Working on media relations today can be a challenge, to say the least.
With shrinking newsrooms and more PR practitioners than ever, getting a journalist’s attention can be grueling. Many experienced PR pros agree that we need to find new ways to pique their interest.
One underused tactic is incorporating original research into our media outreach. But how can we do this most effectively?
Michelle’s guest, Becky Lawlor, founder of Redpoint Insights, will to discuss how B2B companies can elevate their market presence and brand recognition by producing and promoting original research and authoritative insights.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant, author, and writer talks with her guest Becky Lawlor of RedPoint Insights to explain how B2B companies can use original research to build authority and earn PR.
Lawlor defines original research as organization-generated data (surveys, internal data reports, or unique analysis) versus third-party stats, and emphasizes strategy: align topics to goals, analyze competitors, and find a unique angle.
She outlines respondent sourcing via email lists (often 1–2% response rates) or vetted B2B panel vendors, discusses sample size considerations (often 100 minimum for B2B, larger for consumer or segmentation), and reviews budget ranges and incentives.
They stress careful survey design to produce headline-ready stats, limit open-ended questions, and perform deeper analysis (models, segmentation).
The episode covers PR pitching tactics, involving PR early, and broader uses like lead gen, sales enablement, speaking, SEO, and LLM visibility.
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
01:47 What Is Original Research
03:53 Why Research Builds Authority
05:19 Research Strategy and Angles
07:40 Finding the Right Respondents
09:59 Sample Size and Segmentation
13:31 Credibility and Media Scrutiny
15:55 Budget and Panel Costs
19:44 Incentives and Fraud Risks
21:20 Survey Design for Headlines
26:10 Question Order and Open Ends
27:30 Open Ended Pitfalls
28:41 Analyze Beyond Charts
30:39 Pitching Data Stories
33:46 Bring PR In Early
37:07 Repurpose Research Everywhere
42:01 Measuring PR Impact
45:53 Budget Friendly Pilot Surveys
48:55 Find Industry Data Gaps
51:03 Own Your Research Brand
53:55 Wrap Up And Resources
Show notes:
Redpoint Insights: https://redpointinsights.com/
Becky Lawlor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckylawlor/
Full transcript:
How to Leverage Original Research to Boost Your PR Results
Michelle Garrett: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome. I’m so glad to be back today. This is another episode of PR Explored the PR podcast, where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations. I’m your host, Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant and writer, and with me today is my guest, Becky Lawlor of RedPoint Insights.
Hi Becky.
Becky Lawlor: Nice to meet everyone and looking forward to talking about original research today.
Michelle Garrett: Yes. I’m so glad to have you here. We have, we’ve, we’ve known each other a little on LinkedIn I guess for a long time. I’ve followed your work and, we both work with B2B clients and I think.
A lot of what you talk about is very applicable to my work with clients, and so I really respect what you do and, I’m happy to have you here today to talk to us about original research. So why don’t you tell us, if you wanna tell us a little bit more about yourself before we get started, that’d be great.[00:01:00]
Becky Lawlor: Sure. so I run a B2B content marketing agency focused in the, B2B tech space. it, we do thought leadership overall, but we have a specific focus on doing, original research content with clients and that includes. conducting the research ourselves, and shepherding the whole process through to creating content.
And as part of that, PR plays a lot into it, so a lot of our clients are doing PR with this, as part of their overall content marketing goals with their original research.
Michelle Garrett: Yes, I would love, as we get started, if people have questions as we’re talking today, I encourage people to ask.
but I think the first thing that we wanna do before we get into how to use the originally search to, boost Booster PR efforts, I think we wanna talk a little bit [00:02:00] about what we are even. When we say original research
Becky Lawlor: Sure. So I think, there’s a couple of different types of original research, but the first thing to clarify is the original piece, meaning that it needs to be something that is coming that has been generated by.
Your organization in some manner. So going out and doing what we, call third party research where you’re going out and you’re looking for stats that, you might see online, that other people have data that other people have posted is not original research. That’s what we call third party research.
Original research would be like, running a survey is one way you could, get original research, surveying a bunch of people, and then you have data that nobody else has. Based on your survey, but it can also be as a B2B company. you may also have internal data that you then are let’s say, exporting out to the world.
So like I have a cyber security client and they track certain, metrics around breaches and phishing and [00:03:00] all of these other, security. data points and then they create a year over year report sharing out what they’re seeing based on their, data. That is another type of original research.
You can even do, original research using third party information, but you are doing unique analysis of it, such as, like a simplified example might be somebody who goes out and analyzes 100 websites and looks at where the. call to action is on them and then is able to maybe look at like how they’re driving traffic or something and then consolidates kind of their analysis of what they saw.
So those are the different ways you can do original research. I would say the most common, and the one that we’ll probably be focusing on most here is the survey based, type of original research.
Michelle Garrett: Yes, but I, thank you for explaining it. ’cause I do think a lot of people, just don’t [00:04:00] understand that there’s a difference in research.
And it doesn’t mean that if you don’t do original research, you can’t use research or it’s bad or anything like that. It just means, if you, it’s, your research that you own. And I think that for me, I think that adds credibility, to a degree. it makes you the expert, the authority on it.
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, I like to say if you wanna, build your authority, you need to own the narrative. And the way to own the narrative is to have the data, about what’s going on in your industry with your ICP. that’s gonna really build both your authority and your brand awareness.
Michelle Garrett: Yes. So I think for thought leadership, again, position you as the expert.
