Too many marketers, product marketers and founders fail at market orientation because they get wrapped up in one of the traps that we set for ourselves:

🪤 The feature trap

🪤 The competitor trap

🪤 The nasal-gazing trap

You know these traps because you navigate them every day. The PM team is pushing the conveyor belt of feature releases at you at a rapid pace; your main competitor just released the revered ‘golden feature’ or, worse still, slammed the pricing to the floor.

We’re all looking at each other inside the building to see what we need to do to hit our targets.

Suddenly, but unsurprisingly, we’re chasing our tails, swimming around in circles in our own goldfish bowl, looking at the world from the inside.

Despite this pitiful truth, it does not have to be this way; there is another way.

Market orientation is one of the most potent perspectives any individual or organisation can have. But many fail to do it because:

1. They think it takes too much time

2. They can’t see how it connects directly to revenue

3. We want to start selling immediately

4. Pressure for immediate results

At best, these are pathways to inefficient positioning and, worse, a broken business.

👨‍🎓Quick case study 👩‍🎓

I recently needed to launch a market orientation push for a category I needed to learn about. A use case that many PMMs and founders find themselves in when starting out in a new category. You’ve been there, right?

The category was book publishing. I just released my own book 🎉, I needed to orient myself to answer questions such as:

• What is the total addressable size of the market?

• What are the subcategories and sizes in the market (relative to my book)?

• What’s the seasonal curve by sub-category?

• What’s the average selling price by format or sub-category?

• What does the distribution channel look like by market?

• What is the format split, and are there any differences by market?

• How are books promoted, and what’s effective in my category?

As a first-time author of a book, I had no clue.

But as a long-in-the-tooth senior marketer, I had a competitive advantage….I knew where to start so I could begin to make informed decisions.

Good enough insights do not need to cost a fortune or take forever. In this case, I took a two-fold approach to my research, and I am going to show you how you can do it too.

Primary Research

Using YouGov's self-serve insight tool, I selected participants from the general population in the UK and USA to gather information on their book preferences, format usage, and purchasing habits. In a separate exercise, I also tested my book copy and naming.

• Cost £800 for two rounds 💷

• Turnaround time was two days 🗓️

• Two hours documenting the data and conclusions in Excel and Keynote ⏰

Secondary Research

I harvested data from Nielsen's annual Books and Consumers 2022 event in London, where they provided category data, channel and buying trends over three years. I also requested custom seasonal data from Nielsen, which I received in an editable format the following day.

• Cost £300 for the event, £800 for the sales report 💷

• Turnaround time was half a day each 🗓️

• Two hours documenting the data and conclusions in Excel ⏰

Outcome

I got all the market context data I needed to make all my data-driven decisions.

There is no excuse not to be market-oriented. They say a little knowledge is dangerous; be humble and admit you know nothing, then chase it down.

Start outside the building, not inside the goldfish bowl.

In the use case I have summarised, I spent £1,900 ($2,300) and got primary and secondary insights. A large part of it is the same insights the big publishers get from the same source.

It took a total of three work days (over time). Business and GTM planning for my first book was in good shape.

Where To Start On Your Own Insight Plan

Being able to design, execute and analyse your own research is a superpower for any marketer. It will also help you avoid some of the traps! 🪤

Never underestimate the power of secondary research. Often, it’s more detailed and thorough than what we can achieve ourselves on a limited budget.

Self-Serve Tools That I Use:

• YouGov Surveys: Self-Serve (panel access built-in)

• PickFu (panel access built-in)

• Google Forms

As a side note, tools like Survey Monkey now have large audience panels built in. YouGov’s self-serve is cheaper but more limited. Survey Monkey are not cheap, but they're more cost-effective than some of the alternatives.

The guidance below is not exhaustive but is a good place to start:

Types Of Research To Master:

• Focus groups

• Customer interviews

• Basic survey design (sequential questions)

• Intermediate survey design (branching, forwarding)

• Advanced survey design (coding)

Research Methods To Master:

• Meaningful Actionable Grid (Segmentation)

• Maximum Differential (MaxDiff)

• Van Westendorp Pricing Sensitivity

• Gabor Granger

• Conjoint

Keep on rockin! 🤘

Harvey.

A Personal Invitation Just For You 🤘

That’s a wrap on another edition of Below The Waterline; I hope you are enjoying it so far! I’d love to know your thoughts or if there’s anything you’d like me to write about.

I’d like to extend a warm invitation for you to join me live at the PMA Book Club, where we’ll be discussing my new award-winning #1 book, Backstage Pass.

I’ll cover many aspects of the book, and unlike most authors, I’ll share how I did some of the marketing, research and more.

It promises to be as entertaining as it is educational! ⚡️