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The world’s best research teams do their best to proactively plan research over time to advance consumer understanding. At Market Logic, our clients collaboratively create these plans across brands and categories to make sure every research dollar is invested to advance competitive insights. But at the same time of course, they also have to swiftly respond to requests for research from marketers, product managers, and shopper marketing. When you consider the ratio of marketers to researchers, it can be– 7:1, 10:1, or even 20:1. The pressure to react swiftly to marketing requests is immense.
In the past, there was no way to coordinate their requests. Research was needlessly duplicated: the need for speed. At Market Logic, clients are introducing online research requests to turn the situation around. What this means is when a marketer needs a piece of research, they simply fill out two or three questions in an online research brief: What is the business question they want an answer to? And the action they’ll take if the results confirm or refute their original hypothesis? Having the request form seamlessly integrated in their insights platform means the receiving researcher can immediately run a knowledge check to see if there are already useful answers to questions. They can also look at the research calendar to see if similar research is currently being conducted around the world. Some clients are even taking it to the next level noting their savings if a research request can be fulfilled with past research.
So what’s the challenge? It’s getting the marketers to use the request form. When we launch and train marketers, we always show them how to properly use the online request form. But we’re also aware that some marketers might want to kick it old school and prefer to call the research team instead. If that’s the case, the research team can pull up the form and complete it in the course of conversation. Both win in the end.
And what are the advantages? First of all, both parties (marketers and researchers) have a clear and concise alignment on research requests without emails or word documents. And the second advantage is there is no duplicate research.
Any other suggestions for recycling piles of research requests? We’d love to hear.