Do your clients really understand what sets you apart? If your message is muddled or blending into the noise, it’s time to rethink how you communicate. It’s not enough to just say what your insights company does and how it helps clients, your content and strategy must clearly communicate this. That’s where positioning comes in.

In the fourth and final instalment of the Marketing Applied series on Greenbook’s Grow Your Insights Businessexpert channel, Iosetta Santini cuts through the fluff to show you how sharp positioning can set your brand apart… And keep it memorable. You’ll learn how to craft a value proposition that speaks to your audience, align your message across every touchpoint, and internalise your positioning so that everyone in your team tells the same story.

If you want your brand to resonate rather than just exist, this is one you can’t miss.

Read the full article: Marketing Applied Part Four: Stop the Fluff, the Art of Positioning

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Creating a gold standard of LinkedIn networking

LinkedIn has transformed itself into a community building tool that is both, a blessing and curse. It has become a place where reputations are built, conversations begin, and new opportunities emerge. However, it is also a new language to be learnt and best enjoyed with a solid understanding of its full potentials.

LinkedIn has over a billion users worldwide, but only 1% actively creating content… This offers a real opportunity for any company ready to show up, share insights, and build a strong brand presence. With this many users, it is no surprise it has become such an important platform for companies: research shows that 82% of people are more likely to trust a company when its senior executives are active on social media(1) and 70% of employers say that a personal brand is more important than a resume (2) so, a with a cornucopia of branding opportunities such as LinkedIn available for free, you’d be foolish not to use it.

Stop Selling, Start Showing Up

Let’s get started, it’s important to shift how you think about LinkedIn. It isn’t a space for hard selling or cold pitching (is it ever?) – it’s about building credibility by being visible, helpful. Instead of pitching, focus on being visible and valuable. By consistently offering relevant insights, you’ll naturally become known as someone who creates solutions. When you consistently offer relevant ideas and perspectives, people will associate your name with creating solutions to the problems they have.

If you’re aiming to get more out of your time on LinkedIn, the formula is simple: write, connect, and engage. These three actions increase your visibility and help you build a solid network.

If you’re looking for a quick guide on what to do on your LinkedIn, start with these 3Cs:

• Create your own experiences and knowledge – aim to be seen expert in your field on the platform. How can you add value for your audience?
• Curate content from others that you believe your network will find useful or interesting, with your own thoughts spicing up the conversation.
• Converse with those in your network. Ask questions, tag others who might have something to add, and respond to comments. Show people you are an active, curious member of the community.

But how exactly can you approach doing these, you ask?

Write to be seen, share to be heard – just make sure people want to hear it

Posting is key to showing people what you, and your company, is an expert in and why you are distinct. But… How do you find the right subject, tone of voice, and how much information is too much information?

To get answers for this, we must start small. Begin by sharing your insights once a week or a month to build confidence. Focusing on topics that align with your specific interests and areas of expertise. This approach ensures an authenticity and relevance in your posts that’s specific to you. Communicate your ideas with a calm confident expert voice but always make sure you aren’t alienating potential clients with overly complicated jargon.

Aligning your content with your brand is crucial. Here are some key things to keep in consideration when you’re creating content for LinkedIn:

1. Understand your own Identity and messaging: Ensure your content topics reflect your company’s mission, values, and unique value proposition.
2. What are your campaign objectives: Align your marketing strategy with clear business goals, whether it’s building brand awareness, establishing thought leadership, nurturing leads, or strengthening existing client relationships: know what you need before you go in.
3. Know your audience and their interests: Who do you create for, Tailor your content to address your audience’s needs, what are their pain points? Their interests?, when you know position your brand as a reliable resource.
4. Focus on your brand’s actual expertise: Highlight your company’s strengths and repeat key messages to reinforce your brand’s distinct benefits.
5. Choose the right channel: Select content forma

ts and platforms that that work for you, make sure you align with your brand’s tone and communicate this to your target audience.

