This is the introductory episode to Fun with Research! In it, I talk about the purpose of our show.
In my work doing research for agencies and their clients, I’ve noticed two common issues with agency folks in regards to incorporating research into their work:
A problem of CONFIDENCE
While many agency marketers have some experience with research, it’s often limited to one or two approaches and not something that happens often. As a result, many agency marketers don’t feel confident in their own understanding of the various types of approaches out there, and which ones might make the most sense for their client given their goals.
This, of course, creates a crisis of confidence when it comes to talking with clients about research. Lots of marketers worry that because they’re not statisticians they’re going to get a question they can’t confidently answer, and that will reflect poorly on them with clients.
A problem of FEAR
It’s happened to almost every marketer I know when it comes to research — they’ve had a less-than-satisfying experience. Sometimes that’s because the marketer didn’t understand research well, and their researcher didn’t understand marketing well, and as a result, the research for which they used precious client budget didn’t deliver for marketing the way they’d hoped. Sometimes it’s because they got a big binder of crosstabs and charts and weren’t sure what the implications were for their marketing activities, so the research sat unused on a shelf (I call this the Dusty Binder Syndrome) and everybody just resigned themselves to the wasted expenditure.
I created Fun with Research! to help marketers with both of these problems. We’re going to help you gain confidence that you understand research better, are aware of various approaches (both ours and others) and know better how to position research for clients and how to answer their questions.
We’re also going to help you understand how to choose providers and approaches that are a good fit for your goals, and how to make sure you get what you need, so you can avoid having that tough conversation with a client about how the expenditure really isn’t delivering the ROI you’d hoped.
I hope you stay with us! With a new video every Friday, fun guest videos where we’ll talk to other researchers offering helpful services to agencies, and to agencies who’ve had their own experiences (good and bad) with research, plus the opportunity to get your own questions answered on the show, we’ll have lots of concise, helpful content to make your journey with research more comfortable and more rewarding — for you and your clients.
