Writing a market research brief: turn a puzzling task into a tabletop role-playing game.
After some searching on the net, I have discovered that most instructions on how to write a market research brief are written by market research agencies. As a consequence, they present a list of things that researchers need to know for the project, making it harder to write from a client’s perspective. Those guidelines force clients to route their thoughts from business goals to research framework, making it harder to maintain the link between the requested research and the business objectives they wish to achieve by utilising the results.
Let’s bring some zing into the research brief writing process and try a different approach, by using an analogy of playing a tabletop game;
Players: Who is going to take part?
Think about people who will be involved in the research and describe the preferred audience.
Story: What is the story behind your project?
While a list of ready-to-go questions can be very convenient to have for researchers, you might end up with insights that are too obvious or not relevant to your current priority. Instead, let the market research team do their work of designing a study and simply think about what you want to reach as a business. Focus on the information about your market that you lack at the moment and put it all in writing.
Now imagine you’re playing a weird version of charades, where you need to explain yourself without using any professional terminology. That would be your project background description.
Resources: How to allocate your resources to make most of what you have?
Estimate the scale of the research and decide how flexible you are in terms of time and money.
If your budget is not quite determined, ask for a a list of pricing options (based on varying scope) and make an informed decision depending on your priority.
Loot:
You’ve invested enough effort, time and money into your market research project. What do you obtain in return?
Although the deliverables usually depend on what your initial goal was, do not be limited by a presentation and a report. Request ongoing newsfeed, online dashboards or any other presentation formats that you may find more beneficial for your business. After all, you are the lead player.
Written by:
Anna Usupova – Quantitative Specialist, THINK Global Research
For further information on THINK Global Research, please contact Kristy Ihle (Managing Director) at info@thinkglobalresearch.com.
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