Delve deeper in our Greenbook ‘Grow your insights business’ article, “Sealing the Deal: 5 Steps to the Perfect Brand-Content Match,” where Colonel Mustard Lucy Davison discusses the importance of this alignment for a healthy brand that keeps you visible and valuable in more detail.

Connections count

Your network also plays a huge part, in not just your presence online but also your company’s – so, it’s worth putting in the effort to grow it thoughtfully. Connect with people you’ve gelled with at events or online, and always send a message when you request to connect – it makes a difference. The more people you’re connected with, the more people see your posts and updates, and the greater the chances that something good will come from it. More on this in the next section…

Engage with consistency

Neither you nor your company page needs to post every day to stay visible. A lot of the value comes from just engaging with posts: like, comment on, and repost your company’s updates – these posts will come up on your connections’ feed! Aim to do this with every post to increase post impressions. On the other hand, you should do the same with content which you find relevant. Sharing your opinion on a subject you’re an expert in will show others that you are active, curious, and interested in what you do! Not only that, it will keep you and your company on people’s feeds (and minds)!

Put the “Pro” in Profile

Before increasing your activity, take some time to make sure your profile is up to scratch. It should be completely filled out: a clear headline, a summary that reflects who you are, and a recent photo, nothing overly fancy, just professional with a friendly tone.

The content of your profile should highlight the value you bring. Ask yourself this; what do I do really well? What do people rely on me for? What would a friend say if they had to sum me up in four words? What do I enjoy doing when I’m not working? (Hint: you don’t need to mention all of this in your headline and don’t say your role!) Networking isn’t for bragging about job titles, details like these are repetitive and quickly forgotten. Show your spark to the masses, while also highlighting your expertise, will be what sets you apart. The more authentic your profile, the more memorable it becomes.

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Ultimately, creating strong engagement on LinkedIn is about being consistent. Share valuable insights, build genuine connections, and stay active within your professional community. If you write regularly, grow your network thoughtfully, and interact with purpose, you’ll build a reputation that sticks.

Stay visible, stay valuable, and the results will follow.

(1) https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/why-personal-branding-is-crucial-for-ceos-in-todays-world/468320
(2) https://wisernotify.com/blog/branding-stats/

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Are you struggling to make your brand stand out in a crowded market? Are you focusing too much on hyped up consumer marketing mantras and not enough on getting long-term impact?

If your feeling lost on the way to the top of your buyers’ shortlists, then you need to rethink your approach to brand awareness. On Greenbook’s Grow your insights business expert channel, Iosetta Santini breaks down why the journey to being remembered is just as important as being found in part one of her Marketing Applied series. Learn how to stay top-of-mind with potential buyers, create lasting impressions, and ensure your brand is in the conversation before the search even begins.

Find out how your insights company can stay revenant on our Marketing applied part one: Why we’re obsessed with brand awareness.

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How to make case studies work for you in insights

An insights company without case studies is like Batman without Robin. Demonstrating your value through a case study is fundamental to thought leadership and growth. Plus, there’s the added advantage that most clients are burning with curiosity and FOMO; the number one thing that they want to know is what you are doing or have done for other companies like them. But producing case studies is often a big challenge within MRX and one of the areas our agency or supply-side clients need most help with.

Before we start, we should point out that here at Mustard Towers we know about client confidentiality. We could paper the walls with the NDAs we’ve signed to ensure we do not share the communications work we do with global clients. We feel your pain. But we have also managed to share work we have done with several leading global companies (including Coca-Cola, Bic and Nestle Purina) in the media, conference platforms and, of course in our marketing.

So, here is a quick guide to producing case studies that will work for you.

