What makes the analyst/market research business so fascinating and yet challenging is how one competes in a space where there are either established firms with solid market positioning, brand name people, scale etc., or a multitude of generic report factories that push out reports via a process of scraping web-based content, applying generic strategic analysis like Michael Porter, and then lowballing on price.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day on ways in which they could get their small firm up over the hump and become a profitable and sustainable business.  They operate in a space populated by established analyst firms in a market segment with a fair amount of media coverage and marketing noise.  My first thought was in how they needed something that would force people to stop and take notice of them.  Was there some set of findings, analysis, or content that the firm could offer that would grab market attention?   Was there a way to drill into a part of the market or subject area that no one else was doing or offer something unique that could be properly messaged?

New ideas or conceptualizations are hard to come by and it is often painfully obvious when analysts create new categories to get analyst relations departments to throw them some money.  Some markets are simply too well defined to offer a credible new taxonomy.  However, there are times when markets become too myopic, the thinking is too stale or just too noisy.  Herein lies the opportunity.

It is a mistake to do what everyone else is already doing, even more so if they have greater resources, scale, reputation, or huge digital marketing budget.  Also to consider was how much of a commitment it requires to win business via engagements, data collection, analysis presentation and requisite personal and firm brand building.  There are often opportunities to carve off pieces of a market as a niche player, but business scalability is extremely challenging.

Another consideration was that the market they were in was an analyst-oriented business and not report-focused.  A lot of important differences between these approaches and likely a reason that the offshore factories do not make any major headway.  Analyst oriented markets require identifiable persons that are out in front representing the firm/practice.  The reports business can have value where you are in an early stage of market formulation or in less dynamic environment but there is always the matter of offshore factories and tons of content marketing that is not always low-grade.

One suggestion was splitting elements of the published works and generating more forecast oriented products.  Take the reports, break them down into product specific categories, pull out the related forecasts and content, add some additional qualitative elements and there are more things to sell.  Does this practice cut into existing product line though or does it open the door to new revenue and customers both inside the target market for the firm’s products or outside of it?  There are all of the various product marketing and sales issues to address here as well.

Financially, the model of niche player can work if the sales requirements are not too onerous.  I have directed and sold reports that generated in the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales, far more projects in the several tens of thousands and yes, ones that the market simply did not embrace.  There are a host of reasons why reports fail and said reasons/lessons can be addressed ad nauseum in other venues.

But…..

An independent or start up can do quite a bit to garner some market traction with making connections, doing quality interviews and email check ins.  I recommend the provider target 30 companies that comprise the supply chain and some additional firms that serve as sales channels or end user.  From the supplier side 8-10 interviews with another 12-15 email check ins with 5-6 questions generates 20-25 touches.  Convert 5-6 into sales and your project is viable.  Conversion rate will be influenced by how well the analyst engages the market obviously but also in the go-to-market plan.

• News release
• Talking points to market and industry media
• Infographics
• Product sample
• 3^rd party content placement
• Marketing events
• Sales follow ups, meeting set up and presentations

Final thoughts….

Having analysts that can be presented and promoted in a market are an important component of success but not a sufficient determinant.  Where companies have invested time building expertise and reputation, these serve as powerful barriers to entry thus the differentiation becomes paramount.  Hedging risk by offering lower quality or somewhat indistinguishable content to the market is highly inadvisable.  Capital is important and hard to come by, but I have seen people with wealth assume that what they did in other businesses (or in another era) will apply to current circumstance and that simply is not the case in such an evolving and highly nuanced business.

Being undifferentiated is deadly.  While playing the role of the barking Crank in the public square might garner some notice it will not get someone paid.  The parrot is more pleasing but offers little true value and no one will pay for it especially if the provider has no influence.

An analyst practice with some chance of success must be founded on data-orientation, being a market influencer, or providing thought leadership.  Some combination is better. Developing that unique brand that makes a market take notice of you is a complicated process but not having some distinguishable characteristics.

