Desk research is a hugely valuable tool in any researcher’s toolbox. It can provide invaluable context to support primary research by giving nuance and, often, new directions that hadn’t been initially considered. However, when poorly conducted, desk research can give unwieldy and unstructured insight that overwhelms clients with irrelevant information.
As a separate discipline to market research, we appreciate that the world of desk research can often be a mind-shift for clients who are true-blue researchers and are more comfortable using primary research sources.
From conducting market reviews to researching the growth of new product categories to the development and application of new technologies to building a detailed view of the attractiveness of new markets for exploration, we’ve conducted desk research across a range of industries encompassing automotive, F&B, health & beauty, animal health, agriculture, and media.
As more and more clients are commissioning desk research, we popped together a list of top tips to ensure they get what they need from desk research:
- Clearly set the scope.
Spend time with your agency upfront to ensure you are both on the same page regarding the scope and critical data points you seek to uncover. At Kadence, we like to develop a ‘shopping list’ of crucial data points our clients want to uncover, which we can use to structure the desk research.
- Share what you already know.
Don’t just focus on what you want to uncover; take time to share what you already know with your agency to ensure they are fully armed with all the information you already have. This also means valuable resources won’t be spent on gathering the data you already have, ensuring you maximise your budget.
- Develop hypotheses for what you might find.
Collaborate with your agency to build a set of hypotheses to guide the direction of the desk research. We routinely run hypotheses workshops with clients to help us clearly understand the outputs they aim for.
- Ensure you understand the agency’s approach.
Every agency will have slightly different ways of structuring and managing desk research. Ensure you understand the approach, as it may differ from what you’ve come across in the past.
- Be patient.
You likely won’t hear much in the first week or two of desk research, and that’s normal – your agency will be digging through sources, cross-checking, and cross-referencing points as they emerge. View desk research like a snowball – it takes time to build but quickly escalates into a wealth of information.
- Define the deliverables.
Think about how best to share the desk research results with your stakeholders. Data-heavy slides may be better read as a pre-read than presented in full. Often a short overview presentation is the best way to engage stakeholders in the content of the desk research, guiding them to a more detailed report.
And finally, remember this: desk research can only uncover data that is out there! Rather than being a limitation, it is an ideal starting point to identify knowledge gaps to explore further via primary research.
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