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If you’re thinking about developing research-powered Thought Leadership marketing content … here are 6 steps in 4 minutes that can make the difference between GOOD content that might create marketing leads … and GREAT content which delivers value to the reader and influence for the vendor/provider.

video transcript

If you are thinking about creating research-based thought leadership content, then here are 6 steps in 4 minutes that will make the difference between GOOD content that might create marketing leads … and GREAT content which delivers value to the reader and influence for the vendor/provider.

1. Pre-meetings

• Good research is typically driven by marketing teams
• Great research starts when they engage a broader range of stakeholders on what are the topics to be explored and what worked (or didn’t) in prior projects. Beginning with the end in mind, what headlines or punch lines do you hope the research will either fortify or myth bust?

2. Survey development

Writing great survey questions is as much art as it is science. There are industry standards and best practices for how questions should be authored but there’s also the psychology of how you identify the personas and then take them through a mental journey to ensure you get the most accurate and actionable responses.

Having clarity for how you’ll use the data afterwards will help you write better survey questions, including how you might plan to cut against demographics or cross-cut one topical question with another.  

The best surveys are authored with marketing foresight, research methodologies, AND deep context. The more your survey author understands the topic, the better the questions and the more insightful the results.

3. Fieldwork

Your choice of survey tool will affect your flexibility with multiple personas or conditional double-clicks on key topics. Your choice of panel providers directly affects the quality of the responses and therefore the validity of the data and insights; especially when you’re surveying in multiple geographies or needing targeted respondents. Case in point, there’s only a few survey platforms that I utilize and only a few panel providers that I trust to give valid respondents.

4. Data analysis

It’s pretty straightforward just to present the charts one at a time or cite a key statistic in a headline, but there’s so much more insights that you can get out of research data, if it’s been well-authored and you have someone experienced doing the analysis.

Sometimes you’re looking for the shape of the data more than the statistics themselves. In other cases, the deviations by persona, org size, industry, or geography tell an even more interesting story than the global sample. If you’ve asked similar questions in prior surveys, that can yield exponential insights. Again, this is where topical expertise and research experience really make a difference.

5. Unlock the ROI of what you paid for

Good research will give you punchy statistics for your press release and fortify a marketing white paper – you will get ROI. BUT, there’s so much more value that you can get out of the data that you’ve already paid for!

A good analyst will debrief your marketing teams … differently than your sales/enablement teams … differently than your executive team. To unlock all your data’s value, you’ll want to unpack that data and its implications for your go-to-market strategy … differently than how you equip your front-line sellers to gain empathy with their customers … differently than how you might consider product strategy or corporate vision … all from the same survey results and market insights.

6. Marketing

All that being said, most research sponsors do it to create marketing content that will help inform or inspire their target audiences. This is the fun part of aligning unbiased research insights with the intended narratives from your product or marketing teams; all of which can be radically elevated through creative design and a well-rounded package of content:

• Build on a foundation of the ‘research report’ as the citable source of truth
• Amplify through social media, infographics, video shorts, blogs/articles
• Evangelize through webinars and live events
• and ideally enable your front lines for more credibility, differentiation, and empathy into what your customers are trying to achieve.

There are some good (and not so good) research panel companies out there, but assuming you’ve got valid respondents, the difference between good and great is the science and art within the questions, the analysis, and what you can do with the insights.