Industry analysts are a key part of the vendor purchase decision for many large organizations. They have a deep understanding of the market, and can recommend the best vendors based on a company’s needs and goals.
Because of this relationship between analysts and large organizations, it becomes key for vendors to have a positive working relationship with analysts. For the past two weeks, we’ve talked about how to identify the analysts you should target, what the analyst lifecycle looks like, and how you should measure your results.
Now it’s time to start building analyst relationships.
There are no hard-and-fast rules to building and maintaining analyst relationships. Each analyst firm operates differently for customers and non-customers, though across the board it will always be easier to land meetings and build relationships with analysts when you are a paying customer. However, these relationships aren’t cheap.
Without a contract, most analyst firms will accept a handful of briefings from non-customer vendors. These briefings are generally few and far between. They’re also one-sided, with the vendor providing their information and the analyst not giving much feedback. These briefings serve as a way for analysts to understand the full market and write complete reports.
The benefit of having a contract with an analyst firm is twofold: you have priority access to the analyst and to insights and trends in the market.
The benefit of having a contract with an analyst firm is twofold. First, as a customer you have priority access to the analyst—in fact, at some firms analysts are required to take briefings or inquiries from customers when requested. This makes it a lot easier to build relationships with analysts. The more calls you have with the analyst, the better they understand your product and point of view—and ultimately the more likely they are to mention your product to customers or in reports.
Secondly, as part of the relationship you’re given access to the analysts to discuss insights and trends in the market. These meetings provide the opportunity to talk about product messaging, what the analysts are seeing work for other vendors, and what they’re hearing from customers. This insight is invaluable, especially for a new business.
At Kapost, we regularly run our messaging, product updates, and content past analysts before making it public—or even before it evolves to more than just an idea. Analysts provide a great sounding board and will help guide product development and content creation.
We’ve found that the easiest way to beginning an analyst relationship is to ask for a briefing. Though it may take a while to schedule, a briefing is a great way to get in with an analyst and begin building a relationship. Once you’ve had the briefing, we’ve had success sharing content and thought-leadership pieces that fall into the realm of the analysts’ research. This can start a dialog with the analyst and allow the relationship to continue to develop.
Analysts provide a great sounding board and will help guide product development and content creation.
While we’ve found great success with the firms we have contracts with, we’ve also had success building relationships without a contract. Analyst relationships are not easy to get started, and once you’re “in,” it’s important to continue to maintain communication to develop the relationship.
Analysts need support on their research from vendors just as much as you can utilize their support. By building a two-way relationship, both you and the analyst will benefit from and will want to continue having two-way communication.
Reporting Your Results
Once you’ve begun building analyst relationships, it will be important to communicate results. Generally, Kapost’s analyst-relations teams are only used to share report mentions and insights from their briefings. However, by utilizing the scale we put together earlier, our team is now able to share a more complete understanding of our analyst outreach and the impact we’re having.
We report our results on a monthly basis, and each month has measurements for each stage of the analyst-relationship lifecycle.
For engagement, we measure:
- The total number of analysts on our outreach list
- Number we reached out to this month
- Number of connections we made
- How many of those connections are new
- % of total connections
For self-initiation, we measure:
- The total number of analysts on our outreach list
- Number who reached out to Kapost
- New initiators
- % of total connections
For briefings, we measure:
- The total number of analysts on our outreach list
- Number of briefings
- % of total who took briefings
For paid engagement, we measure:
- The total number of analysts on our outreach list
- Number of paid engagements
- Reach of paid engagements
- % of total paid engagements
For mentions, we measure:
- The total number of analysts on our outreach list
- Number of analysts who mentioned Kapost
- Reach of the mentions
- % of total who mentioned Kapost
Additionally, we take a look at how analysts moved through the lifecycle each month. And finally, what the analyst health score is and how many analysts are in each health stage.
By building out these reports and sharing our results on an ongoing basis, we have gained executive buy-in and a better understanding of how the analyst-relations team is supporting everyone at Kapost.
Additionally, we’ve created more sustainable, mutually beneficial analyst relationships, and we have a better understanding of where our individual relationships stand at any time. By taking the time to report on analyst relationships, you can create more visibility within your organization, boost company buy-in, and have a full understanding of the impact of your endeavors.