Steps to Writing a Market Research Report

M.T. Wroblewski reports:

"The most compelling market research reports pivot on a story – about why that new product or service line holds such promise, why that group of untapped consumers could benefit from your offerings or why that merger would be a wise investment. Like all good stories, this one might start with an anecdote or focus on one person – the 'main character' – who could serve as your ideal customer. Telling the story of your research through his or her eyes, and with plenty of dynamic quotes, should flow directly into how pursuing this new opportunity would advance your business objectives. This is a crucial part of the story, too, since the opportunity wouldn't even be worth considering if it didn't conform with your business plan. At this point, you might wish to share with your staff the experience of a well-known manufacturer of a men's fragrance that was ready to embark on a marketing campaign – targeted to men. Then the market research revealed that women, not men, make most of these purchases, and the finding transformed the campaign. Now there was an entirely different story to tell because the main characters shifted to women – who they are, what they do for a living, when they purchase men's fragrances and how they persuade the men in their lives to acquiesce to wearing a fragrance in the first place...As much of the quantitative data as possible should be consigned to charts and graphs...Numbers are easier to read, and evaluate, when they're displayed in a graph rather than tucked into a dense paragraph, where the reader may struggle to interpret their meaning. This point underscores another reality about market research reports: [Y]ou may think it's being written for your benefit and that of your staff. And for now, it may be. Your audience may also include your business attorney and accountant. But [someday], if it's appropriate, new stakeholders may read the report, too, and charts and graphs will make it easier for them to digest. Of course, you can always overdo a good thing. Only relevant charts and graphs – or those that advance the fundamental story – should be included in the body of the market research report. Ancillary information should be relegated to the appendix – that document repository that comes at the end of a report...By focusing on a compelling story and relying on visuals, your staff should find it easier to address your third cardinal rule. They should know that you will judge the value of their effort on its quality, not the number of pages. (It's up to you if you wish to tell them that many market research reports run from between 10 and 50 pages.) It will also help if they:

• Use bullet points when they can.* Read each other's work and 'peer edit' for clarity and concision.
• Challenge each paragraph to the relevancy test. In other words, if a paragraph doesn't advance the basic story, strike it.

...You may hesitate to call it an 'outline,' but you should convey to your staff that the true value of their report will depend on its organization. So if they don't like the sound of establishing a step-by-step progression of the report, then turn them loose on PowerPoint, which will force the issue (in a good way). In the end, they may decide that this format – and not a paper report – is the best one for their findings. As liberating as this may be, most market research reports hew to tradition, and necessity, by including:

• A table of contents. A section on the research objectives. A section on the research methods. An executive summary. Detailed findings and, perhaps, the implications. Told in a dynamic manner, the fascinating finish should get everyone's blood pumping."