Three steps to heaven

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that there are three levels of client attribution, and we always recommend a company uses a mix of these in their marketing.  The first is just showing that you have worked with a company by using their logo on your website or in your credentials. I’m not going to go into that here, but our suggestion is always “ask forgiveness not permission”. Put (the correct) client logo on your site and take down if asked. It’s worth pointing out that none of our agency clients in 16 years has been asked to remove a logo we put on their website.

The second level of client attribution is testimonials. By this we mean short, attributed verbatim from named clients. If you cannot name the individual, then at least name the company and give a job title. Without attribution testimonials are of very little value, (we suggest you just make them up and say what you like). For genuine testimonials, just send them a note with a draft for them to edit in whatever way they are comfortable.

Testimonials should be used in lots of ways, dotted on every page through your website (not in a dedicated area, this will be ignored), on social media, in your proposals (again dotted throughout) and in your credentials presentations.

Finally, there are full case studies. These are based on a recorded client interview or written questionnaire, drafted into an article or blog post or recorded as a video interview or podcast. A full case study will be a shorter version of the HBR/business school style case and will generally follow the format of business context and challenge, a description of what you did to help or solve the problem and the results for the client business. The result is never that you presented a report or completed the research, however enormous and hard that was. The result is what the client did with it – the learnings, actions taken and if possible, a demonstration of the positive contribution to the client’s organisation.

Getting results

This is where most case studies fall down. You must have the kind of relationship with the client that allows you to follow up with them a while after the project was delivered to find out how it went. Of course, doing this is a great business development/client relationship building opportunity but one which many insight companies fail to do for all sorts of reasons (ongoing negotiation on other projects not wanting to rock the boat, fear of drawing attention to potential failure, fear of drawing attention to a client’s failures, too junior a team on the project not able to have strategic consulting conversations with the client, attention elsewhere, the list goes on). As we know, MRX companies often hate to do research into themselves. Not being able to follow up with a client is sometimes symptomatic of the type of relationship agencies have with clients – which is why companies dealing with more senior clients often have the best chance of getting good case studies (and hence winning more of the right kind of client work).

You need to know if you have the results before you start the case study process. So, talk to the client, find out what happened and go from there. If you do not have the right, or any, results, then the client is not the right one for a case study. Revert to a testimonial or just using their logo.

If you do have the right relationship, know you have some results to write about, and have secured permission to do the case study in principle, then the best way to craft the content is via a set of pre-approved questions.  We usually craft a discussion guide and supply it to the client before doing a recorded interview, but you could also send over a set of questions on email and ask the client to respond. The first approach is usually better as it’s quicker and easier for the client to just chat for 30 minutes. You then know exactly what they said and can write up the case study using their verbatim as quotes. You can also lift relevant verbatim and use them as testimonials. If you do a video interview then you will need to edit it down to a tight enough format, ditto a podcast.

Once the case study is packaged then we send it over for clearance.

Clients often ask what will be done with the case study before they give permission. Our suggestion is to say at the outset that you will use it on your website and no more. Most clients do not see this as a problem. If the content is really interesting, then you can go back after you have the case published on your site and ask if it would be possible to do more with it. The main point is to avoid your client having to go to their legal team to get permission to publish. Legal teams will give a flat no to any request like this as life is too short for them. However, once a case is published on your site, there is nothing to stop you asking the client if it is OK to share it with more people.

In our experience, the hierarchy for where clients are happy to share a case study is first of all your own website and newsletters (and hence social media), then via an insights industry conference or webinar platform (typically done in conjunction with the client), then in the published media or external platforms.

If all this feels like too big a thing to deal with, remember you only need one good story which you will revisit and re-use in your marketing for years. There will always be people who had no idea you worked with Pepsi, and who would still be interested to hear about it even five years later. Do one case study really well, and you can just rely on logos and testimonials for the rest.

To wrap up, we always recommend partnerships. Network, meet people and then approach a company you want to work with, suggest an innovative new service or idea you would like to trial. Do an experiment with this client on the basis that you will share the results. You may need to pay for the sample, or do the research at cost, but the content will be gold.

