In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, Kerry Curran and Linus Gregoriadis, Managing Director of London Research, discuss how original research is essential for driving brand differentiation, credibility, and demand generation. Linus shares insights on how companies use research to stand out in crowded markets, establish thought leadership, and support lead generation. The conversation highlights the power of blending qualitative and quantitative data to create valuable content and deliver targeted insights, helping executives elevate their go-to-market strategies with data-driven approaches.

Podcast transcript

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.424)

 So welcome Linus. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

Linus Gregoriadis (00:09.004)

Hi Kerry, good to be here. So I'm managing director of a business called London Research. My background is as a, originally as a journalist, but the last 20 years or so as an analyst writing about all things digital marketing and e-commerce. London Research is part of a business called Demand Exchange, which specializes in lead generation and a lot of syndication of content and London research is the content arm of the business.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:49.904)

Great. So Linus, you and I have worked together many, many times over many years, working on lots of research that's provided value, everything from why should I invest in Amazon was our, or how do I invest in Amazon and why was our original paper we worked on together back in 2017. And then …

Linus Gregoriadis (01:09.184)

Yeah, retail media.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:18.7)

Since then, we've covered multiple topics from the digital marketing landscape, media buying, including programmatic and digital out of home, and also more recently, the affiliate marketing space. So now you and I both are huge advocates of original research papers for just building awareness, building credibility, kind of giving that more content to share and promote to build the brand perception. So talk about from your perspective, what are you hearing when you're talking to your prospects and your brands? What are they talking about when they call you and are interested in partnering for original research?

Linus Gregoriadis (02:11.028)

A lot of organizations we speak to say that they're really trying to differentiate their voice in often quite crowded marketplaces. They want to be, it's a bit of a cliche, but they want to be thought leaders in a particular area. So we help them really develop and tell their stories.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:19.534)

Hmm. Yeah.

Great. And so when they're coming to you, like what are their goals? You know, you talked about thought leadership. Are they looking at kind of, you mentioned lead generation or building a business case for investment or what are some of other types of kind of or goals that they're coming to you with?

Linus Gregoriadis (03:06.26)

It's generally a mixture of branding objectives. So kind of top of funnel awareness and also a lot of it's driven by lead generation. That's partly a function of our bigger business being able to deliver market qualified leads. So lead generation is definitely part of the picture. And our goal is to help them produce content that gets them …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:13.103)

Mm-mm

Linus Gregoriadis (03:35.572)

… well known and established or even better known in a particular area. Whether that's, I don't know, retail media, affiliate marketing or marketing technology, marketing automation, any topic really where they want to get a bit more traction.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:41.657)

Mm-mm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:00.333)

And we talked about there's so much content and demand for content in the buying cycle today, especially for B2B. And they're spending more time trying to find out which partner really offers what they're looking for or what the solution is or who's very credible. So it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity to use this type of content and original data that really can help a brand stand out in their entire content strategy and their go-to-market presence.

Linus Gregoriadis (04:38.304)

Yeah, I mean, that's really well summarized. There's some trends sort of happening in the background, which I think are leading to companies putting more of a focus on some original authentic content. One is the gen AI and there's so much, so many articles, so much content and noise out there, which can often come across as pretty sort of samey and inauthentic and …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:56.612)

Mm-hmm.

Linus Gregoriadis (05:07.98)

And a lot of it is just regurgitated information that's already out there. And I guess there's more savvy companies realizing that we need something original on its own, with a clear voice, proprietary data, some new insights too, so we come across as a bit different. Another trend is the fact that as …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:15.311)

Mm-hmm.

Linus Gregoriadis (05:37.964)

… for example, as B2B buyers, we're doing a lot more research online and quite often there's some quite well often quoted statistics about 70 % of the buying journey is completed before someone speaks to a salesperson at an organization. companies realize that without that kind of great content out there, they're not gonna be part of the …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:43.461)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Linus Gregoriadis (06:07.904)

… conversation, they're not going to make it onto a long list or short list, unless they're being seen as providing useful information.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:13.636)

Mm-hmm.

Linus Gregoriadis (06:22.539)

… to ensure that they're under consideration.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:26.19)

Right. And so I know in the papers where we've worked together in the past, the goals that I had on the business side were just that, you know, to stand out as a leader in the space for our buyers, but also to serve as a tool. My goal was always that they would take the paper and go to the buyer or the executive holding the purse strings or control over where the investment went and say, look, look at this data. Like this is what we need to be doing. This is an, and ideally this is who we need to be doing it with. But to your point, you know, it really serves as that tool to kind of, as I think you've said, kind of cement the reputation of the brand and, and stand out and start that relationship for that buying journey.

Linus Gregoriadis (07:28.106)

Yeah, it can be a, I guess, a sort of softer way of getting people's attention rather than a very kind of over-salesy approach. You've got some interesting, stimulating content and information which can help to start a conversation and potentially also provide good evidence that what you're...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:54.842)

Hmm-mm.

