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Exploring a revolutionary approach to B2B marketing | #CompanySpotlight

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This year, B2B marketing specialist alan. Launched Integrated Intelligence - a new research division aiming to fundamentally change how B2B marketers understand their industries.

Led by Research and Intelligence Managers, Josh Cohen and Emilie Pirson, Integrated Intelligence will focus on providing B2B clients with market analysis, profiling & targeting, and brand measurement. It will give B2B clients the same access to the sorts of brand, audience and market insight that B2C clients take for granted.

Integrated Intelligence will allow alan. to challenge outdated models of thought commonly used in B2B marketing and offer advice to their clients to make more incisive business decisions. We caught up with Emilie and Josh to learn a little more.

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How was your division born?

E: Through our work with a range of leading businesses we observed how underutilised research was by B2B companies.

We found that companies had a rather naive understanding of the industry, and the insights they used were packaged in silos, serving little purpose, and not providing a full picture of the industry. Thus, we identified an underlying need for research expertise to optimise marketing strategy and to give companies the insights and intelligence

Through this our research division was born, founded on a concept of integrated intelligence, aiming at providing companies

What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?

J: We’ve got a lot of work to do in educating the B2B market - the research offering just isn’t as mature as in the B2C market, and many don’t really understand, or aren’t committed to the value of conducting research beyond feeding into content marketing.

But we feel that’s just a result of what’s on offer - with more sophisticated, statistical approaches to market research, a lot more can be milked out of your usual piece of B2B market research. The market will take some further convincing, but they’re certainly coming around.

What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?

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E: The biggest opportunity will be for us to create strong relationships with new clients, and showcase our research expertise. We aim to grow our research offering and team, and produce some outstanding results.

J: Through our work with existing clients, we’ve done a lot to prove that our methods milk more out of the research than traditional approaches can. I suppose the biggest opportunity is that with broader products and capabilities, we now have the capacity to access a broader and more diverse range of products and clients within tech and FS.

Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?

E: Our approach to research is unparalleled in the industry. Our mission is to empower our clients to “challenge their reality”, to question what they know.

We do this by leveraging layers of data, what we call “integrated intelligence” to give our clients an understanding of the entire picture. Our research processes go beyond providing data points in isolation, and deliver actionable insights for business development.

J: I suppose it’s a process of knitting together different sources of information to build a more balanced, nuanced understanding of a business challenge than others might. It’s more labour intensive, certainly, but this approach allows us to read between the lines and spot opportunities that others might miss.

As researchers know, the devil is in the details - but people like us tend to fall down the rabbit hole of one particular data set, transcript or article, and miss how those many sources fit together. Our approach forces us to zoom out, and look at a problem from a rather different perspective.

How does your team remain inspired and motivated?

E: We are relentlessly curious and passionate about all things research, and this the foundation of our team. Being able to explore stories from data is a thriving force for us, and we are constantly looking for new ways and solutions to improve our insights and deepen our expertise.

J: I like to think we have a culture of nerdery. We celebrate things that make us scratch our chin or throw received knowledge into doubt. At the end of the day, we all just want to find out new things, and finding new things keeps us going!

What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?

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E: Have an overarching vision/philosophy that you believe in, and carry that through with you. Our concept of “challenge your reality” is also a mindset for us, and it underpins everything we do.

What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?

E: That research becomes the foundation of all marketing activity. It has enormous potential and the power to give organisations a fuller understanding of their environment and enable them to make more informed decisions.

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