Customer Research: what product and marketing need from it and why they should converge

Key points:

• Across the product lifecycle, we undertake customer research at different points:
  • to explore and research problems to solve;
  • as part of co-creation and validation with customers; and
  • retrospectively, as we observe our product in the market and can gather actionable feedback and insights.
• Your product and marketing functions should work closely across the product lifecycle, though what they look for in customer research is distinct.
• Establishing a customer research framework shared by both the product and marketing functions not only standardises your research with each iteration but also allows product and marketing to share insights more efficiently, leading to better product performance.
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Conclusion: Successful products offer a value exchange with customers by solving the problems and needs of customers. It is through ongoing customer research that we identify these problems and needs. Just that your digital product's product and marketing functions will look for different things in their customer research does not mean their efforts and learnings should be siloed - quite the opposite.

Understanding customer research across the product lifecycle

I often discuss the micro and macro lifecycles of product development and marketing.

When I refer to the micro, I am talking about sprints. Typically, sprints are two-week bursts of effort during which a team agrees on its priorities and goals, sets about achieving them, and concludes the effort, ready to go again.

Depending on the product's macro lifecycle, customer research could be undertaken during any work sprint.

However, in attempting to understand customer research across the product lifecycle, we need to step back and instead focus on the macro lifecycle of the product, of which there are three phases:

1. Planning (and research): exploring and understanding new problems to solve.
2. Execution: executing and releasing your product and marketing development efforts.
3. Growth: realising, optimising, growing and learning ready… for more planning and research.
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Customer research should be undertaken at each phase of the macro product lifecycle and, if not continuously, at least iteratively.

Of course, as soon as quantitative data is available, it should complement the qualitative data you gather through your customer research. Though, as I am writing about customer research for this article, I will not debate which data is better or more essential and say that I think both are important.

(Shit! I entered the debate. Run, data guys at 12 o’clock!)

Let’s dive into what the product and marketing functions will look for at each phase of the macro product lifecycle and the benefits of those insights.
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1. Planning (and research): the “explorative”

In this first phase, product and marketing explore the (new) problems that customers have and, therefore, the opportunity to solve these problems.

In customer research, this can be conducted in two cuts:

1. Vertical: challenges more fundamental issues within the product.
2. Horizontal: finding parallel or related problems to solve.
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Vertical

So what are product and marketing looking for here through the vertical cut at this point:

• Product: identifying new pain points and, therefore, functional requirements to address these pain points.
• Marketing: involves identifying particular customer problems that, if solved by the product, will enhance its messaging.
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Horizontal

So what are product and marketing looking for here through the horizontal cut at this point:

• Product: scope of necessary developments or adjustments (e.g. workflows, data) to realise the functional requirements.
• Marketing: define new use cases or customer segments that would improve or expand the product's appeal and offering.
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2. Execution: the “collaborative”

At this point, we are in solution mode. Product and marketing are pushing forward with the functional requirements and messaging.

Again, we break into two concurrent streams of user research:

1. Co-sketching: ideating with customers (and the business).
2. Validating: validating your proposed solution with customers.
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Co-sketching

Co-sketching is one of my favourite activities. It can reveal ideas and approaches from different perspectives, adding value to the solution that might not otherwise have been identified.

Co-sketching can also have its frustrations. You are bringing in customers without a product or marketing skill set, so that must be managed, and this can take time and energy that does not immediately add value to the product.

What are product and marketing seeking to gain from co-sketching:

• Product: ideate with customers (and the business) on solution design: how the functional requirement might deliver on its purpose and add the intended value.
• Marketing: ideating on messaging to get it to a point of (optimal) resonance with customers.
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Validation

Before releasing the functional requirement (e.g. feature), we ideally want to validate with customers to ensure they understand, can use, and benefit from our work.

Again, product and marketing are looking for different validation:

• Product: observe customers using the feature or solution and gather feedback.
• Marketing: testing proposed messaging with customers to ensure it resonates.
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3. Growth: the “realisation”

Finally, the feature or solution is live and in the market with the advantage of observing the real-world use of the feature or solution. At this point, data is often the predominant form of insight (speed (i.e. immediacy), standardisation, comparison), though that is not to say that further customer research is not helpful:

• Especially where the uptake of the feature or solution is poor or negative.
• To help prepare for your next round of planning and the “explorative”.
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Our product and marketing functions are looking for different insights from customer research:

• Product: understand what is working and not working for customers.
• Marketing: listen to customer feedback to identify challenges and opportunities for further improvement.
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Creating a model to bring product and marketing together

Documentation is an integral part of product development.

We use Notion in our agency, though many teams use Confluence or Excel/Google Sheets.

Creating a reusable model that lets you relate the product and marketing insights from customer research with the function or solution you are developing is a great way to bring the two functions together so that they can easily compare what the other function observes.

You can then overlay other data, experiments insights and the like to add more value.

This builds a valuable and growing depository of insights, allowing product teams to refer to previous work and insights quickly and easily. Add some tags and even more standardisation, and over time, your product function will have a rich source of insights on tap, especially when required to validate decisions and priorities for the business.

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