Using Research to Win Business Pitches

Article Written By: KatieWebb

The costs of new business pitches continues to increase. When budgets are tight, that's alot to spend and not win the pitch. Every agency strives to be creative, and the PR industry is by and large, very good at demonstrating creativity. But creativity is not always enough in its own right to win a pitch. Afterall, most of the agencies will be pitching very creatively! So how can you differentiate your pitch?

The answer could well be gathering market insight. Redshift is part of a group of Communications Companies which includes PR agencies in the US. Here again the US seems to be leading the way. Over the last year Redshift have supported dozens of exercises to provide objective insight on the market and target audience to demonstrate that the PR agency knows the market, and by implication, that its ideas will work. In short, its all about combining creativity and credibility. By contrast, in the UK, we have only seen a handful of agencies willing to add research to its pitch activities. The evidence so far is that research can significantly improve an agencies chances of winning new business. But how?

At a basic level, a quick poll can demonstrate evidence of audience behaviour or attitudes which are central to the ideas of the pitch. The advantage of this approach is that the narrow objectives means the survey is quick to implement, and much lower cost. This approach is certainly better than failing to undertake any supporting audience research.

The more impressive pitch support, however, involves a more thorough, deeper understanding of the target audience, principally through audience segmentation work. In essence, we strive to understand how target audiences can be segmented, and what messages are likely to resonate with them. If an agency can demonstrate that it knows the target audience through objective data, and therefore, why its approach to communications will work, then maybe its pitch will be seen as credible as well as creative. The value is not just about credibility. Market insight can help refine the messages, and identify optimum media consumption habits, which will support the execution of the winning campaign as well.

So what are the barriers to this kind of pitch support? There is always a barrier in persuading people to try something new, but most people in PR are very open to new ideas. Speed can be an issue - its necessary to build in extra time to the pitch planning process. The perception of high costs is probably the obvious barrier. However, online research has significantly reduced the costs of research, and, if like Redshift, a market research agency owns an online access panel, the costs of research can be much lower than you may have thought.

About the Author

Neil Cary is a Director of the Market Research Agency Redshift Research and runs the Online Access Panel, Crowdology.

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