I think it’s really, it’s not something e everybody could probably do or would, want to do, but I think if you can. Consider doing it. It can be a really big, boost and it’s, so useful. You can plug it in so many ways. we’ll get to that. But, [00:05:00] let’s talk a little bit about, and I wanna encourage people to ask questions because again, I know this topic, a lot of people know it inside and out, but a lot of people are not familiar with.
With original research and how to use it in your PR efforts and so forth. So please feel free to ask questions. but let’s talk first, before we get into how to use the research, how you set it up and how you actually conduct the research makes a huge difference, right? And then the outcome and therefore in what you can really, how you can use it, what you can get out of it.
So let’s talk about that.
Becky Lawlor: Yeah. I think this is a really important point. One because. let’s just acknowledge that doing research is, usually a time and, money investment. it’s not a quick and easy thing, so you wanna get it right if you’re gonna make that investment. and I think the first part starts with you need to have a kind of, you need to have a [00:06:00] strategy.
Just like any type of content that you’re going to create, you need to be thinking about. What is the right angle? What, and so when I walk clients through this, I really want them to think about one, we look at, we do a competitor analysis. We try to understand all of the research that’s out there in their industry by their competitors on the topics that they might be exploring.
right now, No surprise, AI type of research is everywhere. So if you wanted to do your own kind of AI research in your industry and with your product or solution, you need to make sure that you’re still getting a unique angle that isn’t one that’s been covered, and that you have something unique to say.
otherwise, publications aren’t gonna wanna pick it up if they’ve already picked it up by somebody else. So even when you’re doing original research, you still have to look at the landscape out there and make sure that you’ve got something unique to say and that you’re not late to the game and somebody else has already said it.
there’s always an angle you [00:07:00] can come up with, but you do need to do your research to begin with. you also wanna do, think about like, how does this align with your, company’s or your brand’s, goals, and. Products and services alignment, all of that. Like you want you, you’re not selling you, this is thought leadership, but you do wanna think about that alignment, as part of your overall thing.
Now, sometimes you might have a PR goal where you’re like, you don’t really care how it aligns. You really just want brand awareness and you decide to just do something really fun, shocking. that would be a driving a PR headline. That’s fine. But that goes back to understanding what your goals are, with what you’re doing with the research.
So that’s the first step. And then I think the next most important step is figuring out who are you going to survey? How will you find these people? How many of them do you need? and that’s actually, can be quite a challenge. you can consider using an email list if you have one. but. Just be aware that the [00:08:00] average is a one to 2% response rate.
So you need to have a pretty big email list if you’re gonna do it that way. I’m not saying I’ve seen examples of somebody getting 50% responses, and some I’ve seen more, in the five to 10%. But I think you should go into it understanding what the average is and what might happen. ’cause I’ve also seen a lot of people really frustrated and surprised that they didn’t get hardly any responses and not nearly enough to actually do anything with the data.
if you look at your email list or that’s just not a viable option for you. The second option, and talking in a, specifically in B2B, if you want to survey professionals, especially if you wanna survey C-Suite or director and above, maybe you need people doing a certain job, like I say, job to be done, like they need to.
or they need to have, some skin in the game in terms of purchasing decisions. There might be, or you want companies of a certain [00:09:00] size, that’s your ICP, that’s who you’re trying to hit. There are panel vendors out there that have built these audiences. and this is the best way to find it.
You, if you go to somebody like SurveyMonkey, they typically, essentially the way they do it is they have a consumer audience. They just have people out in the world are signing up to take surveys. And they’re then trying to segment like, oh, they say they’re in it or they say they’re marketing. If you go to a B2B panel vendor specifically, and even more, if you can get one that’s really aligned with your like industry, typically a lot of them will, specialize in certain industries.
Then you’re going to get, a very, a much higher quality audience. You’re gonna feel much more confident that these people are who they say they are. because they’re doing some vetting. They’re checking their emails and their LinkedIns and they’re making sure that these people are actually professionals, in the industry and doing what, they say they’re doing so that your data quality is there.
Then the next step [00:10:00] is, how many do you need of these folks? And of course that answer’s tricky. ’cause I will say it depends. even from a PR perspective, it depends. if you’re doing a consumer audience, you need a lot more, I would say a thousand is often the minimum for a pr play with consumers.
And that’s because they’re very easy to find. They just have to be somebody. if you just need somebody who buys a bar of soap at the grocery store, that’s pretty much everybody. In the us let’s say if you were look looking to survey the us. So that gives you a very large, population to then survey, which for statistical validity means that you need a larger sample size to hit that.
Now, if you just wanna, survey C-suite in enterprises that are doing a billion or more in revenue. That now becomes a very small population and you don’t need as many of those people as you would. In fact, I’ve seen like the Wall Street Journal run, articles where they’ve surveyed like a [00:11:00] CMOs, enterprise CMOs.
Yes. So it could be, that low. I, however, what I say to my clients and what I think is a good, if you’re trying to just get a good framework
I’d say in the B2B space, the minimum you need is a hundred. there are occasions where you could go low or I just gave that Wall Street Journal example that I saw, but I think a hundred.
and when I talk with my analysts, they say we want a hundred in a sample size at the minimum to be able to feel like we have enough responses to break it out and segment the data. I think for B2B audience of 500 is often a pretty robust survey, and that also allows you, again, going back to your goals, is this a global survey?
