6 Ways Businesses Can Benefit from Market Research Consulting

What is a Market Research Consulting?

Consulting for market research means more than just conducting a survey or running a focus group.  It is important to realise that market research consultants and market research agencies can advise on an array of options to solve your consumer needs, but also help you manage your research budgets, help revise or refresh impractical data choices or recommendations or even help with embedding poorly implemented solutions.

Market research consultants often come with great facilitation skills and can run innovation and ideation sessions, brand development workshops and much more. This is often well beyond the market research brief itself, however, they can be a much better investment than turning to expensive management consultants or further burdening under resourced marketing staff.

How Can Market Research Consulting Benefit Businesses?

Market research consultants often have to have a ‘Swiss Army knife of solutions’ in their toolkit as different businesses can vary on their approach to marketing, brand, and consumer, meaning that the consultant needs to be someone who can typically work across a broad range of issues, marketing tools and strategies as well as diverse target audiences.

Wherever the relationship starts, the consultant’s first job is to address the client request for research. That research request may necessitate additional consulting needs, or simply advice on whether the brief is able to be met by the agency or potential other partners who may provide the right kind of assistance.

To focus on market research consulting assuming the brief can be met, there is a hierarchy of consulting benefits a market research consultancy can offer:

1. Providing advice on a brief, request for proposal or request for tender
2. Getting the right brief
3. Defining the problem
4. Designing an efficient or creative research approach to solve the problem
5. Making tactical and strategic recommendations based on the research outcomes
6. Facilitating workshops to implement findings

1. Providing advice on a brief, request for proposal or request for tender

   • The company may want a consultant’s special expertise on the need for research, how much they may need to spend, assistance to get funding internally or even how to write a brief.  Ruby Cha Cha has a client briefing template we send to clients to assist them in the process.
   • A good consultant will also ask what the client will do with the information once they have it, to ensure they are asking for the right research or if alternative information already exists to meet their needs.

2. Getting the right brief

   • Market research consultants have a responsibility to explore the underlying needs and challenges of their clients.  Sometimes businesses feel that they are providing enough information in a brief, however this is not always the case.  A call to discuss the brief with productive questions and challenges should be the foundation of ensuring both an understanding of the brief by the consultant and a sharing of the key issues from the client.
   • Clients often give market research consultants difficult problems to solve – beyond the ability of the consumer research to be able to solve. For example, a client might wish to know whether to rationalise a line of business or how to change a marketing strategy or how to solve a complex brand architecture.  Often consultants are required to write a trade story to help clients sell into their buyers and we need to provide consumer video evidence, meaning that we are often not just researchers but also videographers.
   • Seeking solutions to problems of this nature are all legitimate market research consultancy functions. The difference between market research agencies is that those who have true consultants on board are the ones who are thinkers, strategists and brave enough to make recommendations.  The difference between market research and management consultants is we come to problems through the consumer lens, based on consumer evidence, to help guide businesses in a customer centric approach to challenges.

3.   Defining the problem

   • Market research consultants have a responsibility to explore the underlying needs and challenges of their clients.  Sometimes businesses feel that they are providing enough information in a brief, however this is not always the case.  A call to discuss the brief with productive questions and challenges should be the foundation of ensuring both an understanding of the brief by the consultant and a sharing of the key issues from the client
   • But the consultant also has a professional responsibility to ask whether the problem as posed is what needs solving and to do this the market research consultant’s first job is to explore the context of the problem. To do so we need to ask:
   • What research has been conducted in the past, with what results?
   • Have they seen the same problem in other markets, or collision industries?
   • Which related aspects of the client’s business are impacted?
   • If the problem is “solved,” how will the solution be applied?
   • How do we bring key stakeholders on the journey to ensure acceptance of the final solution?
   • What is the risk if the consumer led solution does not meet expectations?
   • And many more questions to help frame the issues for a better research approach…

4. Designing an efficient or creative research approach to solve the problem

   • Much of a market research consultants’ value lies in their expertise in designing and cracking research approaches that are efficient, creative and come in on budget.  This requires more than an examination of the consumer through quantitative survey or qualitative approach, the consultant must look at the bigger picture.
     1. Who are the stakeholders and how can they assist with providing better evidence?
     2. What can desk research tell us?  Trends, norms, review of websites and consumer marketing collateral
     3. How many people can we speak to, where best to speak to them and how?
     4. How can we make a tiny budget meet a challenging brief? Or alternatively provide advice on how better to use a larger budget.
     5. Can we facilitate workshops to bring all stakeholders on the journey? We know when clients participate in the process, they can understand the issues and then implement corrective action more effectively

5. Making tactical and strategic recommendations based on the research outcomes

   • Much of market research consultants’ value lies in their expertise as technicians – be that as qualitative researchers, quantitative researchers but also as marketing strategists.   Competent analysis requires more than an examination of the data. The consultant must also ask why the business made certain choices and the impact that has had on consumers.
   • Use of client frameworks in the analysis and delivery (or development of new frameworks or tools) is also an important role for the consultant.  It is never a good idea to change the business frameworks for the sake of it, and good consultants can work within a range of brand and marketing frameworks.  They should also be able to bring psychological frameworks to the table and talk to behavioural economics and social norms.
   • The use of frameworks is critical in making strategic recommendations – how the brand is operating today, and how it needs to change to win in market, brand architectures or segmentation frameworks for growth.
   • Provision of a written report or PowerPoint presentation that summarises key learnings and actions is the outcome. The information and analysis need to be clearly presented and the recommendations convincingly related to consumer insight.
   • A strong consultant knows that they must provide the fact book of research evidence that they are building their tactical or strategic recommendations from.  The inarguable consumer ‘truths’ – this is the basis for change and provides the ability for clients to return to the information later with clarity.

6. Workshops to Implement Findings

   To provide sound and convincing recommendations, a market research consultant must be persuasive, business minded and have finely tuned marketing and facilitation skills to build agreement and drive momentum for implementation.

   • Consultants can help beyond the research itself with a myriad of options.
   • How can we help shape the process and influence stakeholders to increase the client’s readiness for needed corrective action?
   • Is the client in need of embedding or road showing the results to other stakeholders?
   • Does the board need an executive summary?
   • Do we need to shape a trade story for the buyers?
   • Can we help with a brand strategy session?
   • Can we help the workshop to develop an innovation pipeline?
   • And so much more…

As you can see, market research consulting is a critical part of the market research experience.  It allows businesses to get more research and implementation, meaning more finely tuned research and a better return on investment.

Ruby Cha Cha is a market research consultancy. Want to know more? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team of market research consultants.