September 28, 2023 – Getting started on your qualitative research journey with a solid foundation is essential for success. So before diving into creating an RFP, it’s crucial to understand the steps you should take to ensure an optimal outcome.
In this post, we’ll explore five tips for writing a successful qualitative research brief. These tips are drawn from my nearly 20 years of market research experience dealing with hundreds of briefs on both the client side and the agency side.
1. Approach The Process With A WIP Mindset By Using A Project Draft
Whether you are collaborating with stakeholders in various departments or across the globe, it’s vital to stay flexible – often referred to as a WIP (work-in-progress) mindset – because you can be guaranteed that there will be many changes at this stage.
Given that reality, it is critical to avoid the common error of becoming attached to specific objectives and methodologies quickly, which often leads to finalizing a brief prematurely (and extensive reworking).
Instead, take an approach that gives you flexibility in synthesizing input, scoping changes, and exploring various options during the pre-brief process.
To embrace a WIP mindset, before thinking about a solution or having discussions with others, take the time to delve into the project need by asking yourself essential questions such as:
- How might various stakeholders view the project need and what interests might each of them have in the outcome?
- What are the most critical elements that should be addressed?
- What should we be able to accomplish as a business after the project versus before?
- What would we miss out on if we didn’t execute the project?
- How does this project connect to other areas of our business?
Once you have clear answers to these questions (and any others specific to your company), you’re ready to progress to the next step and seek input from stakeholders while continuing to optimize your project draft.
2. Start With Conversations, Not A Template
Initiate broad discussions with internal stakeholders, collecting feedback and synthesizing the input into your project draft based on these conversations. Consider what your stakeholders want to learn, need to know, and expect to receive at the project’s conclusion.
Next, share the initial ideas with your agency partners before crafting a formal brief. Engaging in conversations with your partners provides them with an early understanding of your project’s direction, allowing them to contribute valuable insights at this initial stage. Agency partners, having dealt with similar challenges across various industries, can offer invaluable suggestions to optimize your project draft.
3. Focus On Detailing Three Key Objectives
With input collected, your primary responsibility as a client-side researcher is to outline clear objectives in your qualitative research brief. Effective briefs typically define three distinct types of objectives:
-
Primary Business Objective:
This defines what the research initiative will inform and how the business will leverage the collected information.
- Example: Increase our reach by 25% with the target audience by EOY to build product awareness.
-
Primary Research Objective:
Different from the business objective, this element requires a focused statement on what you need to learn from customers and consumers by the project’s end to support the business objective directly.
- Example: Understand our target audience as people: what their interests are, how they spend their time, what motivates them, and how they learn about new products in our category.
-
Secondary Research Objective:
While not as critical as the primary research objective, this section allows you to outline additional, more specific needs that support the primary research goal. Avoid making it a comprehensive wish list; instead, focus on separating true needs from the noise.
- Example: Explore the full journey for how our target audience moves from learning about our product to consideration to purchase.
With these three objectives clearly defined, you’re well on your way to continue to the next step of the pre-research journey.
4. Align Stakeholders To The Objectives
Before developing the next steps of your research brief, engage in another round of discussions with your primary stakeholders (typically, the top 5 end users of the information). Keeping the group small is advisable, particularly when collaborating with multiple contributing teams.
While remaining in a WIP mindset, share your draft objectives with these stakeholders and seek their feedback. It’s crucial that they endorse the business objective and understand the research objectives since these are the criteria that will be used to evaluate project success.
After documenting these discussions, you and your team can fine-tune the primary and secondary research objectives to align with the final business objective. Highlight these objectives by placing them at the top of your research brief.
5. Build Your Brief
With your objectives set, you can fill in the details of the remaining components of your qualitative research brief. While templates can provide a useful starting point, every brief should be tailored to the project’s specific needs.
Consider including the following details, which will also help your qualitative research agency partnerscreate the most relevant proposal for your needs:
- Audience – Specify the target group for qualitative research.
- Markets – Indicate whether this is a global, national, or localized study.
- Budget Range – Be transparent about your budget constraints. It will actually save you a lot of time in the long run to share this information early so that you receive relevant proposals.
- Timeline – Communicate your project’s timing needs, including the final deliverable deadline and any key meetings or dates.
- Fieldwork Observers – Clarify the number of colleagues who will attend live sessions or require access to fieldwork data after completion.
- Previous Research – Provide background information on past projects conducted with the same audience.
- Deliverables – Describe the type and format of deliverables expected from the research so that your qualitive research partners can accurately design the approach to produce the needed outputs.
We love talking about this stuff, so if you need help scoping an RFP or just want to bounce around ideas, feel free to contact us.