We see strong branding and marketing that nudges people to act, to buy, to say, to go daily. Each interaction is impactful but subtle. But what we don’t always realise is that marketing such as this is applicable to more industries, more brands, more communication interactions than customer-facing communication. This includes internal teams within businesses.
Insight teams are integral to businesses. But depending on the insights team’s maturity and the stakeholders, not everyone in the organisation understands this. Market research provides intangible value that drives decisions that make tangible positive change. It eradicates most levels of uncertainty, and gut-feeling-based decisions.
Despite this Insight is often an overlooked department within a business
So, how do we fix this?
By raising the profile of insight teams, strengthening their internal brand using tried-and-tested marketing techniques.
Peter Shreeve is a Senior Insights Manager, Strategy and Insight at the Open University, heading up the Insights team within Marketing and Communications. This means Shreeve can provide a great commentary internal marketing’s importance and how teams can best approach it.
The Importance of Reputation
We need to start with this question: why is it important for research and insight teams to consider their internal reputation?
An insights team’s reputation can play a great role in how their insights are taken and actioned by stakeholders. The way insight professionals are viewed is reflected onto their work. The better the reputation within the business, the more insights will be integrated into daily decisions.
Peter Shreeve explains:
“Research and insight teams often hold an objective lens on the world of the customer and the markets in which the brand operates or could operate in. They can often champion the customer and ensure that marketing strategies are based on evidence. Therefore, they need to have a voice that is heard and respected. We have written a purpose for our team: Inspire and enable better decision making through exceptional and proactive understanding of our audiences. Implicit is the need for the evidence we gather to make better business decisions.”
Another important impact of a good internal reputation is that insight teams won’t have to fight as hard for their allocated budget. This means more time dedicated to identifying ideal research opportunities and generating quality data and insights. This is a sentiment shared by Shreeve, who states that:
“Building a strong internal reputation ensures budgets are maintained or increased. The function is less likely to be seen as a cost centre as a result.”
If an insights team is seen as a cost centre, that view could overshadow any key insights that the team shares, which leads stakeholders down the dangerous path back to gut-feeling decision making.
Building a Name
So now we fully understand the importance of an internal reputation, the next question we need to address is how should insight teams start to build a name for themselves and their work?
To change the sentiment throughout an organisation, we must first look within. Within the team, our strategies, how we communicate with others, our own actions and how they reflect back on us. First understand the Insights Team’s image within the organisation as it stands and then we can look to change it.
Changing this image might be a challenge. But you can take a leaf from marketing strategies, PR communications techniques, and behavioural branding insights, and we can turn even the worst image of an insights team on its head.
Shreeve explores how he has taken on this challenge in his team:
“Start by developing a purpose and vision for the Insight team and audit what you do, how you do it, who you do it with and where might you go. Then specifically consider how and when you can influence [stakeholders]. Be proactive and seek out engagement. Passive gets you nowhere. Find a way of engaging at the most senior level. We produce an Insight of the Week that goes to our Vice Chancellor and his senior colleagues as well many others across the University.”
Marketing, branding, and communication techniques help build up a name for an internal insights team. I’d like to draw your attention to two simple ways initially that would have an immediate impact on stakeholder perception:
Case Studies.
Case studies are great tools that show the value of work, decisions, and in this case, insights generated, through simple stories that, when crafted right, are easily digested.
These case studies can also act as ‘word of mouth’ advertising by using stakeholder quotes as endorsement and being shared across a business. Potential quotes from stakeholders the insight team has worked with can be embedded within the case study. Secondly, those who read the case study will be inclined to share it if they’re suitably impressed, and will spread the word of the capabilities exhibited through this case study to others.
Digital Communications
We can learn from social media marketing and communicate with stakeholders on their terms and platforms. Like Shreeve’s ‘Insight of the Week’ that engages a great number of stakeholders across the university, your stakeholders will have a desired way they like to digest information.
Is it a punchy soundbite or voxpop that can connect stakeholders to respondents directly? Or maybe a newsletter with the latest insights tailored to each department? Or even an interactive infographic people can read at lunchtime? The platform, communication method, and time you communicate has an impact on how it’s received.
Don’t be afraid to do a little research internally on prominent stakeholders. Find out how they like to be communicated with, what are their concerns with market research and/or the insights team, and how to address them? What would help the insights team become a useful resource they would come to time and again without hesitation?
Besides this, there’s several things we can do in our original purview as market researchers to help support this endeavour, for example:
- Ensure high data and insight quality
- Utilise creative reporting techniques for more engaging insights communications
- Create a freely accessible warehouse of data and insights to open the flow of data around an organisation
- Educate on what it is to use data-driven decision making techniques
- Easing stakeholder involvement into the research process
Measuring the Success
The question on every insight professional’s lips currently is: how can insight teams measure their effort’s success?
But to alter that question slightly: how can we measure the success of our own reputation?
Shreeve has three key questions to help inform the criteria for success:
- How far-reaching are your projects – are you now working with different stakeholders to a year ago?
- How often are you cited by senior management or in papers? Or indeed nearer to home? e.g. Within our Senior Leadership Team in Marketing and Communications
- Are you as lead or are your team building personal reputations as the “go to people” on insight in general or on something specific?
These are three very important questions, but each insight team is different, will have different starting points, and different considerations they need to take into account to measure their own success.
Start small if you need to, but Shreeve’s three questions should be the endgame. Being the go-to team for answers to questions, to find out if an opportunity is viable, or even to simply check in and make sure they’re going in the right direction is the resulting role we should all look to fill as much as possible – and a strong insights team brand will help us get there.
