by Christopher S Penn | Jun 16, 2020 | Content, Content Marketing, Marketing, Research, Strategy
Joe asks, "How do you conduct research for a new content marketing project? Where do you start, what steps do you take, and what systems do you use to organize your research and findings?" It really depends on the project and how much depth I need to go into. How much...
by Christopher S Penn | Jul 20, 2018 | analytics, Marketing, Research
As a followup to yesterday's PR Student Chat, I share some ideas about what the best tools are for staying in tune with and in touch with your audience. Beer Coffee Video chat Conferences There's no substitute for talking to the actual audience. As much as I wish...
by Christopher S Penn | Jul 2, 2018 | AI, Artificial Intelligence, IBM, Machine Learning, Marketing, Marketing Technology, Research
Monica asks, "How do I create good content for an industry I'm unfamiliar with?" I had a colleague in the PR industry who called this getting smart, fast, and she used the time-honored technique of reading and researching via Google, news sources, and social media...
by Christopher S Penn | Apr 19, 2017 | Marketing, analytics, Metrics, Research
In the world of data and analytics, anecdotal evidence is often demonized. Why? People in general and marketers in specific mistake anecdotal evidence for quantitative proof, for statistically representative, reliable, and repeatable evidence. Anecdotal evidence is...
by Christopher S Penn | Apr 3, 2015 | Marketing, Research, Strategy
Alan Belniak asked a followup question on yesterday's blog post about what sources I read. This is less a question of what I read and more a question of method: where do the sources come from? Here's what I mean: everyone starts with the same sources because those are...
by Christopher S Penn | Sep 6, 2013 | Awakening, Metrics, Research, Strategy
I've had the opportunity to do an awful lot of surveying recently as part of my work at SHIFT. The surveying I've been doing has been initiated by me on behalf of clients and the data is used to inform various marketing campaigns. What I've found while doing this work...