Susan Baier began her career as a brand manager for companies like Dial and Conoco-Philips. She also worked agency side and within client companies in their research departments, honing her skills as a research professional.

Recognizing that primary research was often too expensive for small to mid-sized agencies, she launched Audience Audit, where she conducts quantitative attitudinal audience segmented research. She helps her agency clients develop marketing strategy for their clients based on customer insights. They find it much easier to develop messaging, strategic plans, and business development plans with real data that helps them understand how customers who look (demographically) the same behave in very different ways and what motives those choices and behaviors.

Over the past few years, AMI and Audience Audit have partnered together for studies on how business owners find agencies, their attitudes towards working with agencies, and more.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

How the research that Audience Audit does differs from a lot of the research that’s out there
How your agency can leverage research inside your agency-client relationships
The ways agencies can better sell the value of research to existing and prospective clients
Why agencies can’t build their business around “shiny toys”
The ways research has changed and why agencies shouldn’t be afraid to bring it to clients that they haven’t done research with in the past
How bringing research to clients can give them a sense of relief and make it easier for your agency to retain their business
A specific example of how this kind of targeted research helped a client in a big way
The mistakes agencies make when trying bring research into their shop
Why niche really matters when it comes to research
Baby steps agencies can take to start incorporating research

Ways to contact Susan Baier:

Resources:

2015 research
2014 research

We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Episode 14: Using Research to Grow Your Agency, with Susan Baier.

Build a Better Agency Podcast