Case Study: Product Discovery for a B2B Data Business to Inform Product Strategy and Messaging

Challenge

A B2B data business plans to pivot into a new space, and needs deep product discovery to inform product strategy, to guide product investment, and guide messaging of new product to customers.

 

A B2B data provider was looking to pivot their business into a new market space. The company had conducted early research identifying an unmet customer need.  But the company needed deeper insights to flesh out their strategy, to guide their investment focus and MVP, to guide pricing decisions, and to confirm how to message the value proposition.  The company was looking to:

  • Refine their understanding of the problem, getting crisp and focused

  • Understand how much value tackling the pain will truly add to the target customer (how much time? how much money? what are the emotional components of the pain?)

  • Determine the most effective messaging to communicate the new product

  • Determine how to message differently to each of the buyer personas

  • Identify the features that matter most to customers and that would be seen as differentiators from the competition

The business had a staff full of incredibly talented engineers, but the product organization was fairly new and did not have deep experience in product discovery.

Solution

Run end-to-end process of product discovery, across 3 vertical segments.

 

I conducted discovery with 20 customers across 3 segments, synthesizing learnings for the product and marketing teams and for executive leadership. I identified:

  • Priority features for the MVP

  • Understanding of where customers were struggling most in the existing processes that would be replaced by the new product

  • What value customers would place on having a solution to solve the problems addressed by the new product, guiding pricing decisions

  • Use cases where product provides value, guiding marketing messaging, onboarding, and customer success plans

  • Specific messaging that resonated with the buyer personas

Results

Successful launch of an Early Access Alpha product. Discovery continues.

 

The Alpha product has been launched into Early Access. Discovery has not ended. I am leading discovery with these Early Access customers so that we continue to learn and iterate on our solution, messaging, and customer success plays, preparing for a Beta launch in a couple of months. Early feedback has been positive, with reinforcement that the product meets a real and impactful unmet need for target customers.