By Carrie Conko, Vice President of Communications at State Policy Network

The month of May means college graduation season and many young people starting their first jobs out of college. My first “real job” out of college was as a data analyst with a market research firm, the Wirthlin Group. The founder of the firm, Dr. Richard Wirthlin, gained fame in the 1980s as President Reagan’s chief pollster and strategist. What I learned at Wirthlin about the importance of market research and values-based communication has shaped my approach to marketing communications for the past three decades.

At the most basic level, market research is gathering information and feedback from audiences about their preferences so that we can better align with and meet their needs. I’ve been asked whether market research and message testing lead us to bending our principles and pandering to fickle public opinion in order to gain popularity. Others question the reliability of market research when it comes to understanding and predicting public policy outcomes. Both questions have validity, and market research should not be viewed as the silver bullet that will help us eliminate all objections. However, good communicators know that they must be curious about their audience and seek different perspectives from different audiences in order to develop persuasive messaging. Market research is one of the ways to understand our audiences and improve how we talk with them.

Market research is only one of the tools in our toolkit, and is not one we should solely rely upon when formulating strategy. It is just as important to understand other conditions that set the ground for change. Effective communication strategies take into account many conditions, including demography, economics, politics, geography, and (in the case of voting) even the weather. Future articles will delve into how communicators can employ other data and analysis to strengthen strategies. This article focuses on making the case for market research and outlining some of the common types of research done by state policy organizations.

Why bother with market research?

We are in the business of selling ideas. While we might not be able to put a price sticker on our product, the process of gaining buy-in for policy reforms follows a similar path to the consumer buying cycle. In order to gain buy-in, we must create awareness and methodically build a relationship and understanding so that our audiences choose free markets and personal freedom over the counter-options made available to them. A business that does not understand and keep their customers well-informed will wither—just as a policy organization that fails to build coalitions around ideas will fail to see reforms.

Here are three good reasons to incorporate market research into your organization’s strategies:

• Knowledge is cheap and failure is expensive. If you do not know your state’s appetite for change, how will you know where to start building audiences? Conducting market research at the outset will give you the ability to test your market and hypotheses before spending time and money.
• It’s easy to ignore one person. A show of force is harder to ignore. Market research can be useful in educating policymakers about the validity of your ideas and the thirst for reform. Few policymakers can ignore data that proves their constituents care about the issue and support the solutions you offer.
• It can answer the important question of “What’s in it for me?” When building audiences, it’s important to understand what will motivate and persuade them to action. Market research is an important way to uncover the values motivating people to make choices, and it can reveal opportunities to build stronger relationships with key audiences.

Market research is not just about issue polling. While it’s important to understand public opinion around the issues, it can also be used to:

• Strengthen organizational brand and position. Your organization’s positioning goal should be that policymakers and other influencers cannot have a credible conversation on the issues where you are engaged without you at the table. Policy organizations can use market research to understand the strength of the organization’s brand with key audiences in the state. With that information in hand, your organization has a basis for developing informed branding and positioning strategies to overcome weaknesses and build on strengths.
• Create messaging that resonates. Market research can help bridge the gap between policy solutions and the hearts and minds of policymakers, influencers, and the public.
• Perform market analysis. Research can also help an organization to evaluate the opportunities for change in a state. An audience analysis that identifies those groups that are pro, neutral, and against reforms is vital to aligning effective communications strategies and tactics to objectives. A competitive analysis identifies the competition and any key objections in order to develop strategies that neutralize or eliminate barriers to change. And an analysis of other conditions for change—demography, politics, economics, etc.—can lend to better strategies that open the Overton Window.

There’s also a misconception that all market research is expensive. However, there are a number of ways to gather intelligence that can help policy organizations develop effective strategies:

Methodologies in market research

There are two main types of market research: primary research and secondary research. Primary research is information that an organization collects directly from the audience. This original research includes:

• Observation
• Focus Groups
• Interviews
• Surveys

It can also be qualitative or quantitative in nature and can range from very expensive (with cost typically being driven by the scope of the project and analysis) to inexpensive. Some groups have used tools like Survey Monkey to conduct inexpensive surveys while others use metrics like those on Facebook to do simple A/B testing on messaging.

Secondary research is data collected about the audience by someone else. This type of research tends to be from publicly available information, but it can also be purchased. Examples of secondary research include:

• Government data and reports (census, agency, state, city , etc.)
• Institutional data (reports issued by other organizations, data sets from other organizations, academic journals, etc.)
• News media

For policy organizations, the cost of secondary research is usually borne out by staff time in collecting and analyzing the information. 

With solid market research, public policy organizations can have confidence that they have a better understanding of their audiences. It provides assurance that our messages will resonate with audiences before ever creating and delivering that message. It is the data-backed research we need to empower our communications work and successfully move public opinion toward the policy solutions we advocate. 

Additional resources

SPN resources:

State Policy Network recognized the value of policy organization being able to reach the right people with the right ideas at the right time via the right messengers. Investments in market research over the past several years have helped us to help the Network develop and test messaging. Much of the research is available via the SPN Member Portal. 

Books on the topic:

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout
The Greatest Communicator: What Ronald Reagan Taught Me About Politics, Leadership, and Life by Dr. Richard Wirthlin
Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

More articles on the topic:

How to Conduct Market Research in 4 Easy Steps
The Importance of Secondary Data in Research
How to Conduct Secondary Market Research
Facebook: Split Testing & Test and Learn