Posted by Joe Panettieri
Want to jump-start interest in one of your products or services? One way to do so is to publish some research that educates bloggers, traditional journalists, partners and potential customers about your target industry.
Consider our recent experience in the MuniWireless market. A few weeks back, much of the mainstream business press buried the municipal broadband sector because several big city WiFi deployments had stalled. Alas, the mainstream press failed to realize that hundreds of successful municipal wireless projects (involving specific applications) were in place. We needed a way to show the MuniWireless community — and its critics — that some market perceptions didn’t reflect market realities.
Fortunately, Mike Perkowski, our COO and resident number cruncher, had organized our annual MuniWireless State of the Market research project over the summer. While some skeptics expected spending on U.S. municipal wireless deployments to fall in 2007, Mike’s research found that year-over-year spending would actually increase about 35 percent this year. Mike shared this data point and several other findings during our MuniWireless 2007: Silicon Valley conference on October 22.
My goal for this blog entry isn’t to convince you to buy the report. (Although we certainly welcome your dollars.) Rather, the goal here is to show you how in-depth market research can help change perceptions about a market, industry or company. Instead of ignoring industry backlash, we embraced the dialog. We invited the press to our MuniWireless Silicon Valley event. And we shared the data points with them.
The results were very encouraging. Major digital and traditional media outlets — including ZDnet, CMP and the Associated Press — generated coverage that ranged from balanced to positive. Even a local ABC affiliate station weighed in with television coverage.
Still, I’m not suggesting that you dive into market research on your own. Your research metrics and findings have to be credible, otherwise you might sabotage your own efforts. (Here comes the pitch, folks…) Our team has handled dozens of research projects over the years. We’re currently helping an IT security company research key trends and perceptions in the IT channel. And we’re weighing several other custom research projects for 2008. Mike (mike [at] microcast.biz) is our point person on those efforts.
If you need to make a compelling business case for your products, services or market expertise — in-depth research is one reliable way to do so.
