The In-House vs. Agency Marketing Debate: Factors to Help You Decide
Your technology startup is at a crucial phase in its life. It’s raised a significant amount of venture capital funding over one or two rounds, and...
4 min read
Alejandra Zarate : Oct 21, 2020
In the world of journalism, there are few stories more coveted than the exclusive. The more often a publication can scoop its rivals and provide readers with information that can’t be found anywhere else, the more interest and loyalty they will generate from their audience.
This same phenomenon applies to content marketing, whose aim is to draw readers to your brand by providing them with valuable, actionable information and advice. If you can provide insight that your competitors cannot, you’ve got a meaningful competitive advantage!
Often, marketers obtain this kind of proprietary information by conducting a survey, which can be a powerful marketing and media relations asset, but only if well planned and executed. So, here are some guidelines to help your organization get the most out of your investments in surveys — because they’re not cheap and they're also not without risk.
If you’re going to do a survey right, it’s going to require a significant investment, likely in the five-figure range, so before you start writing questions and talking with market research firms, make sure you know what you hope to accomplish. Do you want to position your company as an expert on a particular issue? Frame your product or solution as the ideal remedy to a big problem? Demonstrate the harm caused by an under appreciated issue?
Also, make sure the survey serves multiple purposes. For instance, surveys are often commissioned to provide an asset for the media relations team, and for good reason. So long as the results are strong, they’re powerful tools for securing earned media. But the media are fickle, and even if your findings are compelling, who knows what massive news event might occur on launch day, completely swamping the coverage you might have otherwise secured?
Survey findings can provide content for analyst-style reports, white papers, infographics, and social media cards. They can arm the salesforce with collateral that makes claims backed up by hard data. Some enterprise tech organizations rely on annual or quarterly research to power their most successful lead generation campaigns.
Additionally, don’t discount the ability of a solid survey to provide your own team with significant insights. You can learn a ton about your customers and the issues they’re facing, which can help your company make better decisions about product direction, messaging, and sales tactics.
With smart planning, hard work, and a bit of luck, you could find that your report becomes the industry standard for current data on your chosen topic. For example, the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report has become the de facto source of annual data on cyberattacks, and it’s a great example of how a company can use survey research to establish itself as a big player in a new market. Before the first report came out, Verizon wasn’t often thought of as a security company. Today, thanks to the annual report, Verizon’s name is ubiquitous in cybersecurity conversations across the Internet.
Ideally, you will find a topic that has all the following qualities:
Certainly, you can write your own questions and use a service like SurveyMonkey to query a list of your customers and prospects. In some cases, that might be sufficient for your needs. Understand, however, that fielding the survey yourself won’t be as credible to readers — or to journalists — as one that was fielded by professional market research firms. The cost is obviously much higher than it would be to do it on your own, but the results will, on average, be much stronger, assuming you get good findings.
Here’s what you’ll need:
This is just a bare-bones list of what’s required, and, as you can see, it requires a lot of time, effort, and expertise. And while you may save money doing it yourself, you’ll likely get better results and more credibility with readers if you partner with a credible research organization. Surveys are powerful marketing tools, and they can produce marketing and PR assets that not only perform well but can still generate interest months or years later.
Want to learn more about how surveys can power your own marketing activities. Get in touch!
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