The Power of Primary Research
Building a brand today is tough. You need to have messaging that breaks through the noise. And with GenAI spewing content - there is a lot of noise.
Beyond brand/content marketing, the hardest role in a company might be public relations. That is (in both cases) if you have the ability to make actual news.
To make your brand stand out - be it to prospects or the media - you need to offer a fresh point of view (POV) that connects with your audience and sets you up as the expert. Building this level of credibility means having a set of facts at your fingertips and having those facts populate all of your content.
Indeed, you can regurgitate other people’s facts to show your expertise. But if you really want to be seen as an industry leader, consider conducting your own original research.
Content with data that you have sourced puts your brand in a league of its own. And that can pay dividends in countless ways. Let me show you.
What Is Primary Research vs Secondary Research
Primary research is any research that you source yourself. It is the process of investigating or conducting surveys, studies, experiments, or observations to gather new data and insights on a particular topic or subject matter, and then analyzing that data. Secondary research is when you use someone else’s data.
An analyst firm like Gartner or Forrester conducts primary research and issues their own original reports analyzing that data. If you use their research to bolster your messaging, you are relying on secondary research. (And then having to ask permission from them to use it.)
There are a number of different techniques you can use to conduct primary research. The type of technique you choose, the transparency of your methodology, and the adherence to your methodology - all factor into the data’s credibility. The more rigor you apply when conducting your research the higher your credibility.
Primary Market Research vs Primary Marketing Research
Let me make a distinction here between market research and marketing research. Qualtrics does a super job explaining it. Market research looks at the behaviors and challenges of your target audience within a specific market. Marketing research looks at your product within that specific market, including pricing, positioning (against competitors) and promotional avenues.
With market research, you can use any of a variety of primary research methods, including focus groups and field research surveys. Marketing research usually relies on a variety of both primary research methods as well as secondary data collection.
In this article, I am referring to primary research around behaviors and challenges of your target market (or their customers) within a given market. So for example, if you are conducting research around ecommerce technology - you could conduct research with business people who might purchase or deploy the technology. Or you could design a survey around consumer research on shopper behaviors - to better instantiate a need.
The key to primary market research design is to ask your research question in a way that elicits a straight-forward response. Qualitative research requires mapping the question to a quantity as in the image from a Coveo report below.
Benefits to Original Research
One of the benefits of original research is that you decide the parameters of your research. You decide what the questions that haven’t been asked are - to create a new perspective. Of course, you do so with the idea of how it best frames your brand.
For Coveo, we wanted to see if companies were adopting Search Centers of Excellence (SCoE). Our hypothesis was that a small minority would be moving in that direction. We figured it would be a good baseline that we could track year over year. What we found surprised us. Companies had already started building them - or looking to do so. It was just a question that had never been asked of this group before!
We also were able to change our messaging to better reflect what was going on in the market. Further, we found that when we did a cross-tabulation (looked at the data by certain variables) we could see that some industries were further ahead. This allowed us to create content that reflected these findings, and further, inspire companies who were not yet embracing a SCoE. (Or hadn’t thought to do so.)
We used the data to create a general industry report as well as two more targeted to verticals. We wrote press releases that promoted the report, leveraged the data in our blogs, talks, and byline articles, and used it as part of outbound marketing programs.
Primary research then allowed the brand to increase its:
Authenticity and Originality - through unique insights
Brand Awareness – by having a credible report to promote to media
Credibility - by using empirical data to strengthen arguments.
Tailored Content - to address specific audience questions and needs.
Competitive Advantage - to differentiate through original research findings.
Audiences You Can Influence With Original Research and Analysis
As noted above, you can leverage original research in a myriad of ways.
It is ideal to show your authority on a subject and present yourself as a thought leader. By taking a pulse of the market at large, you can create statistics that can be leveraged in all your content, and develop a bold point of view. And there are a number of audiences that you can influence.
Some of these audiences include
Media organizations: These organizations want to provide their audiences with valuable insights. Your reports based on new data qualifies as news - affording you earned coverage in both traditional and digital offerings.
Customers: If part of your brand strategy is to go-to-market as an innovator, having a fresh POV backed by research lets your customers know that you are The Authority. Customers want to make an informed decision. Reports are ideal for lead generation and education. Use the report to let prospects know you have looked at the subject matter from multiple perspectives. Then, offer a hot tip. Obviously, the hot tip should frame your brand.
Conference Organizers: Similar to media organizations, conferences are looking for new and valuable insights to offer in terms of talks. Create a “Trend in the industry” talk.
Investors: Let the folks with the money see that you really do know your audience.
Analysts: Don’t kid yourself. When analysts are ranking products and companies, they are looking to see how well you know the industry. They will infer that this will lead to a good roadmap.
Search Engines: Search engines are looking for content that exudes expertise, authority, and credibility.