Are you wanting to, are you gonna wanna break this up by different regions? are you serving in the US and uk? I have clients that. they survey both, they create a report for both, but when they go out to do their pr, they might just want UK headlines ’cause those are gonna land in UK publications and they might want us headlines for the US ones.
wherever they see like a big [00:12:00] difference in like the uk, UK is way ahead on this, aspect of it. Then the us, guess what? UK publications wanna publish that ’cause that’s, exciting for them to show that they’re advancing ahead of the US or something. So, you wanna think about your sample size also from how you wanna break up the data.
So if you want it to be global and you want to cut, slice that in different ways, you’re gonna need a bigger sample size. If you just wanna say, survey us IT professionals, and you’re not gonna really segment the data and you’re just gonna use it in a pretty simplified form, maybe, you can get away with somewhere between 150 and 250.
and I, guess the other thing I would say is. I haven’t s the bigger sample size. I still see clients getting PR when it’s smaller. You just have to be thoughtful about it and why you’re doing it. You might be doing what I call like a kind of a trend survey or a pulse survey I call it.
Often we do these short, just [00:13:00] like 10 question surveys, but we’re really centering around a trend or a very specific idea. we’re not trying to do a big state of type of survey in that case. And so then our PR is very targeted. And we typically don’t maybe need as big of a sample size because we’re just hitting on a, quick moment in time versus really trying to explain what’s going on in the whole industry.
so there’s a lot to think about your sample size there, but hopefully that’s giving you, a baseline to go with. I’ll pause there for a second before we actually get into survey design. yeah, a couple things came to mind. So it’s not as easy as just using SurveyMonkey and just going for it.
Michelle Garrett: and the thing is, those surveys sometimes do get coverage. I have seen some, especially in the consumer space, I’d say more it seems less serious sometimes. It’s I have, I wish have, think of an example. I wish I could think of one right now, but I’ve seen some really interesting, just [00:14:00] weird quirky stuff that gets coverage.
So maybe that’s the point. but I think, I don’t know how credible that is, Yeah. I would say, I think it’s more okay to use SurveyMonkey for a consumer, sample, because that is who. Survey monkeys kind of panel is it’s every van consumer out there, so I think it’s more acceptable.
Becky Lawlor: But if you really are trying to do B2B professional survey B2B professionals, I think you really need to use a panel vendor that specializes in that.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. And it makes a big difference because if it’s not credible, then I know I wouldn’t be comfortable pitching it, to journalists ’cause I know the first thing they’re gonna do is start looking, poking around, looking under the hood of the survey and who responded and how did you get the respondents and what is it really looking at all the things that you’ve been talking about.
And I don’t know if enough. Thought really goes into it ahead of time. And, then we [00:15:00] are gonna talk about question development here in just a minute. but just, the media are gonna look journalists, series journalists are gonna poke around and they’re gonna wanna know, one time I worked, I did some, work for an agency that had surveyed five people.
And I’m like, you’re not seriously gonna, we’re not really gonna pitch this like a hundred percent, no. We can’t do that. yeah, I think even in a very, like narrow, like a niche space, you’re still, I think. To your point, you said a hundred respondents right.
Would be the minimum, right? Yeah. In a B2B situation. yeah, but that’s, I always think about that and chuckle. You need more than five. That’s the answer to that question. Yeah. I was just looking to see what else I wrote down here. ’cause you made so many great points. Oh, budget. and, We can [00:16:00] talk about this, in a little bit too, if you’d rather, but I think you mentioned, it is, it does take time.
It is, it can be expensive and there, but there are options too as far as who you work with, a big agency versus a smaller agency or having someone do certain parts of the work versus the whole thing. Which, the whole thing is important of course, but. Maybe, as we go, you can tell us, if somebody’s on a budget, how would you maybe, break it down or what would, how would you approach that?
Becky Lawlor: yeah, I think, I don’t know what their budget is, but, I do have a, I have an article on my website that actually breaks down the different, if you’re gonna go with, I’m not gonna name names here, but if you’re gonna go with a large academic consultancy or, well-known industry consultancy, you probably are gonna pay [00:17:00] around a hundred k, possibly even more. I’ve seen, pos up to three, 400,000 for that kind of research. I have also, then there’s like your middle, maybe an industry one. or a large agency, you’re probably gonna pay 50 to a hundred K in that range.
And then if you are moving to more boutique agencies or consultants, you are probably paying it. Again, it depends on the scope and size. I have offerings that are as low as, 10 K, including the audience research. So it really depends. maybe you can find somebody even lower than that as a consultant or freelance.
I don’t know. But I think you can go as low as that, I think, more boutique agency range, especially if you wanna do more in depth, my, I would say my average price is, in the 20 to 30 K range for a really in-depth, end-to-end survey. It just depends again, and one of the big pieces that [00:18:00] I’m including that cost in when I say those costs is, your panel.
but this is also where you need to be careful. I’ve been doing this a long time and I will tell you that there are panels you, you can pay $75 for response for, or you can pay. 15 to $20 a response. And after doing this for years, I’ve seen that often, I don’t quite understand why, but sometimes paying the $75 does not actually give you better quality people or data than paying $20 per response.
So it’s about vetting the panel vendors that you’re using and having confidence that they deliver.
Strong data. and have, a good handle on who their clients are. They’re the, so you need to. if you’re gonna go out and do this on your own, or even if you’re using a partner.
these are good questions to ask. Understand how they are, putting together, where are they finding their panels, how they vetted it, all of that kind of goes into what your budget will be. But obviously if you’re gonna survey 500 people, it’s gonna [00:19:00] cost more than surveying a hundred people.
