Hello!
I hope you’re having a lovely day, wherever you are in the world. 🌎
This week, we’re digging into another element of understanding your end user. And we are talking about how to run a Product Market Fit survey.
Firstly, this blog post is a tribute to a far superior piece of content: First Round’s case study on how Superhuman ran its first ever Product Market Fit survey. Since Superhuman shared its process, many product marketers around the world have taken the method and applied it to their own companies to achieve product market fit.
Definitely give this a read before starting your own PMF survey.
What is a Product Market Fit survey?
This might actually be a new phrase to some readers. A Product Market Fit survey is a way of finding out which of your users are the most satisfied, and who would be the most disappointed if you disappeared overnight.
While some companies plan out their feature roadmap and bug fix lists based on what their dissatisfied customers or largest cohorts of users are asking for, a PMF survey offers an alternative approach. Rather than catering for the people who don’t love you, how about we lean in to those who do?
This quote from Paul Graham sums it up nicely.
“When a startup launches, there have to be at least some users who really need what they're making — not just people who could see themselves using it one day, but who want it urgently. Usually this initial group of users is small, for the simple reason that if there were something that large numbers of people urgently needed and that could be built with the amount of effort a startup usually puts into a version one, it would probably already exist. Which means you have to compromise on one dimension: you can either build something a large number of people want a small amount, or something a small number of people want a large amount. Choose the latter. Not all ideas of that type are good startup ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are of that type.”
The users who love you may not be as strong in numbers, but they’re likely to be your biggest advocates - as well as being most likely to stick around. So why not build something for them, and then go out and find more customers like them?
Why should I run a Product Market Fit survey?
A Product Market Fit survey will help you find out which segments of users you already have product market fit with. These are the people you should be conducting user interviews with, prioritising feature requests for, and building marketing campaigns around.
On top of that, the survey will give you a great metric to track. And here’s how.
The most important question of the survey is: ‘How would you feel if you could no longer use [Your Product]?’
As a general rule of thumb, you have ‘product market fit’ when at least 40% of your user-base (or 40% of the segment you are prioritising) would be ‘Very disappointed’.
How to run your survey
First, you’ll need some users. Ideally, you’ll want responses from at least a few hundred people but if you’re just getting started, you’ll still be able to get useful insights from a smaller pool.
Then, you’ll want to decide the segmentation questions you care about. Is it company size, age, job title, device type, role seniority, location, the way they primarily use your product, or some more granular variables?
Next, you’ll need to ask the all-important questions that make up a Product Market Fit survey. And here they are…
How likely are you to recommend [Your Product] to someone else?
This’ll help you get a sense of overall satisfaction with your product.
How would you feel if you could no longer use [Your Product]?
Very disappointed
Somewhat disappointed
Not disappointed
This is the #1 most important question and will help determine whether or not you have product market fit.
If you answered "somewhat disappointed" or "not disappointed," what was the primary reason?
It’s still useful to find out what you could be doing better for your less satisfied customers! (It’ll be the first thing you get asked by your Product team too 😉)
What type of people do you think would most benefit from [Your Product]?
For this question, most people will describe a version of themselves, which is extremely useful as they’ll often phrase this in terms you hadn’t previously considered. This’ll broaden your audience targeting in marketing campaigns, and help with messaging.
What is the main benefit you get from [Your Product]?
Again, let’s have our users do the heavy lifting for us. Here, use an open text field to capture what your users think your USP is. Some of the descriptions you get will be copywriting gold.
How could we improve [Your Product] for you?
Don’t forget to use the survey as a chance to inform your product roadmap. You’ll be able to prioritise feature requests based on user segment during your analysis.
That’s it! Those are all the questions you need to run your own PMF survey.
Analysis
Of course, there are tons of things you can do with the results of a survey like this one. But the most important thing to do with a PMF survey is to dig into the results for ‘How would you feel if you could no longer use [Your Product]?’
What we’re interested in here is the people who answered ‘Very disappointed.’
You may already find that 40% of everyone surveyed has answered ‘Very disappointed’ and, if so, then congrats! 🤝 Things are looking great for your product.
But there’s a good chance that you’ll have some way to go before you reach that magic metric. And this is where things get interesting…
A top tip is to use a simple pivot table to cross reference different data points that show you where you have reached that 40% mark.
You might cross reference ‘Location’ with ‘Job Title’ and find out that you already have product market fit with developers in Belgium. There might be a sweet spot of companies with 10 or less employees in the Entertainment industry that hit your 40% goal. Or you might break out your data by device type and find that your iOS users are way happier than those on Android. (Which might also expose some product flaws…)
OK, but what do I do with this information?
Lean in to the user segments you have product market fit with.
Create campaigns that will appeal to them. Target them in your performance marketing. Take their feedback and feature requests and prioritise them with your Product teams. Dig into the phrases they use to describe the benefits of your product and apply them to your website copy or messaging docs.
Growing - and building for - these user segments will eventually get your company to an overall product market fit. And then you’ll be laughing. Probably.
I hope this has helped get you thinking about how to survey your customers. If you’d ever like to discuss PMF, you can always hit reply to this email.
See you next week.
Thanks!
Rory