When Market Research Drives Thought Leadership and PR

Yes, makes sense! Here's the formatted transcript:

Priscilla McKinney: Hello and welcome to Pond Dreams from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, always with you here. I am the mama bird and CEO. And today we're going to have a conversation that really touches a little bit more closely to my work in marketing and my work often as a fractional CMO. I think you're going to really enjoy some of the crossover from market research right on into marketing strategies and we're gonna even hit a larger topic today about how market research can really drive thought leadership.

Priscilla McKinney: And that's not something we've talked about before on this show. So let me tell you who I have with you. It's gonna be a great conversation because we've known each other from many conferences and actually just got to be together again recently at X-Day from Question Pro. So we'll give them a nice shout out for a great event where we got to chat and really reconnect.

Priscilla McKinney: Svetlana Gershman, welcome to the show.

Svetlana Gershman: Thank you so much for having me Priscilla. So nice to be here.

Priscilla McKinney: It's fun to talk with you because you also reach these two worlds that I live in, which is market research and marketing. Now, she's been an insights for over two decades, so she really is accustomed to talking about broad business questions or helping to shape research methodologies in order to answer those questions. but she's really about finding that best path to that action.

Priscilla McKinney: What are we gonna do with this knowledge that we have? So that's an amazing amount of experience. And then as far as a vertical is concerned, Svetlana has been in technology and that's given her a real view of the nuances and challenges to that industry. But today we're gonna talk a little bit more about her, maybe a newer remit that she has about how to craft actually good programs, solid programs, comprehensive programs that really are analyzing multiple sources, including syndicated and primary research and bringing them together to inform business growth and marketing strategies.

Priscilla McKinney: So we're gonna talk about this. Now she's over at Method Communications and she's helping the marketing research team with the PR and the marketing strategy. So this is like a beautiful synergy we're going to talk about. Svetlana, I'm excited about this conversation.

Svetlana Gershman: Me too.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, let's talk about that beginning. So you spent your career in market research, but now you're leading this thought leadership charge at a research and PR agency. So what is just absolutely fundamentally different about research when the goal is earning media versus informing the internal business decisions?

Svetlana Gershman: So I think the main difference is really moving from that mindset of what do we need to know to what story exists in the data that media and audiences actually care about. So when you're starting any marketing research engagement, one-on-one course is to ask, what are your business needs? What are the gaps, right? And when you're starting your thought leadership research, the first question is, what is your narrative?

Svetlana Gershman: How do we stay consistent with your narrative? And how do we find that sweet spot between what your narrative should be and what media actually cares about? So, thought leadership research starts by finding this intersection between what's measurable and what's newsworthy. And another thing that's different is the actual definition of success. When you're conducting research for the sake of defining strategy, success is about informing better decisions.

Svetlana Gershman: So, The insight is really successful when it is actionable. Well, with thought leadership, it also has to be actionable, but success looks a little different because it is achieved when the thought leadership becomes part of the industry conversation. So how do you insert yourself in a conversation and don't get lost in the noise? It's when journalists and market leaders cite your data, use it to inform their own thinking, and you become a thought leader in a space.

Svetlana Gershman: But I think there are things that are also very similar between these things. So it's not completely different. Both really require the same methodological rigor. So you really should know what you're doing and the data should really be bulletproof. Both need clear storytelling. mean, try telling execs what to do with a hundred slide deck and you're not going to get anywhere, right? You need a clear story. And both need to cut through the noise.

Priscilla McKinney: Wow, so there is that tension. You say, yeah, try telling an exec what it is they need to talk about. So there's that tension in thought leadership research where the stakeholders want these really juicy headline-worthy results. But you mentioned that methodological rigor, and you've got to stay integrist to the research. So how have you navigated some of that gray zone when maybe clients are pushing for more sensational headlines?

Svetlana Gershman: Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, first we're being transparent. So we find we start any project saying that we're never going to mislead with statistics. We're not going to misuse the data. And the reason we're not going to do it as a team is because we have reputation to uphold. We have strong media relationships where journalists know that research that comes from us is right, is ethical. We're not misinterpreting statistics.

Svetlana Gershman: And if that ever changes, the whole thing comes crushing down. So we need to stay true to that. I think that our approach to solve these tensions really come from a smart design rather than a compromise. And that's again, one of those similarities that I find with conducting marketing research for the sake of strategy. mean, how many times have I had that one product manager that said, or product director that said, oh, that's my baby, don't ever do anything.

Svetlana Gershman: You know, don't ever give me bad data about this baby. You kind of need to balance it out no matter where you are. But just like smart marketing research on strategy, smart marketing research that is oriented towards thought leadership is all about design. So we start every research project with what we call dream headlines. And that is we get on the phone with our client.