If you are surveying really like high level people, C-suite or very large organizations, the more kind of, the smaller the pool is. People that exist in the world that you wanna survey, the higher the cost will be, is exact, is how to think about it. So if you just want IT professionals at any level and any size organization, maybe you can get those at even eight to $10 a response.
but the more you say, I only want C-Suite and I want ’em to be at really large enterprises, then maybe now you’re looking at, closer to 25 to 50 to some places will charge a hundred or more. So it just depends again. who you’re surveying.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. And, to that point, do you, what do you, how do you feel about incentives for survey participants?
Does it
Becky Lawlor: help? so on the panel side, the panels incentivize them themselves. that’s part of their whole thing, so I don’t really [00:20:00] worry about that. But when I’m running email surveys with clients, yes, incentives help. but you need to think carefully about how you use them because. it’s just I don’t know, it’s human nature.
Even a $10 Starbucks card. some people that are busy people and you think it wouldn’t be the, and they have plenty of money, it’s still just like getting something is an incentive for people. It just makes it more fun for them. So I have seen even where I thought they would do it without an incentive, that the incentive definitely increased, response rates.
What, and I do think that personalized, I’ve done it two ways. I’ve also done. it’s a lottery. Like we’ll have one big prize, $500 Amazon gift cards or one $400 gift card or whatever. I do think personal, small personal incentives work better than one large one because it’s a guarantee you’re gonna get something.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah.
Becky Lawlor: the other thing though I would say is if you’re using incentives, you really need to like, do not put your survey up on LinkedIn with an incentive. because you will get so much fraud and [00:21:00] bots and. So if you’re gonna use an incentive, you need to have it in a closed system like your trusted email list.
I, you don’t want to be putting incentives out in places where you don’t really know who’s coming to take that survey.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. so after, so please go, with what’s the next step after we’ve figured out, who, why, who, what’s next?
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, so the next step, and I think really very, critical, and I think a lot of times people is your survey.
And I think a lot of times people think, oh, we’ll just whip up a survey. And put it out, and that’s all there is to it. And that’s the easy part. But it is actually the most crucial, and I would say one of the more difficult parts because. you need to get it right both from a data quality perspective to make sure that you’re not, that your questions are clear and understandable so that when people are responding, they’re [00:22:00] answering based on, everybody has the same understanding of what they’re responding to.
I see that sometimes in just not carefully defining something like you may say, even things that seem simple, like how effective is x? what does effective mean to somebody? So sometimes you need to get more granular about what effective means. and it’s okay to use that scale sometimes, but other times you need to think about, maybe we need to put in parentheses.
Effective means being able to do X, Y, Z, somewhat effective means being able to do this, not effective means you can’t do any of these things. So sometimes you need to clarify that because people have different interpretations even of what something like that means. but more importantly, I think the biggest error that I see in surveys is not thinking through, especially from a PR lens, thinking through how do these questions actually drive headlines.
How am I going to flip what I’m asking into an interesting headline? Now, of course, you never know what the data is gonna say and you’re [00:23:00] building hypothesis. but I think one you wanna think about when you think about your survey, once you’ve decided on your angle, you wanna start asking like, are there myths that we can bust?
What would be surprising? What would, We, and the way you get about this is because you don’t know for sure, but you should have some sense. if you are, Your interactions with your customers is telling you like that everybody thinks this, but what on the ground is, the opposite then It’s probably a good question to ask because you’re probably gonna be able to bust that myth because your real lived experience is telling you that something different is happening.
for example, I had one where, we were doing like it was around, It was for a legal audience, but they asked are is your company, have they had, compliance issues? Have they had fines? has somebody had gel time? And I was really? Nobody’s had gel time for this, but you know what people had, and in an anonymous survey where [00:24:00] they’re not saying who their company is or who they are.
They can be honest that way. And then that’s a really surprising headline when you can really say yeah, you know what, not dealing with this. Companies are getting fines and they’re getting big fines for it. And that’s the reality. That’s a headline. So you need to think about, and sometimes it’s also being not afraid to ask questions that even, and sometimes, and I think you have to weigh all of this out too, Asking questions like maybe you do really don’t know, but you wanna ask the question. But don’t hinge your whole survey on that. Have other questions so that if that one doesn’t pan out and there’s not really anything interesting there, you have other questions that will drive headlines. So it’s also thinking through how does this whole survey.
Work together to drive a narrative, to drive headlines. I usually, with my clients, I lay out a whole storyline where we hypothetically if the data came out the way we anticipate, this is a narrative we would tell, these are the headlines we could get from it. And I, and I do a back and forth with the survey design [00:25:00] to make sure that the survey, so that I understand what the headlines are that the survey questions could drive.
so again, just really thinking through that and if you’re working with a partner. Making sure, that they have the capability to do that. I think I told you, but like a lot of market research firms are great at market research. You need to vet if you’re going with a market research firm, that they’re actually great at, content and understanding how to do research that drives pr, that drives headlines, that drives even if you’re using it also in other ways for your content that’s gonna drive engaging content.
Yeah, from it. Otherwise, you might just end up with a bunch of data points that are interesting insights, but don’t drive a narrative and don’t drive headlines.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, and I love that point too because there are a lot of ways we’re, focused on, pr, how we plug it into pr, but there are a lot of other ways to use the research for your content marketing, for your, for other marketing initiatives.