I was speaking with a colleague the other day and I remarked about the amount of people covering topics that are significantly oversubscribed. IoT (Internet of Things), AI, cloud, edge, SaaS etc.  That is before you get to the endless amount of offshore firms pushing out reports on anything you can imagine. 

I suppose one could say that people flow to where the action is but if you are not an early entrant you have to ask yourself, why does the market need another analyst covering that space? What is it that you can offer that isn’t already being provided? Can you offer some particular piece of analysis that hasn’t been thought of? Can you outsegment, outpredict, out analyze or do anything else that someone else isn’t?

Another colleague built a massive data set of machines, materials, outputs, utilization rates and the like.  The fact that clients funded the bulk of the development was a bonus.  Their direction helped to optimize the data engine in ways that made it impossible for a competing firm to displace them in accounts.

I have run across agencies that have taken the position that they/their client should receive a copy of a report in exchange for a briefing. This is not a new practice but one that I still find irritating given the lack of professional courtesy that said expectation displays. First of all, I have never once heard of a supplier briefing that was worth $3,500 or whatever the price of a full market study is running. Secondly, PR firms are paid for their time even though their contributions to analyst coverage is, at times, dubious. Why do they feel entitled to the marcom budget but the people whose opinions are sought by the market aren’t?

What a good agency should do is make sure that every media outlet, website and analyst knows what their clients are working on. They should facilitate requests, make sure the company spokesperson is properly messaging and doing so as often as possible. They should be developing coverage for the clients and doing so with a proper attention to professionalism. Treating analysts as the help or worse will damage their clients in the market. I have seen it happen. Instead of listening to the vendor’s side of the story my colleagues called the vendor’s customers, learned what they needed to and issued research notes without their input. Or, they simply avoided the PR people’s attempts to get their clients noticed.

Improper? Well, considering that the customers are the best validation source out there I don’t think so. And, while getting the vendors’ input on things is useful it rarely offers anything close in value relative to how the customer base views them. Depending on the size and stature of the company, once an analyst is up to speed they need not do more than follow the news releases or social feeds and peruse the website.

Something to consider…..

Your content strategy (you do have one, right?) should be focused on the following objectives:

• Establishing and supporting your brand
• Driving engagement with your sources of information, sources of revenue and followers
• Sales lead generation
• Supporting your message channels (press, social channels, industry watchers)

Do it right and you have a powerful process in place to support your firm or personal practice objectives.

Branding:

As I discuss in other posts, branding in the analyst and information services world is more than a logo, color palette and splashy website, it’s the way in which you provide your analysis, forecasts, value proposition and content and what the reader takes from it. It is the depth, substance and relevance to what you are talking about and what your audience sees. You should have a relevant and professional look with clean graphics and lay out. (And if you are at the smaller end of the spectrum you can still look the part without having to fund a graphic design position.) But content clarity, message and discipline matter more.

Does your content show expertise? Does it show you and/or the firm as substantive? Engaged? Connected? Does it engender confidence in your reader? Does it show you to be an authority that people have to go to for something? And is it presented in formats that users like to see?

Engagement:

Say you have press releases, articles, white papers, PowerPoint decks, blog entry, tweets and video blogs. (You do have all or some of these, right? What results are they creating? Are they spurring interactions with people? Do people contribute comments? Do they email you? Buy things? Call and yell at you? Anything at all? And do you have reply mechanisms in place to address these responses? Are you responding appropriately? Do you take time to talk to the people who are most unhappy or who are pointing out where they find you lacking? Are you using disagreement to further your understanding of what’s really going on?

If your content isn’t spurring engagement or at least supporting your efforts to engage with the market then you really need to look at why that is.

Lead Generation:

This aspect of your strategy is the one that many people focus on but simply throwing up a paper, posting slides or excerpting pages from reports isn’t likely getting you all that you want. There has to be consideration for what each item is going to get you. And, is what you are posting going to compel someone to give you their details or ask you how to purchase something?

There was a time when I could have an analyst pull a paper together, we would post a link to the document and email to our lists. 3 days and 400 registered requests later my sales people were locked and loaded to go and sell something. Not so simple any more. Everyone does white papers, video blogs, gives away free reports or keeps an archive. Webinars have proliferated everywhere.

