Howdy!

Hope you’re doing well (and are panic buying your holiday gifts last minute like I am 😌).

Speaking of buying…

This month’s issue is chalk full of the best tips, recs, and advice from marketing pros on everyone’s fave activity: customer research!

Coincidentally, the same activity that gets next to no support from leadership 😂

Customer research can be tough—but it shouldn’t be!

So, in the spirit of helping one another get better at understanding our customers and improving relationships with ‘em in 2025, I’ve worked with other marketing folks to compile everything you’ll need next year to crush customer research 💪

Consider this your ultimate guide to tactical customer research 👇

Ever wondered why customer research feels like a Sisyphean task?

Tbh, I don’t know one marketer who hasn’t, at some point in their career, found CR to be a pain in the 🍑

Marketers spend thousands of dollars each year on CR tech, while companies like to place CR squarely on the shoulders of CSMs and customer marketing teams.

And that kinda sucks.

Customer research is a whole company activity, and not just a CSM task or a “once and a while” survey Product teams sends out 😅 

Now, traditionally, getting to the root of CR has involved doing stuff like:

• Running customer advisory boards

• Sending automated NPS or CSAT surveys

• Listening to Gong recordings for snippets of insights

• Chatting with customers when Sales needs a case study

Those are all totally fine (and still good to do), but it’s not gonna cut it 🫠

What should customer research look like?

We have to consider customer research as part of a broader strategy to understand who the customer is as a person, and the context of what they’re looking to achieve.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into what customer research is—or, at the very least, what it should be.

Customer research starts with audience research

Ronnie (Founder of Neutral Ground Labs) made a great point to me recently about customer research: it very rarely, if ever, takes into account more than just surface-level buying decisions. Which isn’t all that surprising, tbh.

As Marketers, we don’t always approach CR with the mindset of understanding who our customers are as humans (think: the emotional and psychological affinities that drive decision making among buyers—outlined in this great read Ronnie recommends).

To understand our customers, we have to dive into the factors that initially drove each person in a buying committee to make a buying decision 💰 That means starting with audience research first.

It’s not just about NPS or CSAT

The funny thing about NPS, CSAT, and other surveys, is that they’re never really implemented for the good of the customer.

The data you gather isn’t just for lip service, ya know?

Personally, I’m a proponent of surveys like NPS when you do something with the data and apply it consistently and frequently to improve your customer’s outcomes.

(I’ll share my top tips for doing that later on 😌)

Marc Thomas, Head of Growth at Podia (and creator of Positive Human, which you absolutely have to check out), has a slightly different take on NPS, which I’ll also share later on—we may not wholly agree on stuff like NPS, but his hot take is GREAT.

Good customer research takes into account the customer’s process

Some of the best customer research advice I’ve ever heard has been from Ryan Paul Gibson—his take on the customer’s process for why and how they buy what you’re selling is pure gold.

Ryan’s take goes something like this 👇

In other words: understanding the process = effective customer research 😇

Like Ronnie mentioned earlier, audience research is critical for CR—and it also informs your customer’s entire journey with your brand, no matter how long or short that journey may be.

Here’s a list of insights Ronnie typically gathers from audience research 👀

• Top business challenges and goals for next 12 months

• Key role-specific skills and competencies

• Decision-making processes and influencers

• Content patterns and preferences

• Information-seeking behaviors

• Industry trend sources and consumption frequency

• Influential thought leaders and publications

• Social media platform usage and engagement

• Professional network characteristics

• Industry event participation and perceived value

Imagine tying those insights into a broader customer journey, so you understand behaviours that impact the who/what/where/when/how/why of your customer’s buying decisions! 😦 I’ll cover customer journeys next year, so stay tuned 😉 

Now, we get what customer research is (or should be), but how do we actually do it?

Let’s take a look 👇

Define your customer research approach

What is your total approach to CR going to look like?

There are many different kinds of CR activities you can do—but if you’re in b2b, going beyond surveys or customer calls is beneficial!

For example, here are some of the common CR activities you’ve probably worked through…

Personally, I like Marc’s take on customer research (and the good news is, you can steal it 🙂‍↔️).