The, [00:26:00] for the sales team, for, there’s a lot of things you can do with it if you get good. Data, good stuff, and the design is really important. So I do think a lot of people just bap out a list of questions and even the order, the questions are asked, and I’ve, heard people talk about that. So it’s just things that you wouldn’t think about if you, you would think about it.
Because you’re an expert, but the average person would not think about it. So
Becky Lawlor: yeah, and you do need to, to your point with order, you need to think about and it’s, it, you’re taking them on a journey and it needs to make sense. so you need to like move from one theme to the next and the, one question should build on the next, in, within a category.
the other thing I’ll say that I see an arrow that I see a lot is people asking a lot of open-ended questions. There’s two problems with that. From a PR perspective, a big problem is it’s really, you can’t really turn a bunch of open-ended data into a stat. And from a [00:27:00] pr, what journalists want is they want the data point, they want, the 98% are doing X or 65% are doing y.
you can’t really do that when everybody is responded in their own individual way to question. That’s one reason not to use it. The other reason is drop off anytime. And you need to think about this with all your questions, like lots of matrix and tables, like anything that’s cognitively challenging for people to answer, they’re gonna start to think, this is just getting to be too much work.
I’m gonna just, nevermind I’m cutting out. It’s not worth my 10 bucks or 20 bucks or whatever I’m gonna get for this. and they drop. So I think. There’s two reasons. It’s not to say that you can’t have an open-ended question. Especially again, if you’re doing this for other types of content and you do want, maybe you wanna be able to use like interesting quotes, or maybe you really do want to understand on a different level, just internally, and you wanna use one of your questions to get like their personal insights.
But one or two questions in a [00:28:00] survey is fine, but do not build, I’ve seen ones where it’s like. half of the questions are open-ended. And even for me, I’m like, this is just too much effort, and then I think sometimes people don’t answer honestly, either if the question is too complex or they Yeah.
Michelle Garrett: It’s just,
Becky Lawlor: yeah.
Michelle Garrett: they’re just gonna, they just wanna get their Starbucks gift cards, so they’re just gonna, run through the survey and not be thoughtful about how they’re answering. If it’s not easy, I think to answer sometimes.
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, exactly.
Michelle Garrett: let’s see. So can, are we, can we move on to the next question?
Is there anything else you wanna
Becky Lawlor: add? Yeah, I actually do wanna, I don’t think it was, I, do wanna actually talk about the data analysis piece too, because I actually think that’s really important as well, because. What I have also seen is a missed opportunity sometimes with the data analysis. So you have your basic questions you answered, and most survey software, whoever you use, whether it is [00:29:00] SurveyMonkey or something more professional, is gonna spit out A-A-P-D-F.
It’s gonna have a chart and the listing of the percentages, and that’s pretty easy for everybody to read, and that’s great. Some of the most interesting insights and stories come from the more in-depth data analysis you can do with your data. So thinking about building some kind of maturity model from it.
if you ask, and this goes back to your survey design, some of these things you need to think about in your survey design. do we want to ask people certain questions? Based on what they’re able, like what their capabilities are, then we’re gonna put them into this model. If they’re like, they’re a leader, they’re a laggard, they’re somewhere in between, and then we’re gonna allow this to be a benchmark that people can use.
PR loves that kind of, modeling, Sometimes the other thing you can do is just look for, like we find often, like the C-Suite might think their reality is totally different than the person doing the work. And that can be a really interesting story, to say [00:30:00] C-Suite is totally disconnected.
Here’s what’s really happening on the ground. Or, there’s just a lot of different ways that you can find, or like I mentioned with the. if you have a bunch of different, like you’re surveying different regions, the US and em, EEA or apac, maybe you’re finding really big differences between those regions and those are headlines because it’s really interesting to note that, APAC may be way ahead on this and other areas, but also way behind on this.
you definitely want to take the time and have somebody with expertise to help you further slice and dice that data and come up with some more interesting analysis out of it.
Michelle Garrett: I think that dovetails into another point that I think is important is when you pitch the. Results. You don’t wanna just lob the whole report over and say, okay, journalist, here you go.
Here’s the report. You actually want to cherry pick out the data points through analysis. [00:31:00] What’s gonna be most compelling and maybe. you have to, you pick different ones depending on who you’re pitching, so one journalist at an industry trade pub might be interested in this. If you’re pitching, a journalist at a major newspaper or something, they’re gonna be interested in this.
So it’d be, I maybe talk about that a little bit.
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, I think it is really important. your survey. You typically do wanna create what I call like a cornerstone report from it that has all of the data. And you wanna link to that in your, press release or your pitch. So they can go to the full dataset, look at the full methodology and all of that.
But when you’re actually pitching, you really wanna think about, for this publication, what are the most interesting data points to them? what is the angle that would most resonate with them? And then that is what you pitch to them. Like just, you can do it. the first basic step is doing a generic PR wire, right?
That just is we did this research and here’s the report, [00:32:00] but that is probably not gonna land you any, any pieces in a publication. so you probably need to do the next step of really customizing your pitches to the publications and the journalists, based on what resonates with them.
And, you should have enough that you can customize it. To each
Michelle Garrett: one. Yeah, I would say you can issue a press release with general, findings, but then you really wanna drill down and get into some, just telling a story. you mentioned that earlier with the data, with the findings.
’cause again, if you’re just gonna send it over to a reporter and say, okay, here, here it is. They’re not gonna have time necessarily, or maybe they won’t see the same stat that you found most compelling, when they look at it. So you really wanna frame it up for them and give them some, nuggets to work with.