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In the world of insights and research, marketing (if done at all) is frequently focused on short-term, tactical, lead generation. Agencies and suppliers come to us because they want more leads and see marketing as a support for sales and new business. In a digital environment, this seems to be an easy win. Create content to drive traffic and give you leads for your website, encourage clicks, capture data, measure, and target – and Bob’s your uncle. The problem is that this approach very often leads to disappointment and frustration.

A recent study by Professor John Dawes from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute helps us to understand why. Hold on to your chair because you might be about to have a jaw dropping moment…the research reveals that 95% of your potential customers are not in the market for your services right now and possibly won’t be for months or even years. Indeed, only 5% of B2B buyers are looking to buy at any given time. What is more, contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing you can do to convince a potential customer to think about entering the market earlier, because they already have what they need, and they won’t need to change it any time soon.

Let’s start from the beginning. Most of you will already be familiar with The Long and The Short of It the 2013 paper by Binet and Field with the IPA. This introduced the idea that brands should be spending 60% of their budget on long-term brand building and 40% on activation and direct targeting. The key insight is that you need to build memorable and meaningful connections over time to build brands and this will help your tactical marketing to work. But this was entirely based on research into B2C advertising.

The new study looks specifically at B2B marketing. It shows that if you want to grow, you need to invest in building mental availability with the 95% of your potential buyers who are not going to click on a link or respond to a CTA any time soon. Having high mental availability means being remembered; being top of mind when a prospect does think about buying your services. Customers need to be aware of your brand, and most importantly they need to have a strong emotional attachment to it, even in B2B.

This is a long-term effort especially in the lengthy and complex B2B sales cycle. To be successful your marketing needs to build and refresh memory links to your brand, which will activate when customers are ready to buy. But the study also reveals that 95% of B2B marketers expect to see significant sales within the first two weeks of a campaign . So, it is inevitable that there is a great deal of disappointment and frustration.

To build these memories, you need a marketing strategy that differentiates you from the competition and gives you a strong story and point of view; a strategy that will make you famous. Using long-term brand building activities, you can tell your story and shape the perception customers have of your company.

The main challenge for all insights firms is awareness. Yet, tactical digital marketing is not going to solve your awareness problem. What the 95:5 rule teaches us is that short-term tactics mostly hit prospects who aren’t going to buy anytime soon. Your money and time are mostly wasted.

So, does your marketing focus 95% on long-term brand building?

If the answer is no, you need to switch your focus immediately towards building brand awareness; defining and communicating your brand story and building your profile as an expert in your industry, creating engaging content to support it, implementing a PR and media plan to make you stand out within your market. When you’ve sorted out these aspects, you’ll make a long-lasting impression in no time (pun intended, of course).

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When it comes to communicating insights, most people still rely on that dull event, the debrief. All our efforts are squeezed into one hour of bar chart hell. When we should be scintillating and exciting, we are studious and exhaustive. What can we do to change this?
Where better to look for inspiration than Hollywood?! The glitz, the glamour, the lights, the camera, the action. The FAME.

Here are my thoughts on what we can learn from Hollywood to ensure we get the attention we deserve and the recognition we desire.

First of all, it’s worth mentioning, when you think about the way movies are marketed and promoted, they always have a full integrated campaign around them. It’s these different elements working together that build fame. So although I have here a list of six, we need to use them all if we want to get results.

1. Stars
Hollywood is most famous for its stars. Whether directors or actors, from the Hollywood walk to the movies themselves, it’s all about the stars. When people think of the movie Titanic, they think of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. So, you need to think, who from your team can be your Kate or Leo? Sometimes your best presenter (actor) is not the most senior person or the person who ran the project. Be prepared to put your best presenter forward.