Svetlana Gershman: We understand what their narrative, what it is that they want to be talking about, and then what is being talked in the industry, in the space, and we literally draft headlines that we envision that would come out of our research study. So it's almost like drafting your research objectives, except you're drafting those headlines. And that's when we get our PR team involved. So a lot of times PR will say, oh, this is boring. This is like not going to even fly, so don't even try.

Svetlana Gershman: But then what we do is we design a research survey around these headlines. Now, data. Sometimes it may surprise you. Sometimes it may not come out with what it is that you're looking for. But by casting a wide net and making sure that we have a variety of questions, a variety of sort of backup plans and how do we tell the story and what do we hook on to tell the story. we really are able to drive the successful thought leadership studies.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah. So you really are looking to consumer insights to drive the study. But I've got to tell you kind of a funky thing that's happening right now. So there's consumer insights out there. getting this data and we're trying to get as close to the voice of the consumer as we can and be true to that. But now earned media really is becoming so much more critical because buyers, as we know, are shifting from Google and using LLMs for research, right?

Priscilla McKinney: And so they're looking for these quote unquote headlines that we've created. They wanna know, they're trying to keep track of what's going on. So it's intertwined with consumer insights, but also consumer inquiry. What do they wanna hear about? And it's an interesting science in there. So I guess my question from that is how do you think B2B leaders and companies should think differently about thought leadership because of this new landscape, this new search function?

Priscilla McKinney: It's just becoming more critical than ever. So you're no longer writing just for humans, you're writing for robots to be able to pick up what it is that you're talking about and translate it into an LLM search when someone is looking for a new solution or a service. So it's understanding how it works is so tricky these days. Understanding LLM Search and how to influence it is on everyone's minds. There are so many solutions out there to track it.

Priscilla McKinney: And yet, honestly, no one knows what they're doing just yet. When we were entering the Google Search era, I don't know if you remember, but I remember there was this thing called Frugal, where you could go into Google and buy with Google. And I it was the same thing at the beginning of how do I make sure that people find me, right? So finally, industry came to that place where it was easy enough to gather the user feedback so that you can optimize for keywords and paid placements and actually measure it based on what you're seeing.

Priscilla McKinney: Now we're in the same place with LLMs. One thing that we know for sure is that LLMs pick up authoritative pieces. And what is not more of an authoritative piece than your thought leadership piece, especially when it is based on research.

Priscilla McKinney: Right, and people don't understand this. It's back to basics. That's the old acronym we use for SEO, which is EAT. And it's the short version. There's an E-E-A-T. But you can even use the shorter version. But the longer one, well, it's all around expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. And this is exactly what we're talking about. You need to be able to tell the large language model what you are an expert about, what you are an authority about.

Priscilla McKinney: And expertise and authority is different. Expertise is, OK, I have this knowledge. And I can understand the niche that you're in, but authority is, I've written about it six ways till Sunday and I have reports, I have backing, I have data for it. And the trustworthiness is like that. There's a lot of things that factor into it. Are people coming back to your site? Are people back linking to the site? Is this perceived as a very solid piece?

Priscilla McKinney: What people think is that, oh, now Google comes in. So as people are querying, that's going to go away. No, the LLMs are still based on that same really excellent quality of thought leadership. And that's what people are understanding. They think that maybe the rules have changed. They haven't. The vehicle has changed. And I'll just break this down just in one more way for people to understand what is really going on and what Svetlana and I deal with every day, what we're talking about.

Priscilla McKinney: And that is specifically about how the large language model is now shaping the Google search in a way that the ROI that I might look for is not necessarily someone coming to our website. Of course, I would love them to actually come to view our content directly. But what I also need to do, as you said, we are now talking to the robots. I am writing this so that the LLM can understand that we have expertise, that we have authority, that we are a trustworthy site.

Priscilla McKinney: And so this is switching. Now I have to show my clients, okay, you've got this many web hits from people doing search and coming to your website, but you have so many things where the LLM moderated all of that information and excited you that you were the most trustworthy. Your headline was the best. And this is where the connect, I'm just trying to make so that just kind of your average everyday person who comes into the office and wants their own company that we're working at or they own to succeed, they need to understand this very simple connection between SEO and large language models.

Priscilla McKinney: And I think you've just hit the nail on the head with the fact that they are interconnected, but those fundamentals, they stay the same.

Svetlana Gershman: Absolutely.

Priscilla McKinney: What have you heard people maybe misunderstanding about SEO or LLMs or how they're connected?

Svetlana Gershman: Oh my gosh. So right now, I'm actually right in it because we're trying to figure out how to measure LLM search, how to measure the success. And I'm just because I am on the research team, I'm naturally very involved. So I've been on every single webinar I could find about this topic. And I think one thing that people don't understand is There are so many tools out there, a variety of tools that you think at the surface that it's just an automated process.