Linus Gregoriadis (07:54.876)

… advocating is a worthwhile product or service for them to invest in.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:03.31)

Right. And I think the approach that I've taken in the past that you've helped us with is comparing data points of gaps with this is what your target audience is doing, but this is what you and your peer set might be doing. so what we've mostly done in the digital marketing media investment side was demonstrated the gaps between where consumers were going and engaging with content or choosing their purchase or looking for inspiration to converting versus where media planners were prioritizing and barriers and again, kind of really getting to that target audience and what their business challenge might be or how can they improve their business with a little bit of a shift in investment based on kind of the knowledge and experience that we've had.


I know, especially over the years that we've worked together, I think I got more more prescriptive with what I came to you with. But for brands that are kind of newer to that, like what are the considerations or what should they kind of think about or come to you with when they're ready to invest in a research paper.

Linus Gregoriadis (09:33.088)

Yeah, just firstly to what you were saying there, we love that research we did as a case study because it was a good example of research. We had the consumer research and what consumers were doing and thinking about their attitude and their behaviors versus what businesses were doing, where marketers were investing. We were able to shine a light on that gap.


And then with our insights and recommendations would point companies to potentially a better way of doing things which obviously coincided with your objectives as a business without compromising the kind of integrity of what we're doing as independent researchers. But everything aligned pretty well there. But yeah, to your question, I think for any …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:27.258)

Mm-hmm.

Linus Gregoriadis (10:33.298)

… business that's looking, as I say, to establish its voice in a particular domain or area, proprietary research can be, I guess, a great way of getting more of a foothold in that market being seen as for leaders. So when companies come to us, sometimes they have a, like you did, they have quite a clear hypothesis of what they want the research to be about. And they want us to kind of validate that this is a problem or challenge. And there may be some certain ways of overcoming that. Other times companies will say, know, want some great content to help us stand out. And then we'll say, well, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:06.127)

Mm-hmm.

Linus Gregoriadis (11:31.168)

We'll ask them, what does their ideal customer look like? Who, who, who's the content being aimed at? And when we may suggest some, different types of content, maybe something more to the top of the funnel around trends in, in an area, which is in their kind of wheelhouse and in terms of the product, products or services that they're selling. Probably also suggest something a bit.

More lower funnel in terms of content, depending on where they've got the gaps. And we may suggest the buyer's guides or the business case for doing a particular piece of research. We produced a report for Adobe recently on the case for B2B personalization, which is that's umm …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:06.512)

Yeah. Mm-mm.

Linus Gregoriadis (12:28.224)

… mainly focused in the background commissioned by the Adobe Marketo side of the business. So there's some marketing automation elements there, some B2B customer journey optimizer elements kind of feeding into that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:47.406)

Hmm. That's great. So do you kind of guide them to look at their market differentiation and across their competitive set and kind of what else is out there as well?

Linus Gregoriadis (13:03.486)

Yeah, I mean, quite often it might align with their roadmap as a business. So perhaps historically they've been more associated with one particular area because they've grown up as a certain type of technology, but they're now trying to pivot or evolve into something else, which will then become the focal point.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:09.871)

Mm-hmm.

Linus Gregoriadis (13:32.209)

… of the research.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:33.967)

Mm-mm.

Linus Gregoriadis (13:37.472)

So yeah, it depends on what they're trying to achieve and ultimately the types of company and prospects they want to reach. And something we're talking about a lot now is the buying group, the buyer group or buying committee and spinning out different content assets on a particular theme that's more geared towards different personas in that buying group wearing different hats. So it may be the CFO and they need more of a business case. It might be the CTO and then the focus might be more around security and then some of the questions that they may have on the tech side. It might be more aimed at CMOs, the marketing people and also perhaps different or complementary messaging for the users of a service or technology versus the people who are signing off the check, whether they're in procurement or as I said, in finance.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:53.921)

No, I think that's so important to really build the value of the data and output and the paper itself to kind of think about who your target audience is, your ICP for the business, and then make sure that what you're developing kind of gives them what they need, whether it's the CFO to your point or the CMO, to help them make what they're their decisions and their buying process. So I know one of the big differentiators that I've seen in your papers and your research, especially when we've worked together. One of your differentiators is really bringing those quantitative and qualitative angles to the paper and the research. Too often, I'll download a research paper and it will just be data. It will be graphs with some descriptions of the graphs, but it's still, it's kind of missing something. And that's what I love about, again, the, your, what you're producing. So talk a bit more about your purpose and how you're using both quantitative and qualitative data in the process.

Linus Gregoriadis (16:11.564)

Yeah, I mean, in my view, they're very much complimentary. I think qualitative research is always needed and then there's a decision to be made and quite often that depends on our client's budget about whether you can do quantitative research and then whether that's gonna be consumer research or business research or both as we've done in the past.

In terms of good practice market research, you need the qualitative to help define the questions you're going to ask in a survey. We'll typically have conversations with the marketing content teams we're working with, with their internal subject matter experts on a particular topic. And we love to interview different brands and companies. So when you produce the report and say you have got some great charts and proprietary data points, you can really bring that to life with some talking heads in the report. When we're, I think when we're consuming content, any of us can take it from the sort of theoretical to the practical. can really...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:35.909)

Yeah.