2. Titles, and one liners
Film titles are the first thing we hear when a film is announced. Before the cast, the trailer, before anything, it’s the title. With the latest Avenger films the discourse around the title was almost as big as the film itself. The snappy, clever or just plain irritating titles are ones we never forget. So think about what you call your project. Don’t call it ‘Results of Q3 tracker’. No one will come.

Then there are the one liners, which act like hooks to get us intrigued. ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’ – you don’t even need to see the film to know where it comes from and what it is about. So think about a one liner to describe or refer to your project in a way that is really engaging.

3. Trailers
Blockbuster films have blockbuster trailers. And these trailers tend to hold the excitement, get the fans interested and start the fan theories. These blockbuster trailers set blockbuster records, Spider-Man: No Way Home received 355.5million in 24 hours on YouTube, the most for a trailer ever. Think about making three minute video trailers of your project. Just a few key highlights, but in film format, will often be all you need to get people engaged and excited.

4. PR
There is an elaborate PR scheme when it comes to promoting a film, from social media, to news articles and those all important Graham Norton interviews. Even when a film is not immediately due, the PR machine will whirr. So think about sharing the value of what you do all the time, work out key internal influencers, speak to people, use all available channels to publicise what you do, prime your audience for the project completion.

5. Target
Hollywood films are targeted toward different people. Paw-Patrol and a Period Drama have very different audiences and will be carefully planned and targeted for those audiences. They may both be movies, but they will be very different. So why do we in insights consistently do the one report or debrief for all audiences? Tailor your materials, understand your audiences and use different channels to reach them.

6. The Premier
Finally, think about the premier. The glitz and glamour all come together. Make this your debrief. Stage it, add some excitement and roll out the red carpet. Make the material interactive and increase your engagement. Sell your insights in the most exciting way you can.

Want to know how to make this work for you? Get in touch with us and we’ll share how we use our FAME model to add some Hollywood razzle dazzle to your insights communication

Keep an eye out for our upcoming webinar based on Hollywood and the FAME model and what you can do to give your insights FAME.

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Are you challenged to raise the profile of your work with a wider audience? Do you want to stop being a well-kept secret? Are you a thought-leader disguised as a thought-follower?

If the answer to any of these questions is YES then you need to join Colonel Mustard Lucy Davison in her Market Research Society Impact Conference session ‘How to be Famous’ on 17 March at 11.00am. Lucy is the world’s leading expert on communications for insight and in just 20 minutes will give you hot tips on how to influence the media and tell your story. By standing you in the shoes of journalists, you will learn how to communicate with them to get your voice heard.

You can book your ticket here: https://www.mrsannualconference.com/

What have you got to lose?

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Are you struggling to get coverage for your studies? Are you reaching out to the media but not getting the response you hoped for? You might think a press release is a simple thing, but there are some important rules for getting it right.

In a fast and practical hour, this interactive digital training will turn your press releases from bin fodder to cordon-bleu. Learn how to craft a title and tell your story, find out what to put in that all important first paragraph and how to get a quote right.

On which note, here is a quote from a satisfied customer:

“I am involved with the communication program of my organisation, but I never felt like I had the right tools to make the difference. This training has been extremely valuable for me and I now feel more confident in identifying news and drafting effective communications. Great experience overall!”

Led by Colonel Mustard Lucy Davison who is a sought-after speaker and workshop leader, this training is essential for anyone working in a marketing or PR role in MRX. It will also build useful learning for other copywriting – such as emails, invitations and web copy.

The training is via MS Teams in groups of two to eight people for a one off fee of £200.00 per person.

To find out more email lucy@mustardmarketing.com

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Often clients come to us saying they want to feature in all the big titles. “I want my research to be published in the FT, The Economist, The Guardian, Forbes!”. But is it what you need? While featuring in national publications is definitely rewarding for your business and will raise awareness, we recommend clients think hard about their objectives first.

Let’s take The Guardian for example. Their newspaper print circulation is approximately 100,000 while online they gather over 23 million unique visitors a month. It is undeniably a big audience, with rich opportunities for a company to be noticed. But out of this multitude of people, only a very small portion is the readers that you really want to reach.

