Research First Strategy Second

I recently attended an International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) professional development session. The topic was social media; but what I got out of the session stretched far beyond the online world.

One of the speakers, Mary Pat Barry, Corporate Communications Branch Manager from the City of Edmonton, spoke about a program called Edmontonstories. Edmontonstories, if you haven’t already heard of it, is an image and brand enhancement program for the City of Edmonton. The goal of the program is to build awareness about Edmonton by uncovering the essence of the city through the experiences of real Edmontonians.

Mary Pat’s presentation included an overview of the program, and a discussion about how the program is being communicated through online social media. But what really caught my attention was how this program was executed.

The City of Edmonton conducted an intensive research study with Edmontonians, as well as with non-residents, to test people’s perceptions about Edmonton. The results were surprising: the image and brand of our city ranked high for the citizens of Edmonton, and extremely low for non-residents. In fact, the company that conducted the research said that they had never seen such a gap in opinions.

Clearly, the city had some work to do in developing a strategy to communicate Edmonton’s story to the world. To do this, they launched Edmontonstories.ca.

The program has been extremely successful. Since the launch of the website, Edmontonstories.ca has reached 163 countries (there are 195 countries globally), and 62.4% of all website traffic is from people living outside of Edmonton.

As a marketing professional, I couldn’t help but to consider why this program has been so successful. In one word: research.

We’ve all seen it; organizations that don’t invest time or dollars to do their research. Instead, they develop strategies and entire marketing programs without doing their homework first. The result? Ineffective marketing.

Mary Pat’s presentation reiterated one very important thing for me: Research is the first step in developing an effective strategy. If you want to develop a successful marketing program, such as Edmontonstories, you have to be willing to invest both time and money in research. Here are steps to developing a successful marketing program:

1. Do your homework
   The City of Edmonton invested lots of time and money to conduct research before launching Edmontonstories. Without this research, they would never have known about the gap in opinions between residents and non-residents. Their research illustrates just how the perceptions from within a company can be vastly different than those outside the company. Had they not known this, they would never have been able to develop an effective program.
2. Analyze your homework
   Just when you thought you were finished, you’re not. Once you have the research in hand you need to analyze, analyze, analyze. What does the research tell you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Where are your threats and opportunities?
3. Develop your strategy
   Once you know what people’s perceptions are, you can develop your message and a strategy to communicate that message. Edmontonstories was developed based on the research findings that Edmontonians had the greatest ability to communicate the city’s attributes to the world. And thanks to Edmonton’s ability to invest the time and money, it’s working.

Ultimately, you can never really know what your stakeholders’ perceptions are until you invest the time and money into finding out. Once you fully understand how you are perceived in the minds of your audience, you can develop a message that’s relevant, and a strategy for communicating that message effectively.