As a leadership team at a startup, it’s critical to invest in top ways to understand your target customers. Hiring the right team and launching the right user research will help your entire company better understand your users.

Maybe you generally know who your target customers are. But you don’t really know what they think of your company. The right research program can solve this.

A strong marketing team will amplify your customer’s voice. Marketing helps the entire team understand your user’s needs, brand perception, and competitors. Your team can put these insights into action to shape the product, sales, and support roadmap.

Launch a product marketing team to understand your target customers

A product marketing team embeds with your product team to deeply understand your customers and their needs. These user insights guide the product roadmap. And they enable product marketers to create the right messaging, launch plans, and tactics. 

Product marketing’s goal is to get users excited to use your company’s offerings and drive usage. A great product marketing team always thinks user-first in order to guide how your company creates and sells its products.

Invest in market and user research 

Marketing teams also develop incredible insights into your industry and your target audience through user research. Marketing can develop user personas, and they can track customer needs and perceptions over time. 

They can understand the competitive landscape, noting changes in user needs and desires. Leveraging qualitative and quantitative research techniques, marketing can create a holistic picture of your users to inform product, sales, and your entire team.

Create a brand tracker survey

Once you have a consistent brand identity, you’ll want to track what your users think of your brand and product over time. A well-constructed brand tracker survey helps you understand how your product stacks up against competitors. 

A brand tracker can help you spot changes over time and by your different types of customers. These valuable insights can help direct your team’s energy and priorities.

Develop top ways to understand your target customers

Start with a product marketing team. Their job is to deeply understand user needs and work with the product team to solve customer pain points. Product marketing can also launch the right research program to develop these insights. 

Get your entire company involved in research and understanding your customer. Great product strategy and marketing strategy are always rooted in customer empathy.