Re-purposing Market Research
In the last three months, we’ve been involved in a handful of engagements where our clients provided previously executed market research as an input to our work. I thought of four important characteristics of great research.
Point 1 – Honor Vintage – Asking clients and prospects questions about their livelihood is tied to many other factors: namely the marketing condition at that time period (e.g., Q4 2009). Use research in context to the market conditions when the research was fielded and don’t try too hard to extrapolate the results over a long time horizon.
Point 2 – One Cook at a Time – The best research executions seem to have one internal owner that decides on the goal, finalizes the questions, and manages the process. The research that seems to become “watered down” becomes so because numerous groups get involved and want a few of “their own” questions. That can lead to long and unwieldy research with difficult to understand results.
Point 3 – One Goal at a Time – Similar to point (2), the research we’ve seen that’s been extremely effective has one (maybe two) goal at a time. In our opinion, most firms are better off doing numerous smaller research initiatives, where feasible. Having a single goal, such as, “Will our thought leadership be credible to breakaway advisors?” is usually more effective than broad “state of the industry” research.
Point 4 – Analyze in Two-Dimensions at a Time – Analyze the data in easy-to-digest sets. “Independent Advisors with 100MM+ AUM” is easy to understand and consider. “Independent Advisors, with $100MM+ AUM, 50+ clients, CFA charter, and previous work at Merrill Lynch or US Trust” is difficult for anyone to get his/her head around. Just because you can slice/dice data in nifty ways does not mean it’s helpful.
As you consider market research, we hope these learnings from reviewing many good research initiatives will help.