Said awareness within the sector affords firm the means to build influence and grow revenues via product, services and consulting sales. Awareness also helps to insulate brand against new market entrants especially those willing to flood the market with significant volume of reports. Unstated but important element is quality of offerings since it can be possible to achieve a negative general awareness as well.
This process detailed below is designed to create as thorough and engaging approach to bringing research studies to market as possible. Points of emphasis include collaboration, integration, timelines, effective narrative, and ongoing process throughout.
Initiation:
Analysts should be involved with marketing from the outset. As they have largely defined the project, analysts or project leads should be in position to brief marketing and sales teams. Analysts provide universe of companies, segmentation for their value potential and help to minimize wasting time on non-covertable accounts. Also provide messaging support and key points of analysis to facilitate engagements.
Audience Targeting and List Building:
Obviously start with relationships with previous customers. Past buyers, firms that have been engaged for other projects or will be targeted for current research effort. Populate list with names within existing relationship companies as well as new names for broader reach within both this segment and expanded list provided by analyst. Ensure quality of leads, remove deadweight from the campaign and look to add new contacts with fresh database searches and direct outreach to target companies. New additions require your nurturing process to be applied here.
Scout newer companies with VC or high-quality private equity funding who could be looking for guidance.
Media:
Generate a proper industry media list to generate coverage. Media relationships are a tremendous resource for spreading knowledge and findings but these relationships take time to cultivate and should be done with care and authenticity. Second level of media are within tangential industries who may have possible interest in exploring new markets. Industry verticals and/or lower or upper levels of supply chain (mining, specialty chemical, distribution channels). Outlets that can present findings to end-users of technologies or applications are useful relationships as well. The more end-user visibility the more opportunities to build influence companies often consider when buying.
Project Kick-Off:
Announcement of upcoming research effort with messaging on tech and market coverage, companies addressed, sector talking points and intended deliverables. Inquiries made or offerings for potential engagement with companies to boost research and add to sales pipeline. Must be cautious not to overpromise on deliverability as research can take additional time and clients can become frustrated with delays and seek out another solution. Manage the expectations on deliverables and content throughout. Ongoing:
As research progresses and deeper insights become available these should be converted to content that can be utilized to create interest and move possible buyers further down the sales funnel. Engagement that is ongoing but authentic creates better results than canned marketing sequences. Narrative that matches current market activity even better as it becomes easy to tie research efforts and findings to other firm’s announcements or media coverage.
Release Timeline
Within 30 days of release of report, the provider should be able to nail down firm dates for submitting reports to editing, production and market. DTR refers to Days to Release
Sales Process:
Sales engagement should begin in earnest to all qualified leads starting at 30 DTR. The use of pre-publication discount incentives, if deemed appropriate, should begin at 30 DTR and end circa 7-10 DTR.
As Editing ideally initiates at 8-10 DTR, this is an opportune time to pre-brief clients or address other client inquiries direct with Analyst(s).
Once report is released Sales moves to handing follow ups or addressing leads generated via marketing and media campaigns.
Marketing:
Upon submission of report to the editing process (8 DTR) shift to GTM process and strategy. Research results are now available internally and can be applied to content for media, general marketing and sales messaging.
News release is drafted along with report talking points for media, social and general market activities. Suggest creation of 8-10 white board topics that can be delivered on a schedule over 13 weeks. Select forecast releases for infographics and messaging. Webinar or other marketing event planning begins here
Media outreach commences with direct contact with key media to assess interest in release and possible interviews and submitted stories by analysts. Send release to wires and cc’ your internal mailing lists. This process begins 3 DTR.
Release Day? Send out the report and go celebrate…..
Post Release:
Marketing events to present results via conference call, webinar or live interview Q&A should happen within 5-7 days of releasing the report. Analysts are at peak knowledge and messaging and the report has been marketed for several weeks. Plus, at some point the analyst is needing to move on to next project. Content drips with heavy concentrations over the first 3 weeks post release, going to one item per week the next 4 weeks and one item every 2 weeks for the next 6 weeks. This will generate both content spread and longevity to keep the report in front of its audience and stay active in marketing and messaging platforms.
Post-Release analysis:
Target list: how many companies did we get gain access to and convert in some way, i.e., sale, consult, lead for future, research, no results)? Who bought (new or returning?), Who showed interest but didn’t close? Who ignored the campaign?
What feedback from customers did we receive? Right product/wrong product? Did we surpass, match or come in under competition or alternatives. Do they want anything else?
What was the ROI for the campaign broken out by the mix employed? Which approaches produced greatest return and which ones provided the least? Which content generated best results, which angles least?