The power of research for agency growth

I love data and am an avid consumer of as much information as I can get my hands on.

With the pace of change in communications and marketing, we all need to be constantly learning.

But that’s just one of the benefits of conducting research as an agency.

Yes, it can help you get better results for your clients, but it can also be leveraged to build new relationships and win new business.

The SAGA Quarterly Agency Owner Survey provides us with insights into trends and issues related to the small agencies we serve, but it also helps us create unique resources to reach new agency owners. (And if you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to complete the Q4 survey that is currently open.)

But research doesn’t just come in the form of surveys. You can collate and analyze data from third parties. You might share roundups of tools or platforms relevant to your clients.

Saving your prospects time and giving them useful insights can be a great way to demonstrate your expertise and establish the foundation for meaningful conversations which are the key to agency growth.

I’ll explore this a bit more later in this week’s newsletter, but first let’s look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week. 

— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder

Upcoming Events

Weekly Roundup

Below are some articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos that we came across during the past week or so that provide useful perspective and information for PR and marketing agency owners. While we don’t necessarily endorse all of the views expressed in these links, we think they are worth your time.

— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager

Articles & Blog Posts

Podcast Episodes

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AI in focus

The power of research for agency growth

It’s easy to share opinions and advice based on your own experience. I do it every day and get paid for it.

But there’s even more power when you can contribute hard data and original research to the conversation.

It helps make your arguments stronger and expand your reach to new audiences.

Doing your own research as an agency doesn’t have to be incredibly time-consuming or costly — though it does require some level of investment to produce a quality result.

Some things you might consider as research include:

  • Online surveys. As I mentioned earlier, our own Quarterly Agency Owner Survey helps us gather information and insights that we can share with the community while also giving us great ideas for future content and resources.
  • Interviews. You can conduct interviews of experts via email or even as podcast episodes. This gives you access to a range of insights from others that you can compile into regular or one-time reports that explore a specific issue of interest to your own community.
  • News roundups. One of the simpler types of research to conduct is right up the alley of many agencies — and something we often do for our own clients anyway. I have frequently used weekly news roundups as a research tool that helps those in our target market see what news is being made and what insights are being shared so that they can save time in finding what’s valuable to them.
  • Media analysis. If you want to move beyond a simple list of useful articles on a weekly basis, you might dive deeper into an area of media coverage of interest to your ideal clients. This can be especially powerful if you are a PR agency that produces these kinds of reports regularly for clients since it can demonstrate what you do alongside the useful insights provided in the specific report.
  • Best practices. You might consider compiling best practices from articles and other resources created by others. Or maybe you will take your own knowledge and look at the activities of others to assess their success (think of website design or ad reviews that some agencies publish).
  • Research summaries. Perhaps you don’t want to do your own original survey research, but you might be able to tap into the vast amounts of data already being shared online to create compilations that save your clients and prospects time while also providing your own unique analysis.
  • Focus groups or panels. SAGA hosts roundtable conversations among agency owners from time to time where we get together and share knowledge and experiences. These can be done privately or they can even be recorded to provide a public research product where people can learn from their peers.
  • Tool reviews. If some of your clients and prospects rely on specific tools to help support the work that you do or that sits alongside your work, it can be helpful to share your expert assessments of what’s available. For example, if you are a podcast booking agency, you might do some research to share the pros and cons of different podcast hosting platforms or audio/video editing tools.

This list is far from exhaustive and likely omits some obvious ideas that you have as you read this newsletter.

The bottom line is that you should be thinking about how to take advantage of original research to demonstrate expertise, produce better results for your existing clients, and build new relationships that will help fuel your agency’s growth.

Webinar: How SAGA helps small agencies grow

In our upcoming webinar, SAGA Founder Chip Griffin will provide a guided tour of all of the free and paid resources that SAGA provides. 

Since 2018, SAGA has been producing a large volume of free content, including articles, guides, webinars, podcasts, and videos. Chip will help show you how to uncover the resources that you need and explain how to get the most out of them.

To register for the roundtable from 1-2 PM ET on Wednesday, December 4, click here.

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