And maybe [00:33:00] they don’t use your, nuggets, but at least you’ve given them some idea of, what, why you think this of is of interest to them and their audience. So that’s what I would say.
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, I agree.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. so issuing a press release with general findings and then, pitching more, targeted more specifically to, to journalists.
And yes, I always say press release on the wire. That’s great, but to get results, whether it’s research or something else, I think, the direct pitching is always, the best way to
Becky Lawlor: right
Michelle Garrett: to do that. yeah. I, let’s see, skipping around here a little bit. so how, involved do you think pr, the PR team should be, at what stage?
do they get involved earlier on, or do they, are they just coming in at the end or how, [00:34:00] what do you usually see with that?
Becky Lawlor: I’ve seen a couple different things and sometimes I don’t know that clients want, If they don’t, which is weird ’cause I’m asking what your goals and objectives are and so some, but sometimes they don’t bring their PR team in the beginning and I didn’t know that the PR team existed at the beginning.
and they’ll bring ’em in the finding stage. But I actually say I would love them to be on that kickoff call where we’re deciding on what the strategy is, what the angle’s gonna be, and I’m designing the survey. Why? Because I wanna know, they know. They’re gonna know, they already have publications in mind that they wanna pitch to.
And they have been, even though I, again, in my kind of like onboarding questionnaire, I ask clients like, what publications would you wanna, if this is for pr, what ones would you wanna get in? And I go look at those and try to have some assessment. I’m not gonna have the same level of assessment as their PR people that are doing this day in and day out for their company.
having those folks on that initial kickoff call, and even I. I’m happy to have ’em even weigh in on the survey. [00:35:00] I think is great. I think the sooner you have your PR team involved, if you are, if your goal is to get PR placement, the better because, they’re just gonna have insights and thoughts that I don’t have, and that collaboration is what makes it even better.
Michelle Garrett: No, I think that’s, it just, what often happens, I find, what can happen with PR is that sometimes it’s an afterthought and it’s not only with original research, again, it’s in general. And so it’s okay, we have this. News, this story, this research, just, here you go pitch it and it’s already all of the talking strategy, everything’s been done.
And then you expect, the PR team to get involved at the very, last stage and get results. And I just feel like you’re gonna get a lot better at results if you’re including them, a little earlier and even throughout the process. ’cause I do think. To your point, they’re gonna have a really good idea of [00:36:00] who might be interested, in the industry, interested in the research.
Becky Lawlor: yeah. And I think it’s also helpful, I, at the end of the research before we move on to creating content, I always have a findings presentation with my clients where we go really in depth to the data and talk about, not just the data, but how we’re gonna Then turn this into content and headlines.
And I think it’s also like in my process, I don’t, everybody might work differently, but because I have this. meeting with my clients. I also really like to have the PR team on that call. and I find that it’s helpful for them because they can ask me questions about the data that maybe they need a little deeper understanding of how we arrived there, so that when journalists ask them, they can understand the data and how it was generated and what the process was, or, So I think it’s also really important for them to have that opportunity to be part of that kind of going through the results and findings as well.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, [00:37:00] no, I think most PR people would really appreciate that opportunity. So that’s great that you encourage it. we talked a little bit about this already, but, beyond, beyond pitching it, how else could you leverage the research findings?
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, I think, there’s just so many ways. I think I had one client say it’s just the gift that keeps on giving. I think going down from what I see in terms of what clients wanna do with it and the different ways you can use it, I think the first, so you have your PR is your broad one.
The second kind of most common play and maybe most valuable secondary play is for lead generation. Whether you’re gating it or not, gating it, it’s still, having that original research is something that most people find really engaging and they’re likely more likely to engage with that content than other types of content.
So most of my clients do see two to three times the lead engagement from, doing original research than they would see from other [00:38:00] types of content that they put out. and then from there, if you track it, it’s also, I think it works great if you’re doing paid ads. It’s something again that can really attract on pay paid ads.
but also social media. I’ve seen both of those drive, a lot of leads. So that organic piece, it also gives you something to say on social media that’s different if you feel like you’re running outta steam, having data points again, can get a lot of engagement. sales enablement, it’s great.
for sales teams to be able to have some data that kind of backs up what, what they’re saying. Proof. I actually conducted my own research, this year about, to 250 B, two B buyers and what helps them, what type of content helps ’em close deals. And what we saw was that original research was, the number one type of content that helps close the deal because when they get to the point of [00:39:00] closing the deal, they need to bring proof that, these things are happening.
So having data to back it up when you’re trying to convince your, Executive to go ahead and make the purchase
was really important. just having proof in general. So I think it’s important to just closing deals. and I’ve also seen it used, like I had a client who was really trying to, get some speaking engagements at these kind of key industry, conferences.
