The Hidden Cost of Siloed Research: Why Consumer Insights Professionals Can’t Afford to Ignore Downstream Marketing

Consumer insights professionals are facing a major challenge. While their ability to craft solid research and uncover valuable consumer truths is essential, a significant gap often appears once those insights are passed along. This disconnect between research and execution isn’t just a small hiccup—it’s a multimillion-dollar problem that can seriously undermine the value and credibility of their work.

The Costly Cycle of Disconnection

The typical workflow often unfolds in a way that slowly erodes the value of the insights you’ve worked hard to uncover. It starts with research teams developing carefully crafted strategies targeting specific market segments. From there, agencies step in and recreate these segments for planning and creative purposes. Then, media platforms take over, reworking the segments again for activation. Finally, each platform measures its own impact, without considering the broader context. This cycle doesn’t just dilute the effectiveness of go-to-market strategies—it also wastes valuable resources, time, and budget. Resources that could be better spent on more comprehensive research initiatives to strengthen and refine those very strategies.

Why Consumer Insights Professionals Should Care

1. Credibility at Stake: When strategies based on your insights fail to deliver expected results, it’s not just the execution that’s questioned—it’s the validity of your research.
2. Budget Justification: In an era of tightening budgets, the inability to demonstrate clear ROI from research to execution puts future funding for insights projects at risk.
3. Seat at the Strategic Table: By ensuring your insights maintain fidelity throughout the marketing workflow, you elevate your role from information provider to strategic partner.
4. Enhanced Research Value: When your insights directly inform successful campaigns, it creates a positive feedback loop, increasing demand for your expertise and potentially expanding your department’s scope and resources.
5. Data-Driven Decision Making: By bridging the gap between research and execution, you enable truly data-driven decision making across the entire marketing ecosystem, fulfilling the promise of insights-led strategy.

The Stakes Are High

Can your insights department really afford to overlook what happens after your research is handed off? The cost of disconnected workflows goes beyond wasted ad spend—it shows up in the diminished impact of your insights and how they’re perceived across the organization. By embracing a truly integrated approach to insights and activation, you not only enhance the impact of your work but also secure your position as an indispensable driver of business success. In doing so, you transform consumer insights from a cost center to a revenue generator, directly tying your efforts to bottom-line results.

The Big Village Solution: Preserving Insight Fidelity

Big Village offers a revolutionary approach that extends the value of your research beyond the initial report:

1. Always On, Always Connected Data: Ensures your carefully crafted segments maintain consistency from strategy development to campaign measurement.
2. Audience Extension: Unlocks deep insights on audience profiles and media behaviors, driving precise campaign planning and activation based on your research.
3. Seamless Integration: Projects your research directly into digital marketing environments and CRM systems, maintaining continuity between your insights and execution.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to care about downstream activation—it’s whether you can afford not to.

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