Benefits of Original Research and Analysis on Media
In the first sentence, I mentioned that one of the most difficult roles in a company is PR. Metrics can be a bit squishy and whether or not it is worth the expense seems to be an annual angst. Part of the problem is that PR is a channel - that needs to be loaded with news.
Brands spend a lot of money on public relations, but as a former editor, I can tell you, media organizations don’t want generic pieces on what your product does. They have an audience that they want to maintain, and they are looking for ways to stay relevant to that audience. In other words, they are looking for valuable news.
The analysis that comes out of primary research is newsworthy. Since this type of content is not perceived as a sales pitch, they will often take the new stats that you found, and create their own angle to the story.
Invest in creating a high quality report and craft a press release that highlights some of the findings. The press release should have a link to the report. If the media is picking up the story and using your stats, they will cite the report - and include a link back to it. And this is always good for search engine optimization (SEO)!
[Note: You should treat these reports as permanent pieces on your site. Don’t use a generic URL that will be overwritten with the next report - which you might do in a blog. Instead, you want to be able to instantiate the changes over time.]
Finding the News in Year-Over-Year Reports
It isn’t always easy to find something new in year-over-year reports. That’s why it’s important to work with companies that understand what is newsworthy - at the time you are creating the questions, as well as in the analysis.
In a retail consumer survey on shopping habits, we found that there weren’t many changes year-over-year. However, when we broke it down by age groups, we started to see some interesting trends.
Further, because of our client’s knowledge of the market, we were able to make specific recommendations on how retailers could best address the demographic changes in the market. That report garnered pickups from nearly 50 good sized news outlets.
Original Analysis and SEO
I mentioned above about search engines being an audience. Let me explain: In a nod to human-created work, Google’s updated search rater guidelines emphasizes E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust). Any content created that is being optimized for SEO needs to check all of these boxes.
Populating your content with stats and findings from your primary research sets you up as the expert and authority - which increases the trust factor. And while the standards don’t explicitly call for first person narration, here is why I think using “I” and having a point of view is important.
Artificial intelligence (AI) programs are churning out generic information that uses buzzy words and general examples. In this piece, I used actual client examples that show expertise, knowledge and experience. These first-hand examples set my writing apart from anything an AI tool could create.
Growing Trend to Rely on Original Research
Indeed, there is a growing trend in content creation to rely on original research. For its annual survey, Orbit Media asked bloggers in 2018 how many were conducting their own research and 25% said they did. In 2023 the number of bloggers conducting original research almost doubled to 47% saying yes.
Bloggers know that to write authoritative content they need to have facts at their fingertips. But whose facts? It’s okay to cite statistics from authoritative sites, but why not have your own as well?
I turned to The Quotable Leader’s research partner Dimensional Research for more insight. Dimensional is a data collection company that uses verified research methods to ensure the integrity of the data.
Dimensional’s Founder and Principal Diane Haggland told me, “Anybody can have an opinion, but to have data to back up that opinion, especially fresh and different data, gives a higher level of clout to support your story.”
And success breeds success. “As more companies are using thought leadership as part of their messaging strategy, there is more funding for original research and a greater range of research available to choose from,” she adds.
Diane is not only an expert researcher, but she brings to the table an understanding of existing research to help you design a more impactful study.
Challenges of Conducting Primary Research
I asked Diane what some of the biggest challenges are in designing a survey.
“If we are engaging with a client that hasn’t done research before, we stress that they need to be very intentional about identifying the right audience for the questions that they want to ask. You have to be aware of your research objective. And then we have to capture any nuances within that audience.”
Dimensional Research typically deals with market trends for companies with cutting edge technology. So her firm looks to find respondents with the right expertise and knowledge.
“But also, you have to capture where they are in their adoption curve,” she warns. "For example, the people who are the most mature with any technology usually don’t have the same challenges as people just starting on a journey. To tell a compelling story, you have to pick that apart in the data.”
“Innovative companies tend to have the best and smartest customers,” she adds. "But market research looks at everyone in the market. Making sure that our questions and expectations for the results aren’t biased by stakeholders that are working only early in the technology adoption cycle is critical.
As a primary market research firm, we look at every question and ask ‘do they know this language, can we say something simpler, or do we need a definition.’ You don't want a situation where someone looks at the results and says, ‘I don’t believe that. I think the respondents thought we meant something else when we said those words.’"
You will also want a statistically valid sample of people. According to Diane, a good rule of thumb to meet journalistic standards is 400 or more individuals if it’s a business audience. You’ll need 1000+ respondents if it’s a consumer survey.
An article or ebook without facts is just a weightless opinion. With original research you are now the industry authority.
But just as important as your data collection techniques is that the results need to be interesting, offer insights, and tell a story that is easy to understand. While the research method is important, it's not the only objective. “It’s critical that the research has a point of view and a valuable insight that the data supports.”