Getting a base understanding of your customer is a foundational piece of your go-to-market strategy. If you aren’t doing customer interviews and research, your product marketing efforts may fail even before it’s been launched. Understanding your customer’s needs and pains and how they resolve them is key to so many aspects of the go-to-market process that skipping this step is detrimental to everything else you do. 

Many product marketers initially believe that insights from the product team, sales team, or company executives are sufficient to develop effective positioning, messaging, and benefits for a product. Early in my career, I subscribed to this mindset—and I was mistaken. If you’re still of this mindset, it’s time to reconsider.

While it’s true that these stakeholders are knowledgeable and conduct their own research, relying solely on their perspectives is a common pitfall for product marketers. They often bring valuable insights, but these may not align perfectly with marketing needs or the broader customer experience. I’ve seen product teams make enhancements based solely on their own opinions. I’ve worked with salespeople who requested highly specific sales enablement materials that benefited only a small segment of customers and provided minimal revenue. I’ve also seen executives push for marketing or product changes based on something as fleeting as a news item or a social media post. While not always the norm, these examples highlight why it’s critical to balance internal perspectives with direct customer insights to enhance your product’s chances of success.

In a previous blog, I explained the importance of gaining customer insights through customer interviews. Today, I’d like to focus on the different types of questions that a PMM can ask to help gain a firsthand understanding of the customer perspective that will help with your GTM strategy.

Customer Interview Tips

Before we jump into the customer interview questions you can ask, I wanted to leave you with a few customer interview tips that have helped me.

Just Do It!

Talking to customers can be intimidating for some Product Marketing Managers, perhaps due to fears of losing a customer or feeling underprepared about the product or industry knowledge. However, don’t let these concerns hinder your role as the voice of the customer. It’s important to push past these doubts, set up those interviews, and start engaging with customers. The more you practice, the more confident and comfortable you will become in these interactions.

Don’t rely on only one customer’s perspective

Just as relying on a single internal perspective can skew your strategy, basing decisions on one customer’s feedback is equally risky. Customer interviews don’t provide a definitive solution to whether an issue is widespread across all segments; that requires validation through surveys, product performance data, website analytics, or A/B testing. What interviews do provide is a wealth of qualitative data that can highlight opportunities, validate assumptions, and deepen your understanding of what customers seek in products like yours. They also allow you to gather information on where customers get their news, which can inform your marketing channels, tone, and terminology.

Listen, Listen, Listen

A key tip for conducting effective customer interviews is to let the customer speak freely. Remember, you’re not there to sell anything or immediately solve their problems. You’re there to listen. Encouraging them to share their experiences without leading them toward specific responses will yield the most genuine insights, which are gold for your product, sales, and marketing strategies.

Don’t ask too many questions

While it might be tempting to ask every question imaginable to each customer or prospect you meet, it’s important to resist this urge. Instead, prioritize asking 4-5 key questions. This approach respects your customer’s time—keeping the interview concise avoids overwhelming them with a lengthy session. Additionally, focus on crafting open-ended questions. These should be designed not just to gather routine data, which is better suited for surveys, but to elicit responses that offer new insights or validate your assumptions. Lastly, by limiting the number of questions, you allow customers the space to fully express themselves. Often, their detailed responses will naturally cover other areas of interest or can be gently guided there with thoughtful follow-up questions that don’t disrupt the conversational flow.

Without further ado, here are some of the types of questions that I like to ask during customer interviews and how the answers will help benefit your go-to-market strategy. Remember, these are only recommendations, and if you’ve read my tips, you don’t need to ask them all. Determine which ones are most beneficial to your product or GTM Strategy and prioritize them.

Exploratory Questions

1. Questions that will help you segment your audience

• Purpose: These questions are designed to categorize your audience into distinct groups based on specific characteristics like demographics, psychographics, behavior, and geographical location.
• Insights: By segmenting your audience, you can tailor your marketing messages, campaigns, and product features to meet the specific needs of different groups, increasing relevance and effectiveness.
• Application: Use these insights to create personalized marketing campaigns, develop targeted advertising strategies, and adjust product offerings to better suit each segment.

2. Questions to help identify key issues your audience is facing

• Purpose: These questions aim to uncover the main problems or challenges that your audience encounters in relation to the market or your product category.
• Insights: Understanding the pain points of your audience allows you to position your product as a solution to these specific issues, enhancing its perceived value.
• Application: Use this information to focus product development on solving these problems, create content that addresses these issues, and highlight these solutions in your marketing materials.