Linus Gregoriadis (17:36.63)

… imagine it more if someone from a company that you've heard of especially is actually talking about the sort of challenges and opportunities that they've had in a particular area.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:51.726)

Right, it really reinforces the data to be, yeah, much more depth. I agree, I think that's so important and that's always been a real priority for us as well to make sure you're rounding it out. But the hard data coming from the ...

Linus Gregoriadis (17:53.739)

Mm-mm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:14.096)

… consumers or business panels are really important to your point for the graphs and kind of getting more granular. talk about your process in managing the kind of consumer panels or how you find the panels or building out those who to reach out to.

Linus Gregoriadis (18:35.786)

Yeah, the consumer for the consumer research, we have a data scientist who's involved with the business, the business surveys as well behind the scenes, making sure we're answering the right questions for the consumer research as well. We typically use third party panel providers to reach any …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:45.902)

Mm-mm.

Linus Gregoriadis (19:04.876)

… particular global markets and who can give us nationally representative samples. On the consumer side, we don't have our own panels ourselves. On the business side, it's a little easier for us. have as part of the demand exchange, one of the largest groups on LinkedIn called Digital Marketing, which we can tap into for business surveys, we have our own database which is useful for surveys in the surveys of marketers, but we also rely there on third party panels again, just to make sure we're kind of hitting the numbers we need. It's getting harder and harder to get people to take these surveys.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:34.126)

Mm-mm. I think it's so important that to your point, you're using a data scientist to help not just mine the data after the fact, but make sure you're asking questions with the right survey question style. Is it likely to not be likely or? Is it a yes or no question? I know there's a lot of different formats in how you can ask the questions in order to kind of get different data points.

Linus Gregoriadis (20:37.088)

Yeah, there's a danger that the data you're getting back isn't optimal. For example, if you're asking consumers to rate importance out of five for a bunch of different things and where five is very important and zero or one is not very important at all. Quite often people will just say that they're all important and give them a four or five without giving you much differentiation there. But if, for example, you use a technique called MaxDiff, where you keep showing two different things and they have to say which is more important, they really have to focus and decide, think a bit harder about how they're answering rather than taking the path of least resistance.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:34.98)

Yeah, it gives you more, again, more variety of data and kind of rounding out the research to get those different perspectives and ways to measure. And then, so I know from there, you take the data, the massive spreadsheets of data, the output, and your data scientist kind of pulls together some of the analysis. What are your next steps as you're building that story and bringing in your professional writers to kind of write it all in.

Linus Gregoriadis (22:12.906)

Yeah, I mean, to a degree, you have the hypothesis and you're developing the story, you're looking at the data, building the story. I mean, sometimes you'll reverse engineering it to a degree while still doing it with an independent mind. But you know the … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:24.559)

Mm-mm.

Linus Gregoriadis (22:42.344)

… types of stories you want to tell and the emphasis might change depending on what the survey says but the data scientists will work in our case his magic on trying to sort of get under the skin a bit of what the data is saying, maybe do a kind of driver's analysis to say what's really behind those answers that doing, I, you're, you're, breaking things down, maybe by company revenue size or, or geography. yeah, you're, you're just kind of trying to get, really to work on the nuance and to develop that story. And I guess the business intelligence tools and the modeling is getting more sophisticated all the time so that's speeding things up.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:45.712)

Now that's great. And then for the final output, you work with your writers to build out that final report using that, that you mentioned earlier, there's no substitute for human writing when it comes to that final production.

Linus Gregoriadis (24:03.092)

Yeah, I mean, that's really important for us in the AI, Gen.AI. It is useful maybe for doing a first pass at some of the analysis, throwing out some ideas for summarizing some of the transcripts from your interviews, obviously anonymizing them as necessary if you're putting them out there into chat GBT or Google Gemini or whatever.

But as of yet, that's sort of helped me keep a job for a while. You really do need the human touch to sort of write the story in a kind of consistent and compelling way. And there are some shortcuts along the way and, and, some, some economies from doing that, which we're increasingly able to pass on to our clients, but you, in my view, still very much need human copywriters. And one of the things we're doing more of is you have your, I guess, hero piece of content, but you want to have, spin out different infographics, mini reports, articles aimed at the different personas or members of the buying group we've talked about.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:06.618)

Mm-mm.

Yeah, no, it's definitely, I know we've talked a lot about the power of that research paper to become your core to your content strategy and content development plan. So it does to your point, there's so many ways to then use that to create more content and to continue to use that to differentiate your, the brand and the output of the data as well. It's really valuable.

Linus Gregoriadis (26:00.534)

Yeah, I mean, you really want to have something evergreen, not just a white paper you put out once a year. You can really bring that to life, as I say, with video, animations, articles. There's a whole range of assets you can use and then a whole range of channels you can use to distribute, syndicate that content and get the maximum ROI from that investment.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:04.142)

Mm-mm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:31.478)

For sure. So Linus, thank you so much for your time today and for always being such a brilliant partner to work with. So I look forward to the next time you and I can partner together, but thank you for joining us on the podcast today.

Linus Gregoriadis (26:48.544)

Thanks for having me, Kerry. It's been great.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:52.133)

Thank you.