The temptation to skip research is always there. A new client signs up, they're excited, they want campaigns running by next week. The pressure to produce visible output quickly is enormous. And it would be easy to jump straight to building email sequences and prospect lists.
I don't. Every single engagement starts with research. Not because I enjoy the process (I do, but that's beside the point). Because the research is what makes everything after it work.
When a new client comes on board, the first thing we do is build what I call a Client Strategy Blueprint. It's not a 60-page strategy document that gathers dust. It's a focused piece of research that answers five questions.
Who are your best customers, and why? What does your competitive set look like, and where are the gaps? Which channels are your prospects actually using? What's worked before, and what hasn't? What does success look like in six months?
These sound basic. They are basic. And yet most agencies skip straight past them because the answers take time to find and clients want to see campaigns, not research reports.
Earlier this year, a client came to us after working with another agency for six months. The previous agency had built email campaigns, created content, run LinkedIn ads. All competent execution. The problem was that the campaigns were targeting the wrong audience.
The agency had assumed, based on a quick briefing call, that the client's prospects were mid-market IT directors. Reasonable assumption for a tech services company. But the client's actual buyers were operations managers in logistics firms. Completely different people, different language, different pain points, different channels.
Six months of well-executed campaigns aimed at the wrong people. The click rates were fine. The conversion rate was almost zero. Because no amount of good copywriting fixes a targeting mistake.
Thirty minutes of proper research at the start would have caught this. A look at the client's existing customer base, a conversation about who actually signs the purchase orders, a quick analysis of where their best leads had come from historically. Basic stuff that changes everything.
The objection I hear most is that research delays the start of "real" marketing. But consider the alternative. You launch campaigns without research, get mediocre results for two months, realise the targeting is off, adjust, test again, and finally start getting traction in month four.
Or you spend two weeks on research upfront, launch campaigns that are properly targeted from day one, and start getting results in month two. The research doesn't delay results. It accelerates them.
The fastest path to revenue isn't the one that starts the soonest. It's the one that starts in the right direction.
It's not complicated. A proper pre-campaign research phase for a typical B2B client takes one to two weeks and covers four areas.
Customer analysis: who are the client's best existing customers, what do they have in common, and how did they originally become customers? This pattern is the template for finding more like them.
Competitive intelligence: who else is competing for the same prospects, what are they saying, and where are they visible? Not to copy them, but to identify the gaps. If every competitor leads with price, there's an opening to lead with service. If nobody in the sector is doing email properly, that's an advantage.
Channel assessment: where do the prospects spend their time, and how do they prefer to be contacted? A managing director of a construction firm responds to phone calls and WhatsApp. A marketing director at a tech company responds to LinkedIn and email. One size genuinely doesn't fit all.
Historical performance: what has the client tried before, what worked, and what didn't? This saves you from repeating expensive mistakes and builds on what's already proven.
Most agencies skip research for the same reason: it's hard to bill for and harder to show off. A client doesn't get excited about a research report the way they get excited about a new email campaign. The research phase doesn't produce screenshots or metrics they can share with their board.
So agencies rush to the visible work. Templates, designs, campaigns. Things that feel like progress. And sometimes they get lucky and the targeting is roughly right. But often they don't, and weeks of work get wasted because the foundation wasn't there.
I'd rather spend two weeks being boring and thorough than two months being busy and wrong.
Martin Dugan, AA2
