In the five years I’ve been at Alpha Agency, one of the trends I’ve been very happy to see is the rise of research.
Early on, it was common for clients to question our advice to back up their strategic recommendations with research. But, as someone who started their career as a financial journalist, I will (where appropriate) advocate strongly for its inclusion in a project. Pleasingly, clients are increasingly seeing its benefits too.
Research is powerful because it takes you from moving blind to being informed. And information is power. When it comes to stakeholder management, I’ve also found research to be a strong equaliser.
At Alpha Agency we have always put research at the centre of our recommendations. Below are a few of the ways we help our clients use research to its full potential.
How research can support marketing teams:
Internal research: Surfacing the views and opinions of people across an organisation is vital to the success of marketing initiatives. It means you start from a place of knowledge and deeper understanding and are much more likely to secure buy-in for your go-to-market strategy.
Peer analysis: While every organisation is distinct, no one operates in a vacuum. It’s crucial to understand what your peers are doing and how they are positioning themselves in market to make sure you are doing it better, or (at the very least) differently. Whether this is for brand messaging and creative, activation across digital channels or product-specific campaigns – it’s important to know where your business has the opportunity to fill a gap and thrive.
Client research: In investment marketing, the voice of the client has often come to marketing teams through sales. We’re not here to dispute that salespeople ‘know their clients’ given their day-to-day engagement and proximity. But understanding your client base in a rigorous and scalable way requires more than conversation. Unbiased, targeted and repeatable research provides a stronger foundation for strategy than gut feel and second-hand information.
Market testing: Market testing gives marketing teams the opportunity to see how their activity will land prior to launching. Without testing, you miss a chance to optimise campaigns and even risk causing unintentional offence and reputational damage. Synthetic audience testing is also an option here – leading to potential cost savings and efficiencies when all you need is a pulse check.
These approaches have always formed part of our best-practice recommendations, but what has been especially pleasing to witness is how commonplace they have become in our projects over the past couple of years. What was once seen as a nice-to-have but unessential phase of our engagements, is increasingly recognised as an integral step to making better decisions and getting them approved.
Clients have used our research to genuinely listen to internal and external audiences, position themselves effectively in market and optimise their reach and engagement. For the marketing leaders we work with, being seen as a strategic partner to the business is often their prime aim – and embracing research is the perfect means of making that happen.
If you are interested in finding out more about how research can support better decision making at your firm, don’t hesitate to get in touch.