And they had been turned down in previous years and went after they had the data and we’d run this, Research, not only did they get the speaking engagements, they couldn’t get in previous years, they got like prime speaking slots at these events because now they had something really unique in the industry to say that nobody else had.
so that’s another way. It also is actually really good for SEO and backlinks. There’s a lot of data out there. It’s, and it’s also surfacing to be really good for LLM search. Chat, [00:40:00] GPT and Claude and all these, they like data points. They want, original insights and so you’re more likely to be surfaced if, if they’re finding that on your website and in your content out there.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, no, it’s amazing. I just, I, can’t get over the importance of it. because I, one of the examples that I had shared with you ahead of time was. Andy Cena’s blogging survey that he does every year for, his company, orbit Media. And I think he’s been doing it, it’s been at least 10 years, I think.
he’s been doing it maybe longer than that, but it’s really amazing ’cause some, when you do that, year after year, it. You have so much, it’s just like a goldmine of data. And he gets cited all the time, in articles about blogging because of his survey, his research that he’s done. So I think it’s can be really compelling and it can [00:41:00] drive incredible results for companies that really go about it.
wisely and thoughtfully and invest in it. So I’m, I just, I think that the way you use it is just endless, once you
Becky Lawlor: Yeah. And the other way I think that I didn’t mention is just even, I see it often as a, foundation to your whole content strategy. if you run this at the start of your year.
you’ve now asked your, target audience. Typically you’re surveying your target audience. there are cases where you may not be, but, you’re, you’ve just asked your customer or your kind of customer profile typically, what challenges are they having, what’s going on with them like.
what their attitudes are around things. And so now you have insights into what type of content would actually be useful and helpful and engaging to them to go out and create other content. and you have the data to sprinkle throughout your content, throughout the year as well.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, no, it’s, really, it can be very powerful I [00:42:00] think.
I did have a question here about measuring, and I think that’s a hard question to really answer, but if we wanna talk about it for a minute, We can.
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, I think the easiest when it comes to pr, I think obviously the easiest metric is, how many placements did we get Right.
and the other way you can measure that, like I had one client, they got 80, media mentions. and they, then they had, then they broke it down from there. They had 10 long form editorials, and then they were even able to say This equates like they were able to take the publications, reading audience.
So like how many people would’ve seen that piece? and extrapolate if we had spent the same amount, let’s say on paid advertising, what would that extrapolate to? And so then they were able to say, and this equals, in their case, I think it was $255,000. essentially of free advertising [00:43:00] versus what we would’ve paid to get equivalent amount of eyeballs on our stuff.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, I think again, it’s, it can be hard to measure and I feel we get hung up on that sometimes because really it does obviously position the company as the expert in the space, as the thought leader. Not all the competitors are gonna do it, and the ones that do really stand out.
And I think that there’s a lot of value in that. And again. because you’re gonna be using it throughout so many things, it’s gonna be hard to just pinpoint, where it really made a difference. But I’m sure that, it really makes a big difference. yeah, and I think if you, just anecdotally, I haven’t tested this across, but I think if you start to think about your own industry.
Becky Lawlor: Yeah, most likely those that are the most well known and have the most authority in your industry are investing in original research. [00:44:00] and I’m a big believer that even like companies like Salesforce, they invested in original research very early on in their journey. And I’m a believer that’s part of their journey to being Salesforce.
and doing that year over year, like they have their state of marketing that comes out every year and people look for it and expect it. yeah. So I think if you’re really serious, if you are serious about building your authority in your industry, in your space, I think you really, I would say you have to prioritize investing in, original research if that’s what you wanna do.
Michelle Garrett: I like that example, and I’m gonna type it in. The comments are, do you have other examples of, companies that you think besides, the ones that we’ve mentioned already that do, another one. This is just from my own, and people won’t even, I. Workfront that is now owned by Adobe.
Becky Lawlor: I worked for them way back when they were not even Workfront and now I’m trying to remember what their old name was. [00:45:00] anyway, when they were just like starting out as a project management software, but they were one of the first companies out there to start investing in, original research around, what does project management look like for people?
how chaotic is the process and all of that kind of stuff. this was like way back in. I don’t know, 2015, maybe even earlier. my memories. But I felt like again, and and at that point I wasn’t doing this on my own, I was just writing the content for them as a freelancer, but I really felt like this was part of what really propelled their growth.
And ultimately they were, bought out by, Adobe. Oh, that’s successful.
And obviously Adobe invests in a ton of original research as well.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, that’s the thing. I think, we’ve talked a little bit about budget and all of that. I think for a big company like an Adobe, of course it’s [00:46:00] gonna be easy, to find the funds.
But if you’re a, I work with a lot of smaller companies in the B2B space, say 500 to a thousand employees, something like that. What do you have recommendations on, if you had limited. Funds. I put the article up with some of the, yeah. Estimated costs and things, but do you have any advice on that?
Becky Lawlor: Again, this is what I mean. ’cause I also work with companies that have limited funds and what I say is that they should probably start with a pol survey, what I call like a 10 question smaller survey. We’ll do a smaller audience sample size. and that’s where I said like typically I can do that with my, like in my case, and this may vary for anybody else, I’m not.
Trying to sell my services. I’m just giving a ballpark, in my case, that can be around $10,000 to do the research. Do all of the research end to end and, get like a sample size of around 150. typically, I, mean it all depends on what they want, but if they. [00:47:00] Level. then they can, it’s like a pilot project.
Like it may be hard to bring stakeholders along to justify a bigger budget, right at the beginning they may. So this is a test to see how does this do, how does it perform for us? What do we get out of this? And if it does really well. And they’re able, and you can, again, I, go back to if you do the data analysis smartly, you really can get a lot out of a 10 question survey, not just those 10 questions.
so if you do that all really s. And then you can still pitch it to the media. You can still use it as lead gen. You can still use it in all the ways I just talked about. And now you have your pilot project to see how that performed. And then hopefully then you can get more buy-in and more budget because you understand now the ROI is there.
