Marketing guidelines for citing sources in blogs, ebooks, and reports used to recommend research from the past 3-5 years. Today, it’s more like 1-2 years.
Research reports take time. From designing survey questions, to identifying the audience, to conducting the research, analyzing the results, pulling out the trends, writing and designing the report, and publishing and promoting the campaign… (phew) — it can take anywhere from two to four months on the short end. And previously, brands relied on established market research firms for the latest industry trends and consumer sentiments.
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But now, marketing teams have more agile resources at their disposal. Tools like Pollfish have databases of hundreds of millions of global respondents across industries ready to give their feedback — making data collection from consumers, executives, content creators, or decision-makers possible within weeks.
Here are 10 reasons why market and consumer research reports are such a valuable investment for brands →
Market research reports are a significant investment — and the payoff is near-infinite. Not only do well-crafted industry trends report campaigns generate traffic and leads for months or years following launch, but they build trust with your audience, and serve dozens of other departments beyond the marketing team.
Proprietary data positions your brand as an upmarket industry leader — creating trust with executives and decision makers.
“You didn’t hear it from us — you heard it from 1,000+ leaders in our industry.” When your audience can hear from their peers, it establishes trust. Consumers say that user-generated content (UGC) is the most trustworthy content, and data reports provide the perspective of a brand’s audience at scale.
New industry and consumer data is helpful for SEO and generating brand awareness.
Google wants to surface the most helpful, reliable information possible. And it’s getting smarter every day. They’re looking for content that’s up-to-date, accurate, and relevant to the searcher. So, when a blog post says “The Top 25 Email Marketing Statistics from 2023” and every source is linked to another blog that’s linked to another blog that’s from a study that’s actually from 2008, that’s not super helpful.
Up-to-date research reports provide helpful information for searchers, encouraging writers to include your research in their articles, which improves SEO, domain authority, organic search traffic, and overall brand awareness.
Sales enablement teams can use research reports in email nurturing workflows to convert prospects into customers.
Industry trends reports are full of actionable data, insights, and tips (if you create them right 😉). They make for great content in email nurturing workflows, and when prospects engage with them, it shows high levels of intent and a good opportunity for sales to follow up.
Social media marketing teams use industry trends data in posts across all channels and visual formats.
Semrush does a great job using visual content on social media, and they bring in tons of their own data from industry trends reports. It’s engaging, relevant, and super shareable.
Product marketing and engineering teams can use new market research to guide product and feature development.
Win-win-win. Bring product teams into the survey design process and any time you’re polling your audience to see if there are any features that should be prioritized on the product roadmap.
For startups, industry research can help secure investments and inform strategy decisions.
Bolster claims in your pitch deck with the latest research, and generate buzz for your brand at the same time.
Annual or semi-annual trends reports are a great partnership marketing opportunity — giving each brand access to a new, engaged audience.
Every year, HubSpot publishes the State of Marketing — a comprehensive benchmark report for marketers to use to guide their strategy. For the past three years, we’ve had the opportunity to work on this report with their team. HubSpot partners with Litmus, Rock Content, and Wistia to expand the reach of the report and share insights from professionals from different industries.
PR teams love data reports — they’re worthy of a new press release, and reporters can use proprietary research for newsworthy hooks.
Whether you’re an established B2B SaaS brand or a Series A startup, all press is good press. Brand awareness is key to business growth, and in a crowded marketplace, it can be hard to come by. Give a reporter early access to the data, and brainstorm the absolute best press pitches that you can get out of the research.
And don’t forget a roundup blog post with the best statistics to share after the report is out!
Customer success teams can use industry best practices to help their contacts succeed with the product or service.
This year, many marketing leaders are turning their efforts to customer retention over acquisition. It’s less expensive and more predictable. Prepare customer success teams with the latest data and best practices using industry research reports and interviewing successful brands.
When brands create their own research reports, they can strategically incorporate product CTAs throughout, making them a powerful lead generation channel.
Lead gen is top of mind for most marketing leaders. Our clients have generated hundreds of thousands of leads from industry trends reports — with an average of 20%+ net new contacts. When you work with experienced content marketing professionals, you can strategically integrate helpful resources from your brand and product features into reports, turning them into lead generation tools. And one report can continue to drive new leads six months after launch, or more.
Want to develop an industry trends report or consumer insights report for your brand? We can help.
Hi — we’re CXD Studio — a creative team of marketers, designers, content strategists, and data analysts who create content for top brands. We’ve developed industry trends reports for HubSpot, DoorDash, Vimeo, Lightcast, and others and helped them reach brand marketing goals. Reach out to explore creating a brand market research report with us.
