of customers using structured questions. You can measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, preferences, or awareness by using tools like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform. Interviews are a qualitative method that allow you to have in-depth conversations with a small number of customers using open-ended questions. You can explore customer needs, motivations, challenges, or opinions with tools like Zoom, Skype, or Calendly. Focus groups are a qualitative method that allow you to observe and facilitate a group discussion among a selected group of customers using a moderator guide. These can be used to generate ideas, test concepts, or understand perceptions with tools like Zoom, Miro, or Jamboard. Lastly, user testing is a qualitative method that allows you to observe and record how customers interact with your product or prototype using tasks and scenarios. You can evaluate usability, functionality, or appeal with tools like UserTesting, Lookback, or Hotjar.

3 Recruit and segment your customers

Once you have selected your research method and tool, it is important to recruit and segment customers who represent your target market and can provide valuable insights. You can use different criteria to segment customers, such as demographics, psychographics, and behavior. Demographics refer to basic characteristics of customers, like age, gender, location, income, or education. Psychographics are psychological characteristics like attitudes, values, interests, or personality. Behavior is the way customers act or respond to your product. Sources for recruiting and segmenting customers include your own customer database or CRM system, email list or newsletter subscribers, social media followers or groups, website visitors or analytics, referral network or partners, online platforms or communities.

4 Conduct and record your research

Once you have recruited and segmented your customers, you can conduct and record your research. To ensure that you are following the best practices and ethical standards, make sure to obtain consent and permission from your customers, provide clear instructions and expectations, ask relevant and unbiased questions, listen actively and empathetically, take notes and document your research findings, and thank and reward your customers for their participation. There are various formats and tools that you can use to conduct and record your research such as online forms or surveys, audio or video calls or recordings, screen sharing or recording, transcripts or summaries, and notes or highlights.

5 Analyze and synthesize your research

The final step of customer research is to analyze and synthesize your research. To ensure that you are extracting meaningful and actionable insights from your data, you can look for patterns and trends, segment and group by customer characteristics or feedback, compare and contrast customer segments or groups, validate or invalidate assumptions or hypotheses, find gaps or opportunities in your data, and create personas or profiles of customer segments or groups. Different techniques and tools can be used to analyze and synthesize your research, such as data visualization, coding or categorization, affinity mapping or clustering, SWOT analysis or matrix, journey mapping or storytelling, and persona creation or template.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?