Editor’s note: Andrew Dalglish is joint managing director of Circle Research. Based in London, Dalglish regularly works out of Circle’s New York office.

Good research meets three core criteria. First, it must be expertly designed and executed, so that users can have confidence in it. Second, it must reveal deep insight so users can focus their energy on the things that matter. Finally, it must be delivered in a way that inspires and enables action, so that users can drive commercial success.

If researchers are to deliver good research, having an understanding of the research user’s world is critical. You can tell a captivating story, illustrate it beautifully and conclude with recommendations that cut to the heart of the matter but if it doesn’t speak to the motivations and priorities of the user then nothing will happen. Why would it? No matter how interesting or well-delivered, facts that don’t directly help people meet their goals and targets have no tangible professional value.

Building an understanding of the user’s world has other benefits too. If you can demonstrate this you’ll be able to:

  • elevate the research function, as its relevance will be clear;
  • build stronger relationships, as you’ll be able to show empathy; and
  • proactively approach users with ideas, as you’ll be able to spot knowledge gaps.

While there are many users of research it’s often the marketing function that implements our findings. After all, marketers can’t influence behavior in the target market if they don’t have insight into what makes them tick.

Circle Research conducted a study in the fourth quarter of 2017 in partnership with B2B Marketing Magazine. We surveyed 350 B2B marketers and asked them to indicate how focused they were on 14 different trends. They did so using a sliding scale where 100 represented an all-consuming focus on that activity and zero indicated that it wasn’t even on their radar.

This study reveals five trends that will become mainstream in 2018, with the majority of B2B marketers investing considerable time and money into them as we speak.

  • Improving the customer experience: Marketers are focused on baking excellence into every aspect of the customer experience, from the initial enquiry all the way through to the in-life experience. Researchers can help them by mapping out the customer journey, identifying the critical touchpoints, defining excellence at each step and measuring performance.
  • Implementing/optimizing marketing automation systems: Automation systems allow marketers to effortlessly personalize marketing messages and nurture prospects through the buying journey. Researchers can help marketers optimize these systems by segmenting the customer base, applying a segment tag to each record in the CRM and identifying which messages will appeal to each group.
  • Preparing for GDPR: The new EU data privacy regulations (GDPR) come into force in May 2018 and will significantly impact anyone holding personal data about European citizens (whether that data is held in the EU, U.S. or anywhere else). Because of this, marketers are likely to be increasingly protective of their CRM databases so researchers using this data will need to put their minds at ease (and of course, ensure that their research is fully compliant with GDPR).
  • Adopting account-based marketing: Most B2B companies find that sales follow the 80:20 rule where the majority of income (often around 80 percent) comes from a small proportion of customers (the 20 percent). Marketers are focusing their efforts by creating separate marketing plans for each high-value (or high-potential) account. Researchers can assist in developing these plans by crunching data to identify which accounts to target, providing insights into their unique needs/interests and then tracking the health of the relationship over time.
  • Building emotional engagement: A business has never sold anything to another business. People sell to other people. This means that even in B2B markets, emotions play a role in driving brand preference and loyalty. Researchers can help marketers create emotional engagement by identifying the emotions that they should be looking to trigger, testing marketing executions for emotional impact and monitoring emotional engagement with the brand over time.

Missed opportunities 

While it’s important to empathize with marketing stakeholders and support them in their most pressing goals, there’s perhaps also an opportunity for researchers to open their eyes up to missed opportunities.

Utilizing big data came in seventh on the list of 14 priorities and predictive marketing trailed even further behind in 10th place. That’s a shame. If marketers were to mine the data sitting in their company’s servers there’s a strong possibility that they’d find many hidden insights. If they were to apply predictive tools to the data, these insights could drive commercial action. Who better to champion these possibilities and undertake the analysis than marketing researchers?

Why not use this to open up a discussion with the marketing team. Are they focused on these areas? What are their specific plans? What insights do they need?