If your research is about the latest trends in the food industry, chances are the most relevant readership will be subscribed to The Grocer or Food Navigator. These publications might not have six figures circulation numbers, but they do target the right niche with greater chances of your PR activity translating into leads from interested clients. Featuring in a publication that targets a smaller – but engaged and passionate audience – can bring more value to your business than a wider but general poll of readers. Sometimes less is more.

Another question that we ask our ambitious clients is “is your content suitable for national publications?”. There are some criteria for a story to even be considered by a journalist who works for a national. You have to have the numbers; the more people you’ve interviewed the more chances you will have to be published. Your sample size needs to be at least 2,000 people and the data need to be ground-breaking. The story needs to be topical and add a new angle to an ongoing debate. On top of that, because you’re talking with such a wide and non-specialised public, you can’t be too technical. This kind of audience might struggle to understand a specific industry message, let alone have any idea what you or your company do, thus quickly losing interest in your article.

Vertical publications, on the other hand, reach an audience who have a good grasp of a specific subject. This will allow you to focus on analysing an in-depth concept rather than spending time explaining basic knowledge to the general public.

National publications are a crowded space. Thousands of new items make their appearance on these content rich platforms but only the globally important ones reach the front page. Most of the other stories get relegated to a note at the bottom of the page or to some obscure website pages accessed by very few people.

However, trade publications offer your story more visibility. Unlike the broader publications, they only cover one specific industry, narrowing down the amount of news that is actually relevant to them. This gives your business the chance to shine on the home page and even appear as the main cover story.

So, although getting your company’s research on the national pages is definitely important and can fit with your strategy if you are looking for investment, don’t let the numbers go to your head! As a business you need to consider more than one factor and pay attention to which strategy will benefit your company reputation and income most effectively.

Finally, remember your trade media is your trade media. It is vital to have strong, long-term relationships with the sectors you work in. With the help of communication experts, you can easily identify which audience to target and consequently which publications will do the trick.

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Throughout the lockdown, customers from across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa had been sharing their experiences and concerns with the insights team at a large FMCG client. As a result, the team had many diverse, engaging consumer vox-pop clips, which they had grouped into six broad themes. But they needed to weave them into a single, coherent and impactful story.

In a challenge that is typical for many insights teams, there was no lack of data. But the team needed a way to use that data to bring the voice of the customer to life for the senior leadership. And they needed it done for an important meeting in two weeks.

Our mission was to create an engaging 5-minute video to kick off the meeting – and then use it to tell the story throughout the organisation. We couldn’t simply string the clips together. It was important to have a structure and a flow to make the video engaging and bring people’s voices and experiences to life.

We agreed a creative brief, which described the project and the expected outcome. Together with the client team we selected the vox-pop clips that best illustrated the six themes and were also representative of the diverse markets that were involved in the project. Then, we drafted a storyboard with the text and flow of the film.

Once we had the storyboard and vox-pops, we wrote an explanatory script for the voiceover. The structure of the video and the story arc was now defined. Customers’ voices were the protagonists, but supporting imagery, film clips and music brought the story to life.

With such a tight deadline, this project had to be spot on almost at “first take”, bringing the potential re-editing time to the minimum. So we had meetings with our main client contacts every other day which enabled us to incorporate their ideas and feedback each step of the way.

After the final edits, we completed and shared the video the afternoon before it was due to be presented. This was the feedback from the senior client team:

“Team this is fantastic! Thank you very much, I frankly don’t need you need any revision”

“It is really good 😊 thanks… fresh and fast… and covers all.. brilliant.”

After the meeting where it was shown, the video was sent to 1000+ client colleagues, via email and Yammer.

Do you also have a ton of vox-pops, a tight deadline and no idea where to start? Get in touch with Simon

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