How to Use Customer Surveys to Get to Product-Market Fit
Customer surveys can be a key piece of the puzzle for checking and measuring product-market fit. Read more.

Customer surveys can be a key piece of the puzzle for checking and measuring product-market fit. Read more.
Product-market fit happens when a company’s target customers are enthusiastically buying, using, and sharing the product in large enough numbers to promote growth and profitability. It hinges upon a strong alignment between the product’s value and the needs of the target customers.
Having product-market fit is—understandably—a big goal for many startups. But it can feel like a nebulous target. Customer surveys can be a key piece of the puzzle for measuring and checking whether you have product-market fit.
According to entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreesen, who is often credited with popularizing the concept after his blog post, product-market fit means finding a good market with a product capable of satisfying that market.
Andreesen claims that you can feel when product-market fit isn’t happening. Sales cycles feel long, usage isn’t growing, and so on.
On the flip-side, you can feel when it is happening. You’re hiring more sales and customer support staff, usage is growing as quickly as you can add servers, and money is piling up.
Venture capitalists and stakeholders will often look for product-market fit before they invest. It’s a sign that the product is sustainable, addresses a true customer problem, and has tapped into an opportunity in the market. But, most importantly, it’s a sign that the company can grow.
Alongside this, understanding product-market fit helps with conducting research, building positioning and messaging, and putting the product in front of the right customers.
People will often debate the best ways to measure product-market fit. It can feel like an intangible goal.
There are metrics and indicators to track, though. For example, you can look at quantitative metrics like market share, retention curve, and NPS scores.
You can also look for qualitative indicators like:
Customer surveys can greatly enhance your knowledge around product-market fit. They’re a way to gain insights into how your customers are feeling, where things are working, and where things aren’t working.
Qualitative Questions
Quantitative Approaches
There are a couple of ways that you can gain quantitative information from surveys. First, you can ask questions about location, demographics, employment, and more, which will give insight into your target buyer persona.
Second, you can adapt questions into multiple choice or scaled questions. For example, “How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?” can be an open question for qualitative results, or can have results like “very disappointed”, “somewhat disappointed”, and so on, to gain quantitative results.
That way, you can track the number and percentage of customers that would be disappointed if they could not use your product.
Note: A generally accepted metric for product-survey results is 40%. If at least 40% of customers would be “very disappointed” if they could no longer use your product, or if the same percentage consider it vital and would not use an alternative, you have created a product that fits the market.
It’s important to conduct customer surveys to check for product-market fit before the product launched, but it’s also important to keep monitoring it after that point (much like you would continue to measure metrics like NPS scores). As mentioned, fit can change and perish.
You might want to survey customers:
Product-market fit may feel nebulous, but there are ways to track your target customer’s sentiment—and to keep an eye on it as time goes on. Customer surveys are a crucial way to gain the intelligence you need.
To see Checkbox in action for product-market fit surveys, sign up for a free trial.
Subscribe to our newsletter if you want to see more content like this.
Checkbox develops affordable, feature-rich survey software for organizations, teams, and individuals