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In today’s data-rich environment, marketers are spoiled for choice when it comes to tools and metrics. Yet despite this abundance, many still struggle to turn insight into meaningful action.
Too often, research is seen as a support act, something to get through before strategy begins, rather than a strategic discipline in its own right. This mindset limits its value. To drive real impact, strategic research must be embedded with intentionality: designed for long-term use, resourced appropriately, and implemented with clarity and confidence.
This article sets out how marketers can integrate strategic research into their practice, how to make smart decisions about commissioning versus in-housing, and how to avoid the common pitfalls that undermine the power of insight.
From Project to Practice: What Strategic Research Looks Like
Most research projects begin with good intentions. But the reality of deadlines, internal expectations, and budget constraints often lead to default approaches: the annual survey, a round of focus groups, or a well-worn questionnaire.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these tools, unless they’re used without clarity of purpose. Strategic research begins not with a method, but with a question. It’s structured to serve multiple strategic ends, not just one moment in time.
Done well, a single piece of research can inform messaging, guide employee engagement, shape stakeholder communications, and influence service design or business strategy. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through deliberate framing, robust design, and a willingness to invest properly.
How to Embed Strategic Research into Marketing Strategy
To move from isolated projects to embedded practice, consider the following:
a) Start with the decisions
Always define what the research is meant to support. Are you entering a new market? Repositioning a brand? Trying to improve customer retention? Be precise. Ambiguity leads to generic findings.
b) Design for reuse
Build in segmentation. Create benchmarks that can be tracked over time. Think beyond one report, how might the findings inform product, HR, customer service, or sustainability communications?
c) Build internal access and ownership
Bring stakeholders into the process early. Present findings visually. Hold workshops. The more colleagues engage with the insights, the more likely they are to act on them.
Commissioned vs. In-House: When Each Works Best
As organisations invest more in strategic research, the question of whether to build in-house capability or commission external partners becomes increasingly important. There’s growing interest in building in-house research capabilities—and rightly so. Internal teams can be responsive, cost-effective, and well attuned to company culture. But there are limits.
In-house research works well for:
• Regular customer satisfaction or NPS tracking
• Product feedback loops and campaign testing
• Monitoring known KPIs over time
Commissioned research is better suited to:
• High-stakes decisions (e.g. rebranding, mergers, market expansion)
• Sensitive or confidential topics (e.g. employee experience, stakeholder perception)
• Projects requiring advanced or mixed methodologies
• Situations where independent validation is essential or response rates have been low in-house
Importantly, external research partners bring objectivity. They can challenge assumptions, handle difficult topics with neutrality, and generate more candid responses—particularly where internal politics or power dynamics may influence results.
A Lesson in Lost Opportunity
A few years ago, we worked with a specialist producer who commissioned an extensive research project. The work identified clear research opportunities: their heritage story resonated deeply with target audiences, there was unmet demand in premium channels, and proactive messaging could address reputational risks.
The research offered a roadmap; segment audiences, elevate storytelling, secure key stakeholder advocacy, and improve e-commerce usability. But implementing the recommendations required investment in marketing capability and clearer stakeholder communication. Despite recognising the strength of the findings, the business chose not to act and instead allocated additional budget to sales functions.
Months later, competitors adopted similar positions. The insight remained sound but unused, it yielded no value. The cost wasn’t the research, it was the inertia that followed.
This serves as a reminder: commissioning research isn’t the same as being research-led. To get the return, you have to implement.
Common Market Research Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)
- Starting with the answer
Designing research to confirm internal assumptions, rather than explore possibilities, leads to surface-level insights.
Instead: Treat your hypotheses as testable, not inevitable. Use open-ended and mixed methods to uncover the unexpected.
- Viewing research as an admin task
Rushing to complete “some research” before a launch often leads to shallow outputs that inspire little confidence or change.
Instead: Align research with strategic cycles, not deadlines. Plan ahead to allow for quality design and reflection.
- Underinvesting in expertise
There’s a persistent belief that research is something anyone can do, especially now that tools are so accessible. But access isn’t expertise. Poorly designed research can be misleading, or worse, quietly wrong.
Instead: Recognise when specialist input is needed. Insight that informs brand, culture, or positioning is too important to leave to chance.
Research Budgets and Transparency
Research is often one of the smallest lines in the marketing budget, and also one of the most vulnerable to late-stage cost-cutting. Yet its role in reducing risk and increasing return means that underinvesting can prove far more costly in the long run.
While allocations vary by organisation, many marketers dedicate a modest proportion of their marketing spend, typically between 5% and 10%, to research and insight. This rule of thumb is supported by a range of marketing practice sources, including Marketing Management by Kotler and Keller, and aligns with guidance from industry bodies such as the Market Research Society (MRS) and ESOMAR, which emphasise the importance of allocating sufficient resource to ensure robust, actionable insight.
Beyond the headline figure, clarity and transparency during the commissioning process is key. Marketers sometimes hesitate to disclose budget expectations to potential research partners, fearing it will bias proposals. In reality, being open about available budget enables suppliers to recommend the most appropriate scope and methodology. It saves time, reduces misunderstandings, and allows both sides to focus on quality and relevance.
The Long Game: Insight as Competitive Advantage
Intentional research does more than provide answers. It builds alignment. It clarifies decisions. It reduces risk. And it ensures that marketing stays anchored to real-world needs, something particularly vital in times of change.
Organisations that invest in strategic research as an ongoing practice gain a lasting competitive advantage. They’re not just data-informed. They’re insight-driven. And in a world full of noise, that’s what cuts through.