“Customer research should be specific, and a mix of qualitative and quantitive,” Marc told me recently, when I asked for his take on CR. “I am deeply skeptical of NPS and think that a lot of people use it as a crutch to say that everything's going well,” Marc told me.

“Instead of metrics like NPS, I like to set a theme and prefer to run in 30-60 day sprints with another 15 or so to write a really thorough briefing on the data.”

Here’s an example of Marc’s approach from a recent CR project at Podia. 👇

Example: Blogging for solopreneurs

“We went between narrow and broad and back again.”

• Narrow – In app survey asking simply, “Which platform do you use to blog?”

• Broad – Invited a series of respondents to an interview where I asked questions like:

  • What role does blogging play in your business?

  • How has that changed over time?

  • What are the challenges you've faced when blogging for business?

  • What plugins are you using with your blogging platform and why?

• Narrow – Used the responses to that to write a more defined survey about blogging and sent as an in-app survey

At the same time, Marc is looking at elements of Podia’s users’ blogs on other platforms (like the design, features, and content of those blogs).

“All that goes into a thematic report where we summarize what we learned, both qualitative and quantitive, and where possible make recommendations for things to think about when developing the feature set and messaging around the specific theme.”

Stick with a templated customer research report

Actually performing customer research is pretty exhausting 😅 

So, like with most repeatable motions in Marketing, having a template for how you’ll gather, report on, and share your CR insights is really handy.

Marc shared his thematic CR report template with me, and it’s 🔥🔥🔥 

In the report, Marc breaks down CR insights into 4 main categories:

• Main themes: a synopsis of the most common themes/patterns (like a TL;DR)

• Core recommendations: clear, definitive statements based on the research

• Feature requests: what are customers asking for, time and again?

• UX friction: outline common challenges, issues, or feedback customers share about their own experiences with your solution

And he can re-use his report template every time he needs it—which is hella smart, especially when you consider just how few people in your company will actually dive into deep, convoluted reports on CR 😂

Want Marc’s report template? Steal it here 👀 (Thanks, Marc, for sharing this!!)

Consider how you’ll use surveys (if you do)

You could set up virtually any survey you want—follow your heart, folks—but if you’re going to deploy surveys, you’ll need to do 2 things:

1. Consider why you’ll use surveys.

2. Consider how you’ll use surveys.

Surveys are only helpful for you—and your customers—if you actually apply the insights and data to make sure the customers achieve their goals. For example, from a Lifecycle POV:

1. Why am I using these surveys: to better understand where customers struggle to succeed, and how I can help mitigate those challenges.

2. How am I going to use these surveys: by triggering things like surveys based on user behaviour, on a consistent, reliable basis, and apply the insights to improving current + future lifecycle activities.

Let’s take a look at how I use surveys here at Copy.ai to gather insights from customers (and help improve stuff like NPS scores) 😊 

• Micro-surveys: Ditch generic surveys for user, feature, challenge, and JTBD-specific surveys.

  • You can trigger these surveys based on certain user events or behaviours.

  • Be targeted in the questions you ask, or the feedback you ask users to give.

• Simplify surveys: Don’t try to boil the ocean with endless questions, scales, etc.

  • Keep things simple, like limiting your questions to the most burning or relevant insights you need right now.

• Free-form it: I love giving users the opportunity/option to provide honest feedback, even if it’s not wholly positive!

  • You can anonymize your surveys if you find customers or users are more apt to share transparent feedback that way.

Jacqueline Freedman—who’s worked for companies like Grammarly and WeWork to streamline marketing ops—has some additional hot tips for creating surveys that effectively engage people 👀 

Jacqueline’s advice? If you’re going to run email surveys, make sure:

• They’re always simple/concise (no more than 3-4 sentences).

• They look like a personalized email coming from an individual (aka: one of the actual people in your company).

  • You can always make the reply-to go to a catchall email that is monitored!