On the other hand, give away too much and what are you getting in return? You have to establish a fair return on your content with respect to what value you set for the items and evaluate the amount of registrations, requests for more, follows or shares. Also looking at how each content unit feeds into creating leads though your analytics apps. Not every content piece carries the same weight with each audience and industry. See what items create the best leads.

Message Channels:

Press and trade media especially are key audiences for your content efforts. Your news releases have to be well written and substantive but also contain graphics and report data.  Are you supporting media outlets with offers of interviews and yes, press copies of reports? Are you staying on top of what your industry press is covering? Are you engaging with them through social channels?

And for the social world, posting on Twitter or LinkedIn is a must but since everyone else posting what makes your content compelling and engaging?  How much effort goes into producing quality graphics, text and messaging?  LinkedIn groups used to be a way to promote findings but have been rendered ineffective with constant report spam posting from offshore report factories.  So instead, there is a need to build your own following or aligning with other larger accounts be they media, trade associations or yes, vendors.  

To make an effective content strategy work you have to think through what returns you want it to provide. You have to constantly consider and then reconsider how the various elements are working for you. Think about how the audience that you want to reach wants to interact with you and how they prefer to consume information and more importantly, what hot buttons do you need to hit in order to get them to do something worthwhile for you.

But, it is also hard to carry the role of producer, marketing, sales, financial, graphics and any else your business needs. You can outsource the web site, QuickBooks is a great tool, graphic design is reasonably inexpensive and editing is available. Clients will still hold you to a reasonably high standard but no one expects Forrester level branding.  Marketing and selling is a whole other matter.

It is an awkward thing to produce analytical content and then turn around and try and market and sell it to companies. Process wise you have to deal with CRM, creating email campaigns, following up on leads that come in, developing and sticking to a content strategy that promotes the brand and then there is the account management side of it.

My experience has been that analysts analyze, write and forecast. They engage with companies and talk to the media. They produce content. When they are not producing content, they are looking at information to broaden their knowledge. They may have aptitude for sales and marketing but even with a natural flair for some of the practices, they have to choose between being an analyst or someone in the revenue generation side of things. There are not enough hours in the day to be both nor do them well.

Having an in-house sales and marketing department often isn’t practical for solo practitioners. The cost can be substantial and having to manage it can be the extremely time consuming. Junior level people need a lot of hand holding, senior level people command bigger salaries.

And just how much can you produce to keep everyone busy and the cash flow coming in?

The good news is that there are ways to overcome this.

• Organization is everything. Without this, you are done and nothing else matters.
  
  
• Outsourcing can work if you know what key activities you want to have happening in and around your business. Find someone who has worked in your industry and bring them into your business for a fraction of the cost of hiring your own staff. Make the compensation tied to what they do for your business.
  
  
• Commit to some basic marketing and activities and put them on par with eating, sleeping and coffee.
  
  
• Find people that will accept your content in some form and promote it for you. Editors need content, you need promotion. Fair trade and one of the best ROT (return on time) you can find.
  
  
• Get socially active in a business way. If you can keep your name out there people will come to you or at least follow you somewhere which is a major part of the battle. Don’t just say hey, follow me on Twitter. Get involved with LinkedIn groups, trade groups, industry forums etc.
  
  
• Give away free stuff when you can. Automate your web site so people can access archives and samples, they give a name, company and email, they can read your premium content.

Practices to Avoid:

You don’t have to spend an hour on the phone with that company that wants to interview several firms under the guise that they doing due diligence when all they really want is free consulting. 

Agreeing to give prospects a free hour of analyst time if the lead hasn’t been properly vetted.  Sales reps should understand that analyst time is valuable and will only be given to situations that warrant it. Instead, train them better.

Giving away products at serious discounts to prove something to a prospective client. There are excerpts, older reports and other ways to educate a prospective client.  Selling the product short sends a weak message.

Giving away your numbers so that a company can evaluate them and see if you are worth buying.