What is the Importance of Communications Research to a Brand
Sola Abulu, our principal consultant describes research below:
Research is the process of mining while data is the precious stone gotten from the activity. Just like in mining, if you do not dig from the mining site, you are not going to get the precious stone.
The precious stone/gold in this instance can be referred to as the hidden insights gotten from research that businesses and organizations need.
Communications research is the starting point of every strategy and plan. It helps us identify who the target audience are, their needs and their attitude towards our service. Communication research can inform the creation of strategies and serve as a feedback mechanism to the organizations and businesses who understand its importance.
What Does the Research Reveal?
A detailed communications research will provide (but not limited to) the following information to work with.
- Nature of the business/organization
- Identified target audience
- Relationship with stakeholders
- Position in the marketplace
- Competitors
Data Sets to Watch Out for as a Strategic Communications Professional
In applying the strategic communications framework to your unique business or organizational context, the following data sets are important to carry out communications activities.
- Audience Demographics: The statistics of people existing in the world constitutes a growing figure making it very important to determine the specific audience for your business or organization. The research or analytics will provide clarity on your target audience, their interests, profile, demography, gender, etc.
- Social media analytics: It typically shows how people interact with your content. This data informs your decision on the kind of content that interests your audience and makes you double down on it to meet your strategic objectives.
- Internal stakeholder feedback: This kind of data can be gotten through employee surveys.
- Public opinion surveys: To gather this kind of data, surveys or questionnaires can be used to retrieve useful insights.
- Website traffic data: Regularly tracking the website traffic and data about the audience behavior on the site is important to improve digital content.
- Brand perception studies: There are some brand perception tools that can be used to monitor conversations around brands. This is a very important data set and also a proactive way to identify potential crises. Other avenues to gather this data are online reviews, comment features, social media interactive polls and customer experience studies.
- Focus group insights
- Market research data
The goal of gathering this data is to refine messaging to the target audience and improve the communications strategy.
Why is Communications Research Important in Different Expertise Areas
In marketing communications, communications research is very important in identifying the buyer persona and other attributes of the consumer.
In corporate communication, employee survey is a form of communication research that helps businesses and organizations ensure that their staff are aligned with their approach to several processes, especially where the system allows for transparency and trust. Research in this instance is a feedback mechanism that improves the way things are done.
Political communicators often understand the importance of communications research and it is visible in how they build structures for their political parties or leaders based on the competitors agenda. Carrying out this research in political communications for instance can help the leaders gain important information like the number of registered voters. If the number of registered voters is low in areas that are considered as strongholds, that data can reveal to a very large extent the outcome of their work. So, they work on that data and develop implementation plans with such analytics.
Most times, research and the analytics of data reveal very useful insights that can inform strategic decisions. Businesses and organizations that play down on communications research easily make decisions on assumptions. This is costly because the marketing communications then become tactical and misses the target audience through a strategic approach.
Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A) is a strategy and communications consulting and training firm focused on enabling businesses, brands and organizations to achieve their desired objectives through strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation management.
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