I Once you have, I have clients that can track, then they ha they can tie, 250 or I had one that could try 650 ish to, pipeline and [00:48:00] revenue. So once you can do that, then if you’re, if you’re spending even 20 or 30,000, but you’re making, somewhere between 250 and 650 on direct pipeline revenue, close deals, that are coming from, That report as their initial door in, then you can even further justify spending more, doing more of it. I do have clients that do it every quarter versus like once a year. Again, it all depends on your budget and your goals, but I think the smaller one is a great way to just pilot it.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. Yeah. And I, again, I think some are, it’s would be new, to some companies and they, probably don’t know where to start and they probably don’t have any idea how much it costs. And so Becky’s site is a great resource for that. Becky herself was a great resource, so if you do have questions, I’m sure she would be happy to answer those.
anytime.
Becky Lawlor: And the other thing I wanted to say is to think about if you happen to be in an industry that doesn’t do very [00:49:00] much of this, like I had a client, they were in, industrial manufacturing and while there was a lot of, when we did their project, there was a lot of research out there on like sustainable packaging for on the consumer side.
consumers want sustainable packaging, they’ll pay more, blah, blah, blah, that kind of research. But what wasn’t there was on the manufacturing side of how hard is it to do sustainable, materials Like, these are new materials that you’re bringing into the process.
How do you quality control and test them? and so we did this whole research, which did align with, they were, they sold testing equipment, for this, but it aligned, but it was. One of the only kind of like from the inside, not the consumer side, but from the inside. And this is the one I said they got like 80 meeting mentions.
there just wasn’t other research out there. So it was a real opportunity for them to stand up as a, Leader and gain some authority in their space. But eventually when we like, Gartner, one of their [00:50:00] blog articles cited their, research in their, article. So I was like, oh, that’s a real win when you get Gartner citing your research.
Yes. Because again, there’s not a lot out there. So even Gartner needs to, cited. So it’s just, again, I think if you look around and you’re either in an emerging space, That hasn’t had a lot of this done yet, or you’re just in a space that maybe is a little bit more old school and doesn’t do a lot of this, I think you actually have a bigger opportunity than some other people and you should really think about, if you can do this.
I think you’ll see the investment pay off.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, there are a lot of opportunities. it’s just like knowing where to look. I don’t think a lot of people would even think to look and see what else is out there or think to look and see what their competitors may have published or the industry analysts.
That’s a great example with Gartner. what are they talking about or what’s, what’s been done and where are the holes? Like where are the gaps?
Becky Lawlor: Yeah.
Michelle Garrett: So yeah. what, is there anything [00:51:00] else you wanna talk about? anything else you wanna share?
Becky Lawlor: No, I think we have, really covered, a lot of ground, I think, the other thing I just would say, this is just again, from my own research, and this is one of the myths that I wanted to bust, but I think it’s helpful, especially when people think about budget. One of the questions, and I’ve asked this two years in a row, year over year to the, and my B2B buyer survey is, this idea, there’s this idea that you need to use a third party to conduct your research, that you need that big academic institution or well-known name in your industry and, to be credible.
And so I’ve asked. Buyers like, how important is that to you? whether do you care about, does it need to be third party? How do you or brand and what, I found is actually is pretty much 50 50 on, 50% would say I’m neutral. I don’t care if it’s third party or the brand, but out of that other 50%.
We saw more [00:52:00] say that they actually felt that the brand would be more credible than a third party. And then I asked in an open-ended question, why? Why would why did, what is your reasoning for whichever you chose? And what a lot of them said was that. The brand’s reputation is on the line. so a third party is just taking the brand’s money and is gonna do the brand, asks ’em to do, people, your buyers are wise.
Like they, they know that even when you use a third party, you pay them. And there’s a little bit of, doing your bidding, I guess is what I would say there. and I think, so I just, I wanna encourage people to like, own your research. You don’t need to put a third party’s name on it. You are building your authority more when you own it, when you brand it under your name.
and, do that, even if you use a third party vendor. Put your brand on it. Don’t have it. Just be from the third party. Own it. Own your [00:53:00] authority and you will have credibility. I think the other open-ended, why, was they also know the space better. They know the people they’re surveying, they know the topic, so people do have trust that brands can do this, right?
and so just make sure you do run credible research. But don’t be afraid to brand it as your own and to build your authority that way.
Michelle Garrett: I love that. because yeah, I, think, I just think, again, it’s just, it’s a, there’s fear there because there’s not an understanding of what is possible.
And I think that there’s so much possible and, it’s, doesn’t have to be, it’s co not cost prohibitive necessarily, depending on how you, Use the firm that you work with and the firm that you choose. So I think that’s, something, for people to, to think about. And you’ve given some great insight and examples.
I’m gonna put your website up here. Again, it’s RedPoint Insights. [00:54:00] Correct.
Becky Lawlor: Yep.
Michelle Garrett: And I want to just thank you so much Becky for being here and I think, again, if anyone has questions for Becky, I’m sure she’d be happy to answer anytime I put her LinkedIn, in the comments as well. And I wanna thank everybody for tuning in and I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode.
Thanks so much.
Becky Lawlor: Thanks for having me, Michelle.
Michelle Garrett: Bye.
Becky Lawlor: Bye.
About the host: Michelle Garrett is a B2B PR consultant, media relations consultant, and author of B2B PR That Gets Results, an Amazon Best Seller. She helps companies create content, earn media coverage, and position themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Michelle’s articles have been featured by Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, Muck Rack, and Ragan’s PR Daily, among others. She’s a frequent speaker on public relations and content. Michelle has been repeatedly ranked among the top ten most influential PR professionals.
Learn more about Michelle’s freelance PR consulting services here. Book a no-obligation call to talk about your needs here. Buy Michelle’s book here.
