A complete guide to using market research in your PR

A good piece of research can boost your PR efforts no end - providing solid material to drive your media relations and content creation. It’s a tool that creates talking points to feed to the media, spurring conversations among key buyers while educating them on prominent market issues related to your brand.

But why is market research such a great tool to boost PR?

1. Grab journalist attention

A hook or headline with a solid statistic is an effective way of grabbing a journalist’s attention. When so many brands are vying for publications to cover their stories, you’ve got to break through the noise. Providing them with hard-hitting stats that are relevant to current market issues can intrigue them and give them the talking points they’re looking for. In fact, data is such an important commodity for journalists that 55.6% of all stories in the HR media contain data, statistics and research.

2. Elevate your thought leadership status

In B2B marketing, becoming a thought leader in your field is an excellent way to boost brand credibility and authority. Developing reliable and widely regarded research is useful to emphasise this through your entire sales, marketing and communication processes. It can show audiences that you deeply understand their issues.

3. Create weeks’ worth of PR and marketing content

A strong piece of research can go a long way. If you uncover several interesting talking points you can create a series of news releases as well as a multitude of blog, social media and email marketing content to ensure you get the most visibility and payoff possible.

4. Enhance your SEO

When others use your data across their websites, there’s a good chance they’ll link back to your site to credit you. Though online B2B publications may be less likely to provide a backlink without getting paid to do so, certain consumer publications and blogs are happier to provide you with a link and support your SEO strategy.

How to create the best research for your PR campaign?

1. Research before you research

Before doing anything else, research what’s already out there. Find competitor research but also look up what research has been popular and covered within the publications your PR strategy is targeting.

Once you know what research has already been produced, ask: can you add to this conversation? Can you disprove or develop a new perspective on prominent ideas and popular topics? Or are these popular topics overly saturated - do you need to focus on an entirely different angle? You don’t want to recreate research that’s already out there - journalists need something new.

2. Set your objectives

Research needs clear objectives - what are you trying to uncover? What purpose does this research serve? Who is the research aimed at supporting? Is the research covering a broad topic or digging deep into a specific angle? 

3. Consider how you will use this research down the line

Plan questions with news stories in mind - how could the answers to your market research create interesting hooks and headlines or provide talking points for your brand experts to comment on? 

For example, in the HR market, interesting news hooks often show conflicting points of view between employer and employee opinions, making interesting dichotomies for news stories. When you understand that this is the kind of story you want to develop, it gives you a better view of how to frame your market research and survey questions. 

4. Set your survey size

How many people do you want to survey? The number of participants often affects the cost of conducting a survey (more below) as well as its credibility. It’s also good to remember that journalists in different industries typically have a benchmark for how many respondents they would consider a well constructed and reliable survey to have. Take this into account if the purpose of your market research is to generate media coverage.

5. Set your price point:

Research can be an expensive business depending on how you conduct it. To name a few variables, the number and type of participants in your survey, the quantity of questions you ask and the lengths to which you need support in conducting a survey and designing the subsequent report can all affect the price. Ensure you set a budget so you know what’s feasible for your market research.

Using a research company or going it alone - things to consider:

Using a research company

There are a variety of research companies that can help you set up your study, find participants for your work and design the process for you. While some companies such as Censuswide will help you step by step from start to finish -  consulting, designing relevant research questions, surveying participants and creating the resulting report, others like Pollfish or Survey Monkey can support you in different ways. 

These platforms can be a cheaper option for conducting research but your own team may have to be more hands-on. For example, while Pollfish offers services to host studies, find participants and survey them, under their more basic pricing quotas, brands must design the questions and subsequent reports by themselves. At a higher cost, however, platforms like Pollfish can also provide consultancy support to help you design your market research. 

Still, whatever organisation you use, it’s essential to clearly lay out your objectives so the platform or research consultants can be utilised in the best way to create a survey that uncovers insightful responses.

Conducting research without outside help

This is, of course, the cheapest option but brands can come across difficulties - particularly in finding enough participants to respond to questions. That’s not to say this route can’t still produce great results. We’ve previously had clients who conducted research through their own networks and gained tens of thousands of coverage views from the resulting news.

Still, the process is time-consuming. In the end, brands must weigh up their budget, the level of time they can commit to the research themselves as well as the resources and people they have at hand to assist with research creation, hosting and responding. These are the considerations that will influence whether or not a research company is right for you.

It’s good to bear in mind, however, that whether you conduct research alone or choose a research company to support your study, the right PRs will be able to help you too - guiding you on the best objectives, themes, topics and questions that will create interesting research for your PR strategy.

What other strategies can boost your PR? Download the HR Media Report 2021 to find out recent media trends.