• Have visuals of the email are 80% plain text, with two HTML elements:

  • A simple CTA button

  • A signature that matches the company's email signature

Here’s an example of what that email could look like 👇️ 

Jacqueline has a few more tips you can implement for your next survey:

• Short and quick content in email surveys is best—especially when segmented down

• Similarly, you can pair those email surveys with short, in product surveys

• Ensure the survey's content is unbiased (this is a whole topic on its own!)—and informs the individual whether or not the data will be anonymized

Bonus tip from Jacqueline: you could have a survey opt-in list where folks explicitly sign up to be part of surveys! 

Create a matrix of customer research activities you can do regularly—and ways you’ll implement them

When I first started at Copy.ai, one of the core things I did to start gathering insights around our customers was perform daily CR tasks—small things that could add up over time.

The easiest, most basic way to do this that almost no one will tell you?

Look at what your CS team is doing, and contribute.

The upside to performing daily CR is that you:

⚡️ Get to know your users as they onboard and activate
⚡️ Gain more immediate insight into what people are trying to achieve
⚡️ Can action on user challenges right away
⚡️ See gaps in product, service, and TTV almost immediately

Plus, it’s a great way to onboard new hires 😉 

Here are a few other ideas for activities you can add to your matrix👇️ 

Map out what you’ll ask customers—when, where, and why

A big part of customer research is discovery. After all, we don’t know what we don’t know, you know? 😅 

But apart from Googling “10 best questions to ask in customer interviews”, it can be tough to figure out exactly what we should ask…

When we should ask it…

And why we’re asking it.

As Ryan puts it: Success always comes down to asking the RIGHT questions.

When you understand where and when most of your customers are making purchase decisions, mapping out the questions you’ll ask (where, when, and why) becomes easier.

To determine the questions at the “where”, “when”, and “why” phases, I like leaning on Ryan’s definitive list of questions for B2B customer interviews.

Some of my top faves I use from Ryan’s list 👀 

• What responsibilities are shared across departments?

  • What are your responsibilities?

• How do your priorities get set?

  • What are your top 1-2 priorities for your role?

• What happens to the business if you don’t get your priorities/goals accomplished?

• Who did you talk to, outside of your organization, to help guide your research?

  • Did anyone influence your thinking or make recommendations?

• Who was part of your “buying committee”?

Get the full list of B2B customer interview questions here: https://www.contentlift.io/customer-interview-questions

Questions to ask pre-acquisition

Jobs-to-be-done questions are critical in customer research interviews, but you may also want to do pre-acquisition, or mid-acquisition, discovery.

Not a lot of marketers do this; we tend to leave this line of questioning to Sales—a huge missed opp, IMO 😉 

Brendan Hufford, Founder of Growth Sprints and ALL IN, shared his list of customer research questions that I think we’d all be nuts not to bookmark 🔖 

Now, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill JTBD questions—which is actually a good thing. Sometimes, asking prospects and customers more investigative questions can help spark insights you wouldn’t otherwise get!

Bookmark Brendan’s 20 customer questions 👇️ 

When should you talk to your customers?

Now, you’re probably wondering: “When do I talk to my customers?”

In my opinion, it comes down to two things:

1. When it makes sense to talk to customers (frequency).

2. What you’re looking to discover or achieve.

When does it make sense to talk to your customers?

You’ll naturally perform different kinds of CR activities as a company at various points throughout the year. Kind of like when Customer Marketing hosts a CAB every quarter—you don’t need to do everything all at once.

Let’s say, for example, that you want to do more customer research in 2025. You may follow a schedule like this 👇️ 

• Quarterly: Typically involves larger-lift activities where you need to collect insights from a broader group of customers.

• Monthly: Usually involves surveys, pulse checks, smaller CABs, etc., where you can segment or target CR activities.

• Weekly: Tends to involve unsolicited or quick insights—for example, when you monitor customer feedback in your Community, receive comments or questions from customers during onboarding, send quick surveys about features…you get the picture!

In some cases, CR may even happen daily.

For instance, at Copy.ai, I have a segmented, 2-question onboarding survey whose purpose is to gather more immediate insights from paid users.

What are you looking to achieve?

Each CR activity will have a different purpose–knowing what you’re looking to get from the research is handy in figuring out when you perform each activity.

Take the following table, for example 👀 

• Quarterly activities are usually aimed to gather insights your team needs for things like renewals.

  • Think: Talking to Enterprise customers to see where risk of churn might come from, or understanding how your customer acquisition has changed.

• Monthly activities are helpful for teams like Marketing and Product to understand customer satisfaction

  • Think: Gaps in product (features, functions, capabilities), channels that are helping grow acquisition, etc.

• Weekly activities are pretty handy for folks on teams like Lifecycle.

  • Think: insights into activation and retention, onboarding gaps, changes in DAU/WAU/MAU activity, etc.

Once you figure out what insights, data, or outcomes you’re looking to get from CR, have a plan to record or jot down what you learn. 

This could be a Google Sheet where you setup columns for NPS feedback vs. pull quotes vs. churn survey feedback—for example, my onboarding survey triggers any time the user completes a certain # of actions or steps, and I record the survey responses in a Notion table using a Zap 🙂 

Bonus tip: factor customer insights into your onboarding

This isn’t just a pro tip for the lifecycle folks 😉 

I’m sharing this tip mostly because I think a lot of us are low-key stuck on ways in which we can use onboarding and activation to gather immediate CR data (without doing “real” or “formal” research).

Here at Copy.ai, I have 2 cardinal rules for onboarding that help me gather customer insights:

• Focus on quality: We hone in on specific activities that help us improve our customer’s experience, while gathering richer insights for ourselves (this creates a ouroboros effect 🐍).

• Segment: Using Copy.ai as an example, onboarding and activation is always segmented, which further allows me to gather insights from users (both free, and when they become paying customers).

Btw, if you need ideas for onboarding, or justification for doing onboarding differently, feel free to rip-and-replace the cards above for inspo 😇 

You can also factor customer research data into other marketing efforts, like upsell and cross-sell.

In case you want or need some help with that, check out my Lifecycle Upsell Playbook for 2025 👇️ 

Let’s do a little TL;DR 😉 

In 2025, I think you should do more customer research—but you don’t have to have support from your boss, a big budget, or a shiny piece of tech to do it.

Do what other marketers are doing to crush CR activities next year 💪 

• Start with audience research first

  • This helps you go deeper/behind the scenes into the real behaviours behind your customers’ buying decisions—not just theirs, but everyone in their buying committee 😉 

• Understand what process your customer has to perfect

  • Knowing the context of why your customer has made their buying decision—and the process they have to perfect in their own company—is key to conducting effective customer research.

• Define your approach to CR

  • Figure out what makes sense for your team in how you’ll conduct, and record, customer research and the insights you gather from it.

    • Marc’s template is super handy for this 👀 

• Consider how you’ll use channels like surveys

  • Hint: don’t just launch generic NPS or CSAT surveys 😉

• Create a matrix of CR activities you can do consistently

  • This isn’t just CABs, but activities that you can reliably run/optimize and use throughout the year!

• Map out what you’ll ask customers

  • Instead of Googling for the “best questions to ask in customer interviews”, try Ryan’s definitive list of Q&A, or Brendan’s list of 20 JTBDs questions!

• Determine when (and why) you’ll talk to customers

  • Don’t leave customer research up to CSMs or Product teams—instead, create a cadence for when, and why, you’ll talk to customers on the Marketing side 🙂 

Oh, and a bonus tip? Apply your customer research insights to your onboarding—trust me, it’ll make all the difference.

Exhausted yet?

I get it 😂 

You made it through this chonky newsletter edition, and I’m proud of you 😚 

But the upside is, you now have everything you need to absolutely CRUSH customer research in 2025. Plus, free resources from other marketers that have proven their approaches to CR actually work 😌 

Now, go and enjoy your holidays, and have a drink (or two) for me—I’ll be sipping on White Russians (it’s a Christmas drink, change my mind!) 🎄🎄 🎄 

I’ll be in touch in early 2025 with another issue of That Marketing Newsletter!

P.s. here’s what I’m drinking & reading this week

P.p.s. have feedback about this newsletter, ideas to share for future issues, or any gripes? I’m all ears—shoot me an email at [email protected] 👋