3. Questions to help identify audience needs

• Purpose: These questions seek to discover what your audience prioritizes and requires in products or services within your category.
• Insights: Knowing what your audience needs or desires helps in designing products that are more appealing and in creating marketing messages that resonate more deeply with potential customers.
• Application: Directly influence product features, design, and enhancements based on these needs, and tailor marketing messages to emphasize how your product meets these specific needs.

4. Questions that identify alternatives to resolving those issues

• Purpose: To find out what other solutions your audience might be considering or using to address their problems.
• Insights: Provides a view of the competitive landscape and alternative products or services. Understanding these alternatives can help you differentiate your product and identify areas for improvement or innovation.
• Application: Develop unique selling propositions that set your product apart from competitors, and use this information to inform competitive positioning strategies.

5. Questions to identify where your audience spends their free time

• Purpose: These questions help determine the hobbies, interests, and typical activities of your audience, which can indicate the best channels and touchpoints for engagement.
• Insights: Knowing where your audience is likely to spend time (both online and offline) can help you make smarter decisions about where to focus your marketing efforts.
• Application: Choose the most effective channels for advertising, content marketing, and social media engagement to ensure you are reaching your audience where they are most active and receptive.

6. Questions to identify your customers’ buying process

• Purpose: To understand the steps your customers take from becoming aware of your product to making a purchase decision.
• Insights: Reveals customer decision-making processes, key decision factors, and potential barriers to purchase.
• Application: Streamline the buying process by removing obstacles, provide relevant information at each stage of the customer journey, and implement targeted marketing tactics to guide potential customers along the path to purchase.

Product Related Questions

7. What features do you value the most/least in our product?

• Purpose: To identify which aspects of your product are most and least beneficial to your customers.
• Insights: Understanding which features are valued helps prioritize development resources to enhance or innovate on the most impactful aspects. Conversely, identifying the least valued features can help decide which areas may require reevaluation or removal.
• Application: Focus product development on enhancing features that customers care about the most, potentially reducing investment in least valued features, or using this feedback to improve them.

8. How did you find out about our product?

• Purpose: To trace the customer journey to your product, identifying the most effective marketing channels.
• Insights: Reveals which marketing efforts or channels are most effective in driving awareness and acquisition.
• Application: Allocate marketing budgets more effectively by investing in channels that have proven successful in attracting customers.

9. What would make you choose our product over competitors?

• Purpose: To uncover the unique factors or features that might influence a customer’s decision to select your product over others.
• Insights: Provide direct feedback on your product’s competitive advantage or lack thereof.
• Application: Enhance marketing messages to highlight these unique selling points and differentiate them from competitors in marketing campaigns and product positioning.

10. Can you describe a time when our product did not meet your expectations?

• Purpose: To identify specific instances where the product fell short of customer expectations.
• Insights: Pinpoints areas of improvement and potential gaps in product features or performance.
• Application: Use this feedback to make targeted improvements to product design or features, and address quality assurance issues that may impact customer satisfaction.

11. What additional features or improvements would you like to see in future updates?

• Purpose: To gather ideas for product enhancements and innovations directly from users.
• Insights: Direct from the source, these insights can drive product development that is aligned with actual user needs and preferences.
• Application: Incorporate these suggestions into the product roadmap to ensure the product evolves in a way that adds value to its users.

12. How likely are you to recommend our product to others? Why?

• Purpose: To gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty, and understand the reasons behind their willingness or reluctance to recommend the product.
• Insights: Measures customer loyalty and identifies key factors influencing advocacy or dissatisfaction.
• Application: Address issues that deter recommendations; use positive feedback in testimonials and marketing materials.

13. What do you perceive as the value of our product?

• Purpose: To understand the customer’s perceived value of the product and whether it aligns with the pricing and marketing strategy.
• Insights: Assess whether the product’s pricing and perceived value are aligned with the market.
• Application: Adjust pricing strategies, enhance features, or improve marketing communications to better convey the value of the product.

14. What are your challenges related to our product or its category?

• Purpose: To delve into broader challenges customers face that may not be directly related to the product but are relevant to its context or use.
• Insights: Identifies potential new areas for product development or service offerings.
• Application: Develop new features, services, or complementary products that address these broader challenges.