Truth about User Research at a Startup — Part 2

Let’s dive right back in, if you haven’t read my previous article about recruiting your existing users, check it out here.

Now we are going to get into the more exciting use case (if you’re an optimist) or the more anxiety-producing use case (if you’re … well.. me ).

I’m not a person that is really comfortable cold calling/emailing people or asking strangers for help. But this was an opportunity for me to step outside of my comfort zone, in order to make a great impact for my users.

Luckily, the product I was working on was a 2 sided marketplace so I have the distinct pleasure of having multiple sets of users. So, I took a targeted and more organic approach.

One side of the marketplace was MBA candidates looking to gain new skills and showcase their expertise to potential companies. So the natural thing is to just want more MBAs on our platform to talk to. We had a member of our team focused on user growth specifically, but I also needed to do my part for clearly different reasons. I focused on where MBAs would be prior to joining our platform. Luckily I have an MBA myself, so I was already apart of the “in group” in a few places.

I made posts in LinkedIn and Meetup groups focused on MBAs. I looked up associations and more formal groups to reach out to and even sent chapter leads emails that they could then share with their networks. A little time intensive, but because of my connection to these groups, it was a lot easier to even get more connections and share my message.

The other side of the marketplace was HR users (well, they are one of the main personas that we targeted). So, I took a similar approach and focused on where they currently are, and what they pay attention to. What associations are they apart of, what newsletters do they read and more importantly, how can I get in front of them.

At this point, this is kinda where Product/UX starts to meet Marketing. When you are going after new users in this manner, if you have a Marketing coworker, this would be a great time to tag-team and do a few joint initiatives. Otherwise, utilize your team if this is unfamiliar territory for you.

To ensure that we are “capturing leads” in sales speak, or “identifying potential new user testers” I also needed to make sure that I had a way for people to self identify or opt-in if they landed on our site, but didn’t sign up (review my previous article to see what I did for people that signed up.)

So a quick solution was to utilize a chatbot, like Intercom that we already had installed, while we designed a more explicit email collect tool for the site.

Remember this solution is going to be multi-use. So as usual, with any new process or solution that you create, ensure that the users you collect through these new methods are available to all the stakeholders that could benefit from this knowledge.

— — side note : I would suggest having additional a kickoff call with your stakeholders or create a clear process on how your stakeholders can reach out to these potential users so that 3 different departments aren’t reaching out to you on the same day for different reasons.

Leveling up

In order to take some of the personal outreach to the next level, I utilized the holy grail of people connections, LinkedIn.

If you already have an upgraded LinkedIn account, (or have access to one like I did). You can utilize LI to have a more targeted and personal outreach to the users your looking to talk to. Do a simple search for keywords and you can send LinkedIn messages to people or connect with them and ask for a little of their time.

This is a really effective approach, and it's all about how you structure your outreach. Keep it simple but make sure to show how you are connected.

Hi [New Friend],

Fellow Domer here! I work at a startup that connects MBAs to employers via performance data. I’d love to connect and get your thoughts on some of the stuff we are working on.

Go Irish!

Brittany

Next time I’ll get into the details of how to utilize your network and how connecting it with this LinkedIn approach is the best thing I ever did. Stay Tuned!