Svetlana Gershman: It's a process of let's get the tool. The tool will tell me what prompts to monitor, and then I will rely on a tool to monitor my success and adjust strategy. Well, yes. But one thing that's happening is the tools right now don't have an ability to pull from existing user data. So your prompts that every single tool that I've used that auto generates are prompts that you would hear LLM use, not what you would think a person would actually type in when they're searching for something.

Priscilla McKinney: Gosh, this brings me back to when Google really started understanding intent and how it changed. search and people don't understand what a big deal this was, but if you were standing in Chicago and you said, take me to the best place to have pie. Well, Google at some point needed to understand that you meant pizza and you didn't mean a bakery. And this is really this understanding how humans work and nothing has changed, even though that was so many years ago.

Priscilla McKinney: Now we take so much of that for granted, but think about that intent. Like to have a robot understand, oh, I can see by GPS, you're standing in Chicago. I think you mean pizza. let me show you all the places where there might be pizza pie.

Svetlana Gershman: Exactly.

Priscilla McKinney: I am kind of curious about like how you actually do your work. So when you're designing a thought leadership strategy, what makes the difference between research that generates genuine media pickup and really good industry conversation versus something that just ends up in a report somewhere?

Svetlana Gershman: So the first thing is timeliness. Your research has to be timely with what's going on. And I'll actually give you a perfect example. Are you a Swifty?

Priscilla McKinney: I'm not, I'm not.

Svetlana Gershman: You're not a Swifty.

Priscilla McKinney: uh But I respect you a lot of that girl. And I guess you could call me a Swifty, but I've had a lot of people in my life that are Swifty.

Svetlana Gershman: You can take your journey.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay.

Svetlana Gershman: You'll know the example.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay.

Svetlana Gershman: Swifty or not. You must have heard a little news about Taylor Swift's album being released on October 3rd.

Priscilla McKinney: Yes.

Svetlana Gershman: Okay. So it was all over the news. So we have this client, Bamboo HR, which is, we've been doing thought leadership research for this client for years. And we have, just because of the nature of what their narrative is all about, they're all about how do people work? How does the work culture change? And so we have the survey that taps into these things. I have one person on my team and I'll give a shout out to him, Carter.

Svetlana Gershman: He's amazing. He's a major, major Swift team. And the survey for Bambuichara was just about to go into the field right around end of September. And he was on a call and he said, wait a second, Taylor Swift's album is about to be released. And I wonder how that affects people's work. But like, Taylor Swift's album affecting people's work? That's weird.

Priscilla McKinney: I had an employee this year who actually took a lot of PTOs for Taylor Swift concert. So I agree with his old concept years.

Svetlana Gershman: So our research actually found out that 15 % of people plan to take a PTO on October 3rd for a Taylor Swift release album.

Priscilla McKinney: Oh my God.

Svetlana Gershman: And you know what's crazy? That one third of current workforce actually considers themselves a Swifty.

Priscilla McKinney: Oh my goodness.

Svetlana Gershman: So fun fact. Timely facts, cultural fact, taking advantage of that and understanding what that means for your industry, for your context, for an employer is important. It's fun, it's timely, it will make the news, but it's also valuable.

Priscilla McKinney: Right. So then if we can show this is around your expertise, that you have authority around it and you are a trustworthy source, boom, you've got this magic. And I just love Svetlana how What you're weaving together here is consumer insights, B2B content marketing strategy with thought leadership strategy. And it's just, it's really an amazing place. I would imagine your job is really interesting every day because you're trying to get something that is compelling.

Priscilla McKinney: And I tell people this all the time when they're writing, quit writing boring stuff. It's not a game of how much content we can put out there. It's a game of How much great content can we get out there and can we make it visible?

Svetlana Gershman: Exactly. Yeah, another success, I would say, an important part of it being successful is it being authentic. Yes, you should be timely. You should be fun. But to your point, how do you continue being fun? You continue to surprise. You continue to find things that people haven't thought about. And that's where really our value comes through is by digging into data and understanding it from the inside out and finding those trends that otherwise wouldn't surface.

Priscilla McKinney: Love it. I love it. Okay. Your work's so interesting to me. could talk forever, but Svetlana, thank you so much for coming on this show. And I just haven't had anybody on yet who is really in this exact space. And it's exciting for me because I love the mixing of market research with marketing. I think it's super important. And like I said, I think it just makes everything much more compelling. However, you and I at a cocktail party, very compelling.

Svetlana Gershman: Very, absolutely.

Priscilla McKinney: So let's do that again.

Svetlana Gershman: Let's do that again.

Priscilla McKinney: I love it. From all the peeps here at Little Bird Marketing